Texas getaway driver set for execution

The getaway driver in a Texas robbery spree that ended in murder is set to be executed in the US today, drawing anger from critics who say he should not be put to death because he was not the shooter.

Kenneth Foster would join a number of other condemned prisoners executed under a state statute that makes non-triggermen equally accountable for their crimes - including one put to death earlier this year.

“This is a new low for Texas,” said Larry Cox, executive director of Amnesty International USA, the human rights organisation that opposes the death penalty in all cases. “Allowing his life to be taken is a shocking perversion of the law.”

Foster’s execution would make him the third Texas prisoner executed in as many days and the 24th this year in America’s most active capital punishment state.

Foster acknowledges that he and and his “knucklehead” friends were up to no good as drove around San Antonio in a rental car and robbed at least four people. The spree turned deadly when one of Foster’s passengers, Mauriceo Brown, jumped out of the car, walked up to Michael LaHood, demanded his wallet and car keys, then opened fire when he could not produce them. LaHood died instantly.

Foster says he was 80 feet away from the shooting.

“It was wrong,” Foster, 30, said recently from death row. “I don’t want to downplay that. I was wrong for that. I was too much of a follower. I’m straight up about that.”

“I didn’t kill anybody,” he said. “I screwed up. I went down the wrong path. I fault myself for being in this messed-up system.”

Brown and Foster, tried together, were convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death. Brown, 31, was executed by lethal injection last year.