Kenneth Foster is a Texas death row survivor whose 1997 capital sentence was commuted by Governor Rick Perry in 2007, hours before his scheduled execution, even though he never fired the shot that killed Michael LaHood Jr. in San Antonio in 1996. Foster was the getaway driver; his passenger, Mauriceo Brown, pulled the trigger. He was convicted under Texas’s law of parties, which allows co-conspirators to be held equally liable for a killing that “should have been anticipated.” In 2024, while serving life in prison, Foster was convicted of capital murder a second time for fatally stabbing another inmate and was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole.
The Night of the LaHood Killing
On August 14, 1996, Foster, then 19, drove a rental car around San Antonio with three companions: Mauriceo Brown, Julius Steen, and DeWayne Dillard. The group committed a string of armed robberies through the evening, with Foster staying behind the wheel while the others confronted victims.
In the early hours of August 15, Foster followed a car driven by Mary Patrick to the home of Michael LaHood Jr. After everyone got out of their vehicles, Brown left Foster’s car, walked up to LaHood, and shot him in the head at close range. LaHood died from the wound.
The four men did not end up in the same place legally. Brown was sentenced to death and executed by lethal injection on July 19, 2006. Steen took a plea deal, testified for the state, and received 35 years to life for aggravated robbery. Dillard was never prosecuted for the LaHood killing but drew a life sentence for a separate murder committed about two weeks earlier.
How the Law of Parties Sent a Driver to Death Row
Foster and Brown were tried jointly for capital murder in May 1997. Prosecutors relied on Section 7.02(b) of the Texas Penal Code, the state’s law of parties, which erases the distinction between principals and accomplices. Under that section, if a killing happens during a conspiracy to commit another felony, every conspirator can be held equally responsible when the death “should have been anticipated” as a result of the underlying crime.
The state’s theory was that the earlier armed robberies that night put Foster on notice that lethal violence was foreseeable. Steen, testifying under his plea agreement, told the jury it was “kind of like, I guess understood” that a robbery might happen. The jury convicted both men and sentenced them to death.
Texas is the only state that applies a law-of-parties doctrine to death-eligible offenses. No other jurisdiction allows a defendant to be executed for a killing carried out by someone else during a conspiracy.
Appeals That Went Nowhere
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed Foster’s conviction and death sentence on June 30, 1999. Three judges dissented, arguing he should have been granted a jury instruction on the lesser offense of aggravated robbery. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the case in March 2000.
Foster then turned to federal habeas corpus. In March 2005, a federal district judge granted conditional relief, identifying what he called a “fundamental constitutional defect”: the jury had never been asked to decide whether Foster played a “major role” in the crime or acted with “reckless indifference to human life.” Those findings are required under Enmund v. Florida (1982) and Tison v. Arizona (1987), which hold that the death penalty is disproportionate for a defendant who did not kill or intend to kill unless he was a major participant showing reckless indifference to life.
In October 2006, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals vacated that ruling and denied relief, finding the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals had already effectively addressed the constitutional requirements. Foster had nearly run out of options, and Brown had already been executed months earlier.
The Clemency Campaign and Perry’s Commutation
As Foster’s August 30, 2007, execution date closed in, his case drew international attention. Amnesty International campaigned publicly for him. A grassroots “Save Kenneth Foster Campaign,” organized by activists and members of his family, formed in May 2007 and mounted demonstrations in Texas and abroad. Bishop Desmond Tutu signed a friend-of-the-court appeal on his behalf. The Fort Worth Star-Telegram, the Dallas Morning News, and the San Antonio Express-News editorialized against the execution. Protests took place in Italy, outside Governor Perry’s church in Austin, and at the governor’s mansion.
On the day Foster was to be put to death, the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles voted 6–1 to recommend clemency, a recommendation the governor was free to reject. Perry accepted it. In his statement, he said he believed “the right and just decision is to commute Foster’s sentence from the death penalty to life imprisonment,” pointing to concerns about the law of parties and its allowance for capital co-defendants to be tried alongside the actual killer. Perry also urged the legislature to change the statute. A spokeswoman for the governor said Foster would become eligible for parole in 2036.
It was the first death penalty commutation of Perry’s tenure, which had by then run eight years. Foster’s father held a celebration with supporters outside the death house in Huntsville after the announcement.
Reform Efforts the Case Fueled
Foster’s near-execution has driven several legislative attempts to narrow the law of parties in capital cases. In 2017, Representatives Harold Dutton and Terry Canales filed House Bills 147 and 316, which would have removed the possibility of a death sentence for people convicted solely under the anticipation clause. Both bills were left pending in the House Criminal Jurisprudence Committee. The case of Jeff Wood, another Texas death row inmate sentenced under the doctrine despite not being present at the killing, added momentum; the original prosecuting district attorney in Wood’s case later petitioned for his commutation to life.
In the 2023 session, Representative Jeff Leach filed House Bill 1736. It would have required proof that a conspirator was a “major participant” who acted with “reckless indifference to human life” before a capital murder conviction could stand, stripped juries of the ability to impose death based solely on the anticipation standard, and required the Board of Pardons and Paroles to review existing death sentences imposed under the law of parties. HB 1736 passed the Texas House but never received a Senate hearing and died without becoming law.
The Telford Unit Killing and Second Capital Conviction
On November 6, 2021, officers at the Telford Unit near Texarkana found inmate Anthony Dominguez unresponsive in his cell with injuries consistent with a fight. He was pronounced dead at the prison’s medical facility about 40 minutes later. The cause of death was a puncture wound to the chest from a sharpened piece of metal. Surveillance footage identified Foster as the person who injured him.
Foster told investigators he acted in self-defense, saying Dominguez had been using drugs, was paranoid, and attacked him with a weapon when Foster went to the cell to tell him he meant no harm. The state offered a different account. Surveillance video showed Foster walking to Dominguez’s cell on a different row and making stabbing motions into the doorway. Witnesses testified Foster had earlier threatened to “get [Dominguez’s] homeboy in line” if others did not address Dominguez’s behavior. Five days after the killing, an eight-inch sharpened metal shank was recovered from a shower vent, and the medical examiner said the wound was consistent with that weapon.
Foster was charged under a Texas statute that makes it a capital offense for a person already serving a sentence for murder or capital murder to kill again while incarcerated. After a four-day trial in Bowie County, a jury convicted him. On November 15, 2024, he was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole.
He appealed, arguing the evidence was legally insufficient because the state had failed to disprove his self-defense and necessity claims. On September 4, 2025, the Sixth Court of Appeals of Texas at Texarkana affirmed the conviction, finding the jury was entitled to reject his account and citing his conduct after the stabbing, including hiding the weapon and trying to coordinate stories with other inmates, as “indicia of guilt.”