Death by lawyer

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George W. is confident that justice was done in every single execution carried out in Texas during his time as governor — 146 of them, as of Wednesday. That’s a relief, because the picture’s not quite so clear in North Carolina, where earlier this week a lawyer admitted purposely fumbling the appeal of a convicted murderer because he didn’t like the man. His former client is due to be executed in December.

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An Associated Press story in the SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS reports that Attorney David B. Smith was aware that his co-counsel, Steven Allen, misunderstood the deadline for the appeal, but failed to correct him, and stalled to avoid meetings. A date for Tucker’s execution was set after the defense missed the deadline.

Smith, overcome with remorse, confessed a week later. Tucker’s case is still up in the air, though prosecutors continue to oppose both his appeal and attempts to replace his attorneys. Lucky this kind of thing never happens in Texas.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT.

We have a considerable $390,000 gap in our online fundraising budget that we have to close by June 30. There is no wiggle room, we've already cut everything we can, and we urgently need more readers to pitch in—especially from this specific blurb you're reading right now.

We'll also be quite transparent and level-headed with you about this.

In "News Never Pays," our fearless CEO, Monika Bauerlein, connects the dots on several concerning media trends that, taken together, expose the fallacy behind the tragic state of journalism right now: That the marketplace will take care of providing the free and independent press citizens in a democracy need, and the Next New Thing to invest millions in will fix the problem. Bottom line: Journalism that serves the people needs the support of the people. That's the Next New Thing.

And it's what MoJo and our community of readers have been doing for 47 years now.

But staying afloat is harder than ever.

In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

You're here for reporting like that, not fundraising, but one cannot exist without the other, and it's vitally important that we hit our intimidating $390,000 number in online donations by June 30.

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