In 1989, Hood was convicted of murdering Ronald Williamson and Tracie Lynn Wallace. The Holland-O'Connell affair was first reported by Salon in 2005, quoting anonymous sources. Judge Holland refused to either confirm or deny the affair at the time. A year ago this month, Holland and D.A. O'Connell, both since retired, acknowledged under oath that they had had a long-term sexual relationship, which was never revealed during more than a decade of appeals by Hood's lawyers. In her defense, Judge Holland said the affair ended more than two years before Hood's trial. But O'Connell also testified that the two had discussed marriage, and recalled that the affair continued as late as mid-1989 -- just before Hood's trial. He said the two continued to have a "good relationship," sans sex, during and after the trial. He said the two took a trip together in 1991.

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That's according to papers filed by Hood's attorneys in two Texas courts Thursday. Hood's lawyers allege that Texas state court Judge Verla Sue Holland had a "personal and direct interest in the outcome of the case," and was disqualified from trying the case under the Texas Constitution because of her ongoing affair with Collin County District Attorney Tom O'Connell. Hood's lawyers are seeking a stay of execution and the reversal of his conviction and death sentence.

Allegations that Judge Holland and District Attorney O'Connell were romantically involved when Holland presided over the murder case prosecuted by O'Connell were first reported in Salon in June 2005. But yesterday's petition, which cites the original Salon report, marks the first time Hood's lawyers have taken the matter to court. The "wall of silence that has long protected Judge Holland must now come down," the lawyers argue in their filing.

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"Is any jury going to convict Jack Bauer?" Scalia scoffed. He went on to argue that when it comes to torture, "the question is really whether we believe in these absolutes. And ought we believe in these absolutes."

The clear implication was that Justice Scalia does not believe in an absolute ban on torture -- at least when it comes to suspected terrorists. That's a popular view these days, particularly among members of the Bush administration, although the hard questions of whether there are any limits on the use of torture have yet to be fully tested in the courts. We may get a somewhat better idea of just how far Scalia and his colleagues would go in tolerating abusive treatment of prisoners -- or what some would call torture -- next week when the Supreme Court considers a case challenging the use of lethal injections in execution.

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Warner, a moderate Democrat, is expected to devote himself full-time to a run for the White House in 2008. But with a month left in his term as governor, the 51-year-old presidential hopeful is not out of the woods when it comes to messy questions of murder and justice in the American legal system. While the media focus on the pending execution of Stanley "Tookie" Williams, the notorious Crips gang leader seeking clemency in California for rehabilitating himself in prison, Warner finds himself embroiled in a struggle over the blatant miscarriage of justice. Before departing office, he must address no fewer than three major cases involving possible wrongful convictions in the Virginia courts.

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In the case of Charles Dean Hood, the short answer is, "Don't bet your life on it."

Hood, who was sentenced to death for a 1989 double murder, is scheduled to be executed by the state of Texas on June 30. Unfortunately for Hood, in the 15 years since he arrived on death row, the issue of the strange and not-so-secret relationship of State District Court Judge Verla Sue Holland and Collin County District Attorney Tom O'Connell has never been raised in a single state or federal court.

Now, it should be stated at the outset that the private affairs of public officials, including extra-marital relations, should under all but the most extraordinary circumstances remain solely the business of the parties involved.

But when a person is charged with a serious crime and his life hangs in the balance, such a private relationship may well become a matter of public interest, because the public has a right to know that the judicial process that prosecutors and judges swear to uphold will not be compromised.

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"After carefully reviewing all the facts in this case," the Republican governor said, Patterson would have to be executed because Texas had no statute mandating life without parole "and no one can guarantee this defendant would never be freed to commit other crimes were his sentence commuted."

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In the end, few senators wanted to sully the Gonzales love-in just because the sworn testimony of the soon-to-be rubber-stamped head of the nation's chief law enforcement agency was not entirely responsive. But if Gonzales was lacking in candor on the subject of torture, the main thrust of the hearing, he almost certainly crossed the line from half-truth to untruth when it came to a discussion of his role in the execution of 57 Texas death row inmates.

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Gonzales' values, to say nothing of his legal judgment, have come in for scrutiny of late due in part to his supposedly aggressive questioning of homeland security nominee Bernard Kerik (which failed to uncover extramarital affairs, unpaid taxes on an illegally employed nanny, a warrant for his arrest related to unpaid condo fees, and alleged links to organized crime), as well as to two highly controversial memoranda Gonzales authorized for Bush that laid out the case for torturing prisoners taken in the "war against terrorism." Whether Gonzales' central role in designing policies that may have led to the abuses at Abu Ghraib and other military facilities should disqualify him for the job of attorney general will be a major focus of his Senate confirmation hearing set to begin Thursday morning.

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And yet, it might be more surprising that such a speech even came from O'Connor. The Justice, the latest in a growing chorus of conservative death penalty supporters -- some of whom have been severely critical of how it is applied -- has rarely expressed any misgivings about the way the states mete out death sentences. Rather, she has been a key swing vote on numerous of the Court's death penalty decisions, including several in which profound questions of innocence and due process were raised.

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And based on her own professed beliefs about criminal justice reform, this case is likely making for a wrenching decision as her eight-year term comes to a close.

Chandler, a 48 year-old former marijuana grower from Alabama, was convicted in 1991 on murder and drug conspiracy charges. His case is exceptional for several reasons, not the least of which is that he may be innocent. When the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals voted last summer to uphold his conviction and death sentence by a 6-5 vote, the majority acknowledged that "the evidence of guilt [on the murder charge] was not overwhelming," a standard of guilt even some death-penalty supporters should have a hard time swallowing.

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So too, it now appears, did the State of Texas. Two of them, in fact.

At the time Danziger was attacked, he and another man, his onetime roommate and friend, Christopher Ochoa, were serving life sentences for the brutal 1988 murder of 20-year-old Nancy DePriest, the mother of a 15-month-old baby girl. According to the sordid testimony in Danziger's trial, the two men repeatedly raped De Priest at an Austin Pizza Hut where she was working, including twice after she'd been shot in the back of the head.

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In the four-page letter its author, Achim Josef Marino, a 39-year-old state prison inmate serving a life sentence for aggravated robbery with a deadly weapon, described how he had "robbed, raped and shot" 20-year-old Nancy DePriest at a Pizza Hut in Austin in October 1988. Marino explained that at the time of the murder "I was insane," and that since then he had undergone a "Christian conversion" and "spiritual awakening" and was fully prepared to be executed for killing the young woman.

Perhaps most startling about Marino's letter was his assertion that two innocent men were serving life sentences for a crime he himself committed. "Governor Bush Sir, I do not know these men nor why they plead [sic] guilty to a crime they never committed," Marino wrote, "but I tell you this sir, I did this awfull [sic] crime and I was alone."

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"Character" is the mantra of Bush's campaign against Vice President Al Gore and President Clinton. He mentioned "character" nine times in his acceptance speech at the Republican Convention. In other speeches he's made as many as 20 references to character. He's even pledged doubling funding for "character education," whatever that is.

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Bush not only wants to provide senior citizens a drug benefit; he also wants to change the basic structure of Medicare by having the federal program compete with a smorgasbord of new government-subsidized HMOs and insurance plans.

Bush's free-market proposal, which closely tracks a bill favored by Republicans in Congress, is sure to appeal to the party faithful. It attacks what Republicans see as Medicare's "big government," "one-size-fits-all" approach to healthcare. Yet it is not at all clear that Medicare's 39 million elderly and disabled beneficiaries are anywhere near as disillusioned with the program as Bush and more conservative members of his party who have long viewed Medicare as the prologue to socialized medicine.

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Quirion, a retired quality-control worker at the local Hathaway Shirt factory, walks with two canes and lives on $1,000 a month from Social Security and a small pension. And as one of 70 million Americans who has no prescription drug coverage, she offers a glimpse into the emerging battle over prescription drug prices in this year's presidential race.

Quirion was heading for Canada because she can purchase her drugs there -- Relafen, an anti-inflammatory arthritis drug, and Prilosec, which treats her stomach problem -- for nearly 60 percent less than she would have to pay at the drugstore in Waterville ($399 instead of $979). Like many seniors on fixed incomes, Quirion is acutely sensitive to the price of prescription medications, which have risen at rates of 10 to 14 percent in the past five years and are projected to rise another 10 percent annually until 2008. She says she simply can't afford to pay U.S. prices for all the medications she needs.

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Less than a week after Bush's announcement, the Texas attorney general's office was in New Orleans trying to convince a federal appeals court that Calvin Burdine had received his full day in court and adequate legal representation despite the fact that Burdine's lawyer slept through major portions of his murder trial. "He must show harm," the state's deputy solicitor general told the judge. "Burdine has not done that." There was, however, the small matter of Burdine's death sentence. ("But other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play?")

Bush's decision in the McGinn case has been widely seen as an astute move by the presumptive GOP presidential nominee to moderate a perception that he may be too zealous about executing people. "By granting a reprieve to a convicted murderer," a Time magazine headline opined, "Bush highlights the first part of compassionate conservative."

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You wouldn't expect Graham to evoke much sympathy from the governor - or many people, for that matter. As a teenage thug, Graham went on a weeklong rampage of 22 robberies and assaults. He was found passed out, drunk and naked, in the bed of a 57-year-old taxi driver who accused him of raping her, at which point he was arrested for the murder of Bobby Lambert. Today Graham, who has been taken to the Texas death chamber on three previous dates, insists he will "fight like hell" and "physically resist" efforts to kill him, and he has called on his supporters to "take up arms to defend our rights by any means necessary."

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