Are murderers cool if they're into drugs? An investigation.

This is an odd position to take as a prison abolitionist, but can we stop rehabilitating horrible people?

George W. Bush, whose team successfully stole an election and launched several catastrophic wars, is considered “good” for not being Trump and for giving Michelle Obama a candy. John Boehner was the bane of every liberal’s existence in the Obama era, and now he’s just some delightful old wino who’s into legal pot.

Reason magazine (full disclosure I write for them sometimes and also think their criminal justice coverage is great and may make up for the weird libertarian stuff) just posted a Podcast with former Texas Governor Rick Perry, touting his newfound love of psychedelics. Reason editor-at-large, Nick Gillespie, whose work I very much admire, intro’d the podcast with the following:

In June, I traveled to Denver with Zach Weismueller to cover the Psychedelic Science 2023 conference, organized by the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS), a group that has been working to gain Food and Drug Administration approval of MDMA-assisted therapy for PTSD since the late 1980s. We produced a 30-minute documentary about today's "psychedelic renaissance."

The most surprising speaker at the conference was Rick Perry, the former Texas governor and Trump administration energy secretary. What in tarnation was a conservative Republican doing on the stage, extolling the virtues of drugs long associated with hippies and 1960s counterculture?

I sat down with Perry to learn why he believes psychedelics should be legal medicine for veterans and others suffering from PTSD, how to allow more immigrants to come to America lawfully, and why if he were ever to take a psychedelic drug it would be Ibogaine, a notoriously powerful substance made from the bark of an African tree.

Cool. What did he have to say about the 279 people who were executed on his watch when he was Governor of Texas? Don't ask, don’t tell!

That includes: Cameron Todd Willingham. Willingham’s three daughters burned to death in a house fire. Literally nothing worse in the world could happen to a human being. But then, he was convicted for their deaths based on totally made-up forensic bullshit, and executed in 2004, despite being innocent. Salon has a good round-up of one of Perry’s many murders:

Shortly before Willingham's execution, the renowned arson expert Gerald Hurst sent Perry and the Texas Board of Pardon and Parole an analysis demonstrating that Willingham could not have set the fire that killed his daughters, but a defiant Perry signed Willingham's death warrant anyway. Subsequent investigations have only cast further doubt on the case against Willingham.

Asked if he ever struggled with his role in gruesome and preventable deaths, Perry was like, “Nah.”

"No, sir. I've never struggled with that at all. The state of Texas has a very thoughtful, a very clear process in place of which -- when someone commits the most heinous of crimes against our citizens, they get a fair hearing, they go through an appellate process, they go up to the Supreme Court of the United States, if that's required."

Going back to the original conceit re: prison abolition vs. the public monsters we effortlesslty rehabilitate after a little time has passed: people actually in prison hoping for a second chance have to grovel before parole boards. They have to admit to things they did not do—such as in felony murder cases— and beg and plead to show they’ve changed. With powerful people, we’re just like, '“It’s cool, he’s into drugs now.”

I’m not trying to be holier-than-though. Getting a standard Republican on the record to say he’s into psychedelics is a great scoop. No reporter would skip it. It’s also perfectly human to not display active animosity to another human who agrees to have a public conversation with you. Sometimes I have fevered fantasies of going on Fox News and calling them out on their bullshit. I would not have the balls, I’d be polite and worry mostly about how my makeup looked.

And as a prison abolitionist, I don’t think anyone is as bad as their worst deed. But come on. Maybe address the fact that, “mistakes (279) were made?”