Armed Polite Society
Main Forums => Politics => Topic started by: Manedwolf on January 27, 2009, 01:49:38 AM
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Yes, he seems to be serious, and yes, it's real...Ha!
NH Rep.: expand death penalty, add firing squad
By Associated Press
Monday, January 26, 2009 - Added 4m ago
CONCORD, N.H. — A Keene, N.H., lawmaker wants to expand New Hampshire’s death penalty to include more crimes, and make death by a firing squad the punishment in some cases.
The current law includes the murder of judges and law enforcement officials, as well as murder for hire, murder connected to certain drug offenses and murder during a rape. But Rep. Delmar Burridge, a Democrat, also wants to include murder during a robbery or other felony using a gun.
Under the bill he has sponsored, anyone convicted under that expansion would face a firing squad instead of lethal injection. He says threatening would-be murderers with a firing squad would be a more effective deterrent.
09-0024
04/01
HOUSE BILL 37
AN ACT relative to the penalty for using a gun in the commission of a felony.
SPONSORS: Rep. Burridge, Ches 3
COMMITTEE: Criminal Justice and Public Safety
ANALYSIS
This bill provides for death by firing squad for causing the death of another by the use of a firearm, while engaged in the commission of a felony.
http://www.gencourt.state.nh.us/legislation/2009/HB0037.html (http://www.gencourt.state.nh.us/legislation/2009/HB0037.html)
STATE OF NEW HAMPSHIRE
In the Year of Our Lord Two Thousand Nine
AN ACT relative to the penalty for using a gun in the commission of a felony.
Be it Enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives in General Court convened:
1 Homicide; Capital Murder. Amend RSA 630:1, I to read as follows:
I. A person is guilty of capital murder if he or she knowingly causes the death of:
(a) A law enforcement officer or a judicial officer acting in the line of duty or when the death is caused as a consequence of or in retaliation for such person’s actions in the line of duty;
(b) Another before, after, while engaged in the commission of, or while attempting to commit kidnapping as that offense is defined in RSA 633:1;
(c) Another by criminally soliciting a person to cause said death or after having been criminally solicited by another for his personal pecuniary gain;
(d) Another after being sentenced to life imprisonment without parole pursuant to RSA 630:1-a, III;
(e) Another before, after, while engaged in the commission of, or while attempting to commit aggravated felonious sexual assault as defined in RSA 632-A:2;
(f) Another before, after, while engaged in the commission of, or while attempting to commit an offense punishable under RSA 318-B:26, I(a) or (b);
(g) Another, by the use of a firearm, while engaged in the commission of a felony.
2 Homicide; Procedure in Capital Murder. Amend RSA 630:5, XV to read as follows:
XV.(a) Except as provided in subparagraph (b), an execution carried out by lethal injection shall be performed by a person selected by the commissioner of the department of corrections and trained to administer the injection. The person administering the injection need not be a physician, registered nurse, or licensed practical nurse, licensed or registered under the laws of this or any other state.
(b) When the penalty of death is imposed, the punishment for a defendant convicted under RSA 630:1, I(g) shall be execution by firing squad. If execution by firing squad is to be carried out, the commissioner of the department of corrections or designee shall select a 5-person firing squad of peace officers. The commissioner or designee shall ensure that the method of judgment of death specified in the warrant is carried out at a secure correctional facility operated by the department at an hour determined by the department on the date specified in the warrant. Compensation for firing squad members shall be in an amount determined by the commissioner of the department of corrections.
3 Effective Date. This act shall take effect January 1, 2010.
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Rope is cheaper and reusable.
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Rope is cheaper and reusable.
... than a single bullet?
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Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.
It should be Hemp or Manila rope though. Nylon isn't very green.
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firing squads are a circus. this proposal sounds like political autoeroticism. its no accident places got rid of firing squads.
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firing squads are a circus. this proposal sounds like political autoeroticism. its no accident places got rid of firing squads.
I think it'd be an effective deterrent.
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I think it'd be an effective deterrent.
I would imagine that the guillotine would be more of a deterrent, despite being slightly harder to maintain. Hanging is creepy too, though. And cheaper.
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I allow myself the comforting delusion that I would be skilled enough to use a firearm for self defense, or for repelling the blue helmeted commiezombies that are sure to come some day here ;/... but I don't think I'd have the cool necessary to put a rifle bullet into a man tied to a firing post at 10 paces.
A little too close to his eyes, if you know what I mean. Yeah, he's a scumbag murderer/rapist/whatever. I worry that my nerves would hold up at bang-time and I would wobble the shot, end up gut-shooting him or something awful like that.
Hanging with a drop-floor actuated by a lever, electronic lethal injection / gas / electric chair are deaths not dependent upon the skill of the executioner.
I think "way back when" that the executioner wore the big black mask for his own sake, not to protect him from retribution via anonymity. It's gotta be downright nerve-wracking to deliberately kill someone who's restrained and awaiting your own personally delivered doom. People who enjoy that type of stuff tend to get captured and put on death row.
Killing in battle, sniping enemy soldiers, clandestine assassinations via knife or poison... they're still different, at least in my mind.
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why would a firing squad deter more than any other method?
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I support the death penalty for certain crimes including murder, but I'd have a difficult time convicting someone under the law as stated in this thread as I do not accept that someone's life is more important than John Q. Public's simply because they happen to work as government employees. ( "(a) A law enforcement officer or a judicial officer . . . " )
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I allow myself the comforting delusion that I would be skilled enough to use a firearm for self defense, or for repelling the blue helmeted commiezombies that are sure to come some day here ;/... but I don't think I'd have the cool necessary to put a rifle bullet into a man tied to a firing post at 10 paces.
Then go with bench-rest .50 cals @ 1000 yards. At the very least, I'll point out that firing squad was a tradition for a long time. They can find people to pull the trigger. Heck, mount some single shots to an electronic firing system with the guy tied up at a defined point.
I support the death penalty for certain crimes including murder, but I'd have a difficult time convicting someone under the law as stated in this thread as I do not accept that someone's life is more important than John Q. Public's simply because they happen to work as government employees. ( "(a) A law enforcement officer or a judicial officer . . . " )
+1M I don't really care WHO the victim is, other than to note that I'd generally be harsher on somebody who harms a child over an adult. I'd look more towards the methodology. An 'accident' during a crime would rate less than a premeditated torture&murder.
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why would a firing squad deter more than any other method?
Actually, I think it is less deterrent than the electric chair. Of all the commonly used forms of execution, I would want to be electrocuted the least. It is always painful, and sometimes not immediately successful. So they have to zap you a few times. Also, sometimes you catch on fire. My second least preferred method would be hanging, because if your neck doesnt break, you have to choke to death.
Lethal injection, the gas chamber, and firing squads are going to be the least painful.
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Our whole system of crime and punishment stinks.
I think we need to go towards a much more public punishment phase.
For lesser crimes like vandalism, petit theft and the ilk a good old fashioned public caning is in order. Let the miscreants be seen getting their backside flailed on the 6:00pm news cast with a full relating of the crime convicted of.
For capital crimes where the death penalty is to be imposed a public hanging is called for. Roll a bunch of human filth out on a big flatbed truck during halftime at the Super Bowl and let them swing.
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Our whole system of crime and punishment stinks.
I think we need to go towards a much more public punishment phase.
For lesser crimes like vandalism, petit theft and the ilk a good old fashioned public caning is in order. Let the miscreants be seen getting their backside flailed on the 6:00pm news cast with a full relating of the crime convicted of.
For capital crimes where the death penalty is to be imposed a public hanging is called for. Roll a bunch of human filth out on a big flatbed truck during halftime at the Super Bowl and let them swing.
Hear, hear. Personally, I wish we'd bring back the death penalty here. Might as well bring back public flogging while we are at it.
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Somewhere between "the circus" (which never really left town) and Koranic "justice" lieth justice.
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I think we need to go towards a much more public punishment phase.
For lesser crimes like vandalism, petit theft and the ilk a good old fashioned public caning is in order. Let the miscreants be seen getting their backside flailed on the 6:00pm news cast with a full relating of the crime convicted of.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TiU_NmYUy7U&feature=related
Execution: Tonight at 6. All net, all channels. :police:
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TiU_NmYUy7U&feature=related
Execution: Tonight at 6. All net, all channels. :police:
"Would you like to know more?" :police:
=D
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If you want a scary way to go, go for immolation or drowning. By far the worst.
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Guillotine....quick, painless, and cheap....and leave the preserved heads on display in criminal courts where they were initially sentenced....
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Guillotine....quick, painless, and cheap....and leave the preserved heads on display in criminal courts where they were initially sentenced....
Preserving them is more than they deserve. I say just mount it on a sharp pole, like ye olde dayes. Preferably, they would be mounted close to schools and various problem areas, to remind any potential shithead about the price of failure in getting away with his criminal enterprise...
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Utah has provisions for firing squads as a method of execution. Last time it was used was Gary Mark Gilmore's execution in the 70's. It was his choice.
We should be concerned over the psychological well-being of the executioner. Everything else is irrelevant.
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Guillotine....quick, painless, and cheap....and leave the preserved heads on display in criminal courts where they were initially sentenced....
Absolutely. Give the taxidermists more business, too. :laugh:
By far the worst.
Ant mound burial. Woodchipper. Need I continue?
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Utah has provisions for firing squads as a method of execution. Last time it was used was Gary Mark Gilmore's execution in the 70's. It was his choice.
John Albert Taylor was executed by firing squad in 1996. Utah again. They later banned it as a method of execution.
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Absolutely. Give the taxidermists more business, too. :laugh:
Ant mound burial. Woodchipper. Need I continue?
Vogon poetry? :laugh: =D
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I don't think firing squads are effective enough... didn't it take the last guy to die by firing squad a few minutes to expire?
I'm against the death penalty in general... I understand the sentiment, but I wouldn't be able to pull the trigger myself, which means I'd be a hypocrite to expect the govt. to do it. There is just something horrifying about leading a guy down a hall to his death, even if he is evil... life in prison is a worse punishment anyway, imho.
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Vogon poetry? :laugh: =D
:lol:
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Utah has provisions for firing squads as a method of execution. Last time it was used was Gary Mark Gilmore's execution in the 70's. It was his choice.
We should be concerned over the psychological well-being of the executioner. Everything else is irrelevant.
Actually the last time it was used here (Utah) was 1995 for John Albert Taylor (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Albert_Taylor). The state then outlawed it in 2004. Taylor reportedly wanted the firing squad specifically because it is a circus and he wanted to make things more difficult for the state.
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1500 folks volunteered to be on gilmores squad. got a couple good books on him.
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This bill provides for death by firing squad for causing the death of another by the use of a firearm, while engaged in the commission of a felony.
In other news today, man convicted of felony manslaughter after shooting a youth that had entered his home. Firing squad footage of this criminal coming up on news at 11!
There are already enough places in the world where defending yourself will make you subject to prosecution. I'm pretty tired of the NRA hang 'em high enforce all gun laws, no guns for felons shtick. Pretty soon spitting on the sidewalk will be a felony and there are already plenty of immoral gun laws on the books.
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"Would you like to know more?" :police:
=D
Blast you for saying what I was thinking before I could get here! :laugh:
Vogon poetry? :laugh: =D
The Eighth Amendment DOES prohibit "cruel and unusual punishment", you know... =D
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In other news today, man convicted of felony manslaughter after shooting a youth that had entered his home. Firing squad footage of this criminal coming up on news at 11!
There are already enough places in the world where defending yourself will make you subject to prosecution. I'm pretty tired of the NRA hang 'em high enforce all gun laws, no guns for felons shtick. Pretty soon spitting on the sidewalk will be a felony and there are already plenty of immoral gun laws on the books.
I am pretty sure they're thinking more in terms of the lowlife from MA who pointblank shot a bicycle cop in the head.
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IMO it is only acceptable to kill in the immediate defense of innocent life. Capital punishment doesn't meet that standard.
At any rate, at least a dozen folks have been absolutely exonerated by DNA and released from death row. The execution of innocents is too high a price to pay for any "deterrent effect" created by capital punishment.
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IMO it is only acceptable to kill in the immediate defense of innocent life. Capital punishment doesn't meet that standard.
At any rate, at least a dozen folks have been absolutely exonerated by DNA and released from death row. The execution of innocents is too high a price to pay for any "deterrent effect" created by capital punishment.
Disagree. You go look up the details of Michael Addison's murder of Officer Michael Briggs in Manchester, NH, and tell me that that lowlife didn't deserve two rounds to the head immediately following the guilty verdict.
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Sure. But killing him doesn't do anything -- except perhaps satisfy a need for revenge -- that isn't accomplished by life imprisonment. And considering that innocent people are almost certainly put to death by the state, one has to wonder what is the acceptable ratio. One "oops!" for every hundred instances of revenge? Two? Ten?
On a slightly unrelated note, I am always surprised when conservatives -- ostensibly supporters of small government -- are usually the ones pushing the hardest for granting the state one of the highest powers imaginable. Just another strange bedfellow, suppose.
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Sure. But killing him doesn't do anything -- except perhaps satisfy a need for revenge -- that isn't accomplished by life imprisonment. And considering that innocent people are almost certainly put to death by the state, one has to wonder what is the acceptable ratio. One "oops!" for every hundred instances of revenge? Two? Ten?
On a slightly unrelated note, I am always surprised when conservatives -- ostensibly supporters of small government -- are usually the ones pushing the hardest for granting the state one of the highest powers imaginable. Just another strange bedfellow, suppose.
No.
It's deletion, instead of wasting taxpayer money to keep it alive for however many years it lives, because it can't ever be allowed to be inflicted on society.
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It costs more to kill them than it does to keep them alive. One can argue whether it should be so, but it remains fact.
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And considering that innocent people are almost certainly put to death by the state, one has to wonder what is the acceptable ratio. One "oops!" for every hundred instances of revenge?
who do you think should be on that list. i've got one and a possible. i'm curious who else folks think we fried that were innocent
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Sure. But killing him doesn't do anything -- except perhaps satisfy a need for revenge -- that isn't accomplished by life imprisonment. And considering that innocent people are almost certainly put to death by the state, one has to wonder what is the acceptable ratio. One "oops!" for every hundred instances of revenge? Two? Ten?
On a slightly unrelated note, I am always surprised when conservatives -- ostensibly supporters of small government -- are usually the ones pushing the hardest for granting the state one of the highest powers imaginable. Just another strange bedfellow, suppose.
What & how we punish shows what we value, to a good extent. Making the price of murder one's life indicates we value innocent human life more than those who imprison them for a while and then let them out on furlough.
Also, "life imprisonment" still allows a lot of shenanigans to be performed by hte lifer, who has nothing to lose in a non-death-penalty state.
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What & how we punish shows what we value, to a good extent. Making the price of murder one's life indicates we value innocent human life more than those who imprison them for a while and then let them out on furlough.
True that. I support the death penalty because I place a very high value on innocent life.
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who do you think should be on that list. i've got one and a possible. i'm curious who else folks think we fried that were innocent
http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/node/1935 (http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/node/1935)
Tough case to make, at any rate. Everyone knows that there are no guilty men in prison, and everyone's got a sob story. I personally can't say for a fact that anyone has been wrongfully put to death. I base the argument upon the absolute fact that many death row inmates have been released based upon essentially infallible DNA evidence. It must then follow that prior to DNA evidence, innocent men were put to death.
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What & how we punish shows what we value, to a good extent.
Then it must also be true that our values include occasionally killing an innocent person.
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Then it must also be true that our values include occasionally killing an innocent person.
I disagree. With all of the court trials and appeals and more trials and still more appeals associated with death penalty cases, I think that it just doesn't happen these days.
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I think you owe it to yourself to undertake a very thorough investigation of that opinion. You may be surprised at the results.
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I think you owe it to yourself to undertake a very thorough investigation of that opinion. You may be surprised at the results.
What makes you think I haven't?
I think you owe it to yourself to not make baseless assumptions around here. Disagreement with your opinion is not an indication of ignorance. APS is not a place where you can get away with that kind of stuff.
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Your belief that no innocent man could possibly be condemned to death. There is simply to much contrary evidence for that belief.
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The execution of innocents is too high a price to pay for any "deterrent effect" created by capital punishment.
Deterrence is secondary to justice. When the state fails to execute the murderer, justice is denied.
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http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/node/1935 (http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/node/1935)
Tough case to make, at any rate. Everyone knows that there are no guilty men in prison, and everyone's got a sob story. I personally can't say for a fact that anyone has been wrongfully put to death. I base the argument upon the absolute fact that many death row inmates have been released based upon essentially infallible DNA evidence. It must then follow that prior to DNA evidence, innocent men were put to death.
you gotta look at some of the anti capital punishment folks stuff witha jaundiced eye. a good example is the guy in texas that they have a s a poster child on the innocence project site. they assert his innocence in the rape murder but strangly enough over look his 2 previous rape charges as well as the fact that a piece torn from the dead girls panty hose was found in the trash at his home as well as hairs torn from her head (roots attached were found in his truck and cell phone records place him where the body was found on the day of the murder. and he swears he was nowhere near there. they believe their cause is just and have an agenda too.
i think we've done at least one woman wrongfully and i have some questions about ronald keith coleman
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Your belief that no innocent man could possibly be condemned to death. There is simply to much contrary evidence for that belief.
Name all of this contrary evidence.
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Pass. "I think you owe it to yourself to undertake a very thorough investigation, etc., etc."
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Pass. I think you owe it to yourself to undertake a very thorough investigation of that opinion. You may be surprised at the results.
Ok then.
Welcome to APS.
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Thanks! =)
FWIW, I don't mean to seem rude. I simply believe that supporting capital punishment is a very serious position to take, and one should undertake a very serious study of it before advocating it. If you have and still hold the same position, then more power to you.
You'll just have to learn to live with being wrong. :laugh:
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there are several texas cases that might not pass the sniff teat and i believe one in fla
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the most damning thing is when the state refuses to allow dna testing or like that texas case (not capital) where they alloweed the defense to run dna it exonerated the guy they didn't like that so they ran their own test which exonerated the guy they then changed their version of the crime to "he killed her but someone else had sex with her" eventually he was pardoned by bush 19 years after they locked him up
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I simply believe that supporting capital punishment is a very serious position to take, and one should undertake a very serious study of it before advocating it.
And to oppose it is just as serious.
Yes, of course some innocents will be executed. That is regrettable. But let us not oppose justice in 90 percent of cases, just to uphold justice in 10 percent.
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And to oppose it is just as serious.
Indeed. Changing from a pro-capital punishment stance to an anti-capital punishment stance was a decade long experience for me.
But let us not oppose justice in 90 percent of cases, just to uphold justice in 10 percent.
"Better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer" ~ William Blackstone.
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And to oppose it is just as serious.
Yes, of course some innocents will be executed. That is regrettable. But let us not oppose justice in 90 percent of cases, just to uphold justice in 10 percent.
Why must some innocents be executed?
I get that it is possible in theory. I don't believe that it happens in practice. Not in recent times. Perhaps it used to happen occasionally, decades ago. But in recent years? I just don't buy it.
If it does happen, it is certainly much, much less than 10%. It can't be more than one in many thousands, or something on that order.
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If it does happen, it is certainly much, much less than 10%.
small consolation to that percentage and their wives children and other family nto say nothin of the fact we leave the real killer on the loose
whats an acceptable number to kill by mistake? in the name of justice
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whats an acceptable number to kill by mistake? in the name of justice
The $64,000 question.
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If it does happen, it is certainly much, much less than 10%.
small consolation to that percentage and their wives children and other family nto say nothin of the fact we leave the real killer on the loose
whats an acceptable number to kill by mistake? in the name of justice
If the chance of making a mistake is one in many thousands, and we're only executing a couple dozen a year, then for all practical purposes it just doesn't matter. There won't be anyone executed by mistake.
It's a practical problem we deal with in engineering all the time. As an occurrence rate decreases, it will eventually reach a level where it will be zero for all practical purposes. It may not be absolutely zero, but the difference between practically zero and actually zero becomes negligible.
As an example, consider that it is possible in theory for an asteroid to destroy the earth tomorrow. There is a nonzero chance of that event occurring. But for all practical purposes we know it just won't happen. There won't be any planet-killing asteroids striking the earth tomorrow.
I think that we're currently at the point where there is no practical chance of executing an innocent man by mistake. Deliberate misuse of the system might still be possible, but that's another matter entirely.
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so lets say is a state found that there were serious flaws in in the convictions of 1/3 the people on its death row that would be problematic to you? or no?
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how about if after examining the flawed cases they admited to a 4.5 percent oopsie rate? its an oopsie to everyone except the dead guys
http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/node/28
Retired U.S. District Court Judge George N. Leighton, a member of IDPEP's advisory board, said, "Most Illinoisans don't understand the very real risk that we will execute an innocent person. When they know the truth, they overwhelmingly support common-sense reforms like these."
Since 1977, Illinois has freed 13 innocent men from death row. In addition to enacting a moratorium on executions, Governor George H. Ryan appointed a blue-ribbon commission to study the death penalty system in Illinois in 2000.
"The error rate for death sentences in Illinois is 4.5 %," Colfax said. "Informed people would certainly agree that such inaccuracy is intolerable when the stakes are so high. The current debate over the fairness and effectiveness of the death penalty is a unique opportunity for serious, nonpartisan discourse and education regarding reforms to capital punishment."
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Sorry, but I don't believe that the odds of convicting and executing someone by mistake is 4.5% these days. Anti-death-penalty activists may claim that it is so, but I rank that right up with the "facts" the Brady Bunch uses to claim handguns are a menace.
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Indeed. Changing from a pro-capital punishment stance to an anti-capital punishment stance was a decade long experience for me.
So you've learned to live with being wrong? I'll stay on the right side, thanks. =)
"Better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer" ~ William Blackstone.
As I'm not terribly familiar with Blackstone, perhaps you could tell me what conclusion he drew from this principle? The logical conclusion would seem to be an utmost regard for due process, rather than the denial of justice (opposition to just punishment) which you have embraced. As is common with left-wing points of view (not that I'm calling you left-wing), your position disposes of the baby with the bath-water.
It's early, and I start work at five this morning, so I won't do the math. How does that work out in terms of percentages? Whatever it is, I'm sure we can beat it. In an age of DNA evidence and other forensic tools, and such careful attention to due process, we should more comfortable with the death penalty - not less.
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Sorry, but I don't believe that the odds of convicting and executing someone by mistake is 4.5% these days. Anti-death-penalty activists may claim that it is so, but I rank that right up with the "facts" the Brady Bunch uses to claim handguns are a menace.
oh not all of em make it to execution but i'm inclined to be discomfited by that large an allowable percentage. the illonois recommendations are pretty decent ones. we live in a world where folks , and particularly some of the lawyers who are in control of the system leave something to be desired. a good example would be the former prosecutor (and by this time retired judge) who when confronted by incontrevertible proof that he put a totally innocent man on death row for more than 25 years replied "heck i convicted lots of folks less guilty than him"
i support capital punishment but our methodology lease something to be desired
do you remember why (aside from political grandstanding) ryan cleared out death row?
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Why is it alright to put someone innocent away for life?
Why is it worse that an innocent person be executed?
In both cases, the problem is not the punishment, but the process. If you do not want innocent people punished, then fix the system.
If we CAN'T fix the system, and if we can't find a better system, why do you think it's better to subject an innocent person to life in prison than the death penalty.
In both cases, we have a miscarriage of justice.
However, leaving a guilty person alive when he deserves death is also a miscarriage of justice.
Why do we pick the circumstance (innocent people in jail and guilty people still alive) where justice is denied the most?
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Think of all the things we'd have to ban from our society because that thing could be misused....
...nothing contrived by man is perfect. We have to do the best we can, and the death penalty--in regard to felons who are a danger to society--is the best answer.
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The firing squad should be made up of blind dwarfs and the procedure should be the firing squad shouting "MARCO!" and the criminal shouting back "POLO!" until the criminal has been successfully justiced.
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"In both cases, the problem is not the punishment, but the process. If you do not want innocent people punished, then fix the system."
YESSSSS!!!
"...nothing contrived by man is perfect. We have to do the best we can, and the death penalty--in regard to felons who are a danger to society--is the best answer."
but if our current administration of it is the best we can do we should be ashamed and have much to answer for
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The firing squad should be made up of blind dwarfs and the procedure should be the firing squad shouting "MARCO!" and the criminal shouting back "POLO!" until the criminal has been successfully justiced.
But what if the criminal is a ventriloquist?.... :lol:
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We will simply pass a law making it illegal for ventriloquism to be used during an execution. Problem solved.
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We will simply pass a law making it illegal for ventriloquism to be used during an execution. Problem solved.
....and the penalty for such a crime would be death by firing squad....
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Two firing squads! :lol:
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whats an acceptable number to kill by mistake? in the name of justice
What's an acceptable number of innocents to let rot unjustly in prison? The extra expense of a capital case helps ensure that all aspects are considered; in comparison a LiPwP case doesn't get nearly as much scrutiny.
Not to mention that, compared to a DP case, a LiP has little recourse for appeals and overturnings.
You should consider this, especially when many DP opponents quote the costs of the extra trial measures to say the DP is more expensive.
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i'm a death penalty supporter
i just can't mlose one eye and squinjt through the other and pretend we do a good job
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Maybe if you opened both eyes you'd see that we do a pretty darned good job.
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i've been looking at it for years how about you?
explain to me why a state would refuse to allow dna testing when new technology becomes available? if their interest is justice
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we've cut loose 135 innocent folks off death row since the 70's
or using texas as an example 9 folks were released as innocent in that time.
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So you've learned to live with being wrong? I'll stay on the right side, thanks. =)
As I'm not terribly familiar with Blackstone, perhaps you could tell me what conclusion he drew from this principle? The logical conclusion would seem to be an utmost regard for due process, rather than the denial of justice (opposition to just punishment) which you have embraced. As is common with left-wing points of view (not that I'm calling you left-wing), your position disposes of the baby with the bath-water.
It's early, and I start work at five this morning, so I won't do the math. How does that work out in terms of percentages? Whatever it is, I'm sure we can beat it. In an age of DNA evidence and other forensic tools, and such careful attention to due process, we should more comfortable with the death penalty - not less.
You seem to have assumed that I concede the point that "execution = justice". I do not, and thus consider your first point invalid. The second brings us very close to the point where I find something else to do, as the leftwing/rightwing deal is pointless IMO. =)
As for percentages and such, I hold that even one is too many. If you really put yourself into that position; really spend a few minutes imagining what it must be like for the innocently executed and his family, it ought to be pretty hard to blithely dismiss it.
Regardless, I'm going to try to steer this one back to my primary position: the only morally justifiable reason for taking life is in the immediate defense of another. I very much approve of the citizenry taking this to heart and executing such criminals wherever they come upon them -- but state sponsored execution years after the fact does not meet the criteria, as far as I am concerned.
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Sorry, but I don't believe that the odds of convicting and executing someone by mistake is 4.5% these days. Anti-death-penalty activists may claim that it is so, but I rank that right up with the "facts" the Brady Bunch uses to claim handguns are a menace.
I take issue with the idea that "out of the blue" assertions like "one in a thousand" carry as much validity as figures derived from research and investigation.
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well its easier than looking at numbers that make you uncomfortable
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Why is it alright to put someone innocent away for life?
Why is it worse that an innocent person be executed?
Because there is no undoing a mistake once the innocent person is dead.
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theres no undoing 20 years taken from someone either
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I take issue with the idea that "out of the blue" assertions like "one in a thousand" carry as much validity as figures derived from research and investigation.
I fail to see why I should accept someone else's biased and agenda-driven "research" over my own studies.
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theres no undoing 20 years taken from someone either
No, but at least he gets back the remainder.
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I fail to see why I should accept someone else's biased and agenda-driven "research" over my own studies.
Will you share with us the studies you undertook prior to arriving at your "1 in 1000" figures? And please, show your work. =D
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Then it must also be true that our values include occasionally killing an innocent person.
Good luck finding a perfect system on Earth.
With the advent of DNA testing and VERY LARGE budgets handed over to the defense teams in DP cases, I sleep very well at night knowing that we have driven the false positives down to as near-zero as practical.
I am glad that your attitudes are not those that rule the land in both DP cases or other human endeavor. Humanity would still be screwing around trying to perfect the wheel so as to never produce one that was out of round or a wheeled machine that could result in injury or death to an occupant.
We are also forgetting something: a jury of fellow citizens was convinced that every person on death row is a heinous murderer.
I don't know about any of y'all, but I am not going to vote for "guilty," let alone the DP without very convincing evidence. I am all about getting fija.org-ed up and making dang sure and well gov't proves its case and that the law is in accord with the COTUS*. If those conditions are met, though, I have no problem imposing an appropriate penalty, including the DP. That is justice.
* Note, "In accord with the Constitution of the United States (which allows for the DP)," not some candy-assed notion of my own that I seek to impose on all other citizens.
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I am glad that your attitudes are not those that rule the land in both DP cases or other human endeavor. Humanity would still be screwing around trying to perfect the wheel so as to never produce one that was out of round or a wheeled machine that could result in injury or death to an occupant.
This is the sort of nonsense that invariably brings down the discussion of controversial topics. Four pages is a good run though. =|
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This is the sort of nonsense that invariably brings down the discussion of controversial topics. Four pages is a good run though. =|
Don't be so smug. Your arguments were nothing to be proud of.
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so then the at minimum 135 folks that have been released as innocent so far is indicative of how well those large budgets et al work?and correct me if i'm wrong but the money only gets forked over if you go public defender. a regular working stiff pays as he goes and truly in our system money walks
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http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2000/06/12/deathpenalty/main204759.shtml
CBS) A new study finds that legal mistakes are not the exception, but the rule, in death-penalty cases nationwide, CBS News Correspondent Bob McNamara reports.
Columbia University researchers tracked all capital convictions from 1973 to 1995, nearly 5,800 cases. They found serious errors in 68 percent.
Two-thirds of death penalty cases that were appealed were successful, report researchers who contend the nation's capital punishment system is "collapsing under the weight of its own mistakes."
"It's not one case, it's thousands of cases. It's not one state, it's almost all of the states," says Columbia University law professor James Liebman, the lead author of the study. "You're creating a very high risk that some errors are going to get through the process."
There are so many mistakes, the authors express grave doubt that the appeals process can catch them all.
Of 28 capital-punishment states, Texas has carried out the most executions, 218.
Bulletin Board
Do the results of the study affect your opinion on capital punishment?
Click here to join the discussion.
In Houston on Monday, six men innocently sent to death row and later freed campaigned for the life of Gary Graham.
Graham is scheduled to die in 10 days -- convicted on the testimony of only one witness.
Gary Graham's lawyer Ronald Mock offered virtually no defense. And among Mock's clients were five men executed already, and six more who are waiting to die.
Still Texas Governor Bush says the system is fair.
He says, "I believe they've had full access to the courts and they've had full access to have a fair trial not only in the state system but in the federal system."
Bush recently granted Ricky McGinn a 30-day stay of execution so DNA tests could determine his guilt in the rape and murder of his step-daughter.
The governor's run for the White House has put the Texas death penalty system under a microscope. And numerous investigations have found some convictions based on jailhouse snitches, and defense attorneys who were judged incompetent, or who presented little defense of their client at all.
Liebman says, "All of these states, including Texas, are having more errors that they're generating than they're having successes, and that's creating a real rsk that something is going to go very badly wrong."
While some anti-death penalty advocates believe the latest reports on flaws in the system are another nail in the coffin of capital punishment, in Texas, support for the death penalty remains strong at 80 percent.
"It's been clear for a few years that there are major problems with the implementation of the death penalty in this country, " says CBS News Legal Consultant Andrew Cohen. "In Illinois, they've stopped them altogether because of a horrendous record; other states are considering similar moratoria and it's getting harder and harder for even the biggest death penalty proponents to ignore the effect DNA testing can have on most of these cases."
Earlier this year, Republican Gov. George Ryan of Illinois imposed a moratorium on capital punishment in his state after 13 death row inmates were exonerated.
The Columbia study said only 5 percent of the 5,760 death sentences imposed from 1973 through 1995 were carried out.
The study, written with Professor Jeffrey Fagan and graduate student Valerie West, examined 4,578 death penalty cases in which at least one round of appeals was completed. Of those cases, a state or federal court threw out the conviction or death sentence in 68 percent of the cases.
Richard Dieter of the Death Penalty Information Center, a group critical of how capital punishment is administered, said, "It's amazing how many mistakes are being made...Those supporting the death penalty might look at it and say this isn't getting us anywhere."
Dudley Sharp of Justice for All, a Houston-based victims' rights organization, said, "We all know that these cases get the closest scrutiny imaginable...All systems can be improved and the death penalty is certainly one of those systems." But, he added, there has been no proof of an innocent person being executed in the past century.
The study said the rates of reversals varied widely from state to state and among federal appellate circuits.
Texas, which executed 104 people during the study period, showed 52 percent of its death penalty cases reversed on appeal. Florida, which executed 36 people, had a 73 percent reversal rate.
On the other hand, Virginia, which executed 29 people, had a reversal rate of only 18 percent. The study suggested that may be partly due to Virginia's strict limits on appeals in death penalty cases and the overall low reversal rate in the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which hears appeals from that state.
Liebman said the 68 percent reversal rate appears to have come down some since 1995. A second study to be released later this year is expected to look at those numbers, as well as the reasons why death penalty convictions are thrown out.
The main reasons appear to be incompetent defense lawyering and misconduct by prosecutors, the Columbia study said.
Capital punishment resumed in 1977 afer a Supreme Court-imposed moratorium, and 313 people were executed by the end of 1995. In recent years, the Supreme Court and Congress have acted to speed up death penalty reviews in federal courts, and there have been 642 executions to date.
hey and maybe you texans can explain how
Gary Graham's lawyer Ronald Mock offered virtually no defense. And among Mock's clients were five men executed already, and six more who are waiting to die.
you managed to get one lawyer to set 11 guys up to fry pretty slick of you guys or maybe its just coincidence? 11 times. how does he get all those cases? what judge is assigning him? it can't be because hes got a good rep for defending em
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In an 11th-hour move, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals halted the January 27, 2009 execution of Texan Larry Swearingen. Four forensic pathologists , including the medical examiner who testified against Swearingen at his capital murder trial, now say that Swearingen was in jail when Melissa Trotter, 19, was strangled and left in a national forest near Conroe in East Texas. The 5th Circuit did not address his innocence claim, and the Montgomery County DA remains intent on seeing Larry executed, regardless of evidence of his innocence.
hmmm some more recent lonestar justice? or this?
Michael Toney
Since he arrived on Texas’ Death Row in 1999, Michael Roy Toney, of Lake Worth, has proclaimed his innocence to anyone he thought might listen. Nine and a half years later, he has everyone’s attention. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has overturned Toney’s capital murder conviction because Tarrant County prosecutors withheld evidence favorable to his defense. Among the 14 documents were records that cast doubt on the testimony of two key witnesses against him.
what you boys gonna do to the prosecutor who with holds evidence? is that illegal down there?
heres law in order in nc
Glen Chapman
The bologna and cheese sandwich that Glen Chapman savored Wednesday could have been his last meal. Instead, it was his first as a free man after almost 14 years on death row. Chapman, 40, was released from Central Prison on Wednesday after Catawba County, North Carolina District Attorney James Gaither Jr. dismissed murder charges against him.
Related: A day after Glen Edward Chapman was freed from prison, the State Bureau of Investigation agreed to review allegations of perjury and obstruction of justice against Dennis Rhoney. The former Hickory police detective led the 1992 double-murder investigation that resulted in Chapman's convictions. Ex-Cop Who Led Discredited Case Probed
you know the other bad thing about srewing up? besides screwing the innocent and leaving a scumbag free to kill again? every screwup tarnishes the integrity of the system and makes outlawing capital punishment much more likely
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Don't be so smug. Your arguments were nothing to be proud of.
I appreciate the thoughtful critique, although I have to say it is not as valuable as your other contributions to the thread.
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ACLU and Texas Innocence Network Appeal Innocent Man’s Death Sentence
TEXAS - October 24 - At a hearing today before the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, the American Civil Liberties Union and the Texas Innocence Network (TIN) argued that death row inmate Max Soffar was unfairly prevented from proving his innocence at his second trial in 2006. The groups hope to overturn Soffar’s conviction in the capital murder case of four victims shot during an armed robbery in a Houston bowling alley in 1980. In 1981, Soffar was convicted and sentenced to death, but a federal court overturned his conviction in 2004 because his trial lawyers failed to argue that Soffar’s confession contradicted the account of the sole surviving witness and other reliable evidence in the case. The state of Texas retried Soffar last year and he was again convicted and sentenced to death.
“This case is a textbook example of a miscarriage of justice,” said John Holdridge, Director of the ACLU Capital Punishment Project. “From a false confession to two unfair trials and death sentences, the problems with Max Soffar’s case are gravely troubling. We must not allow the state of Texas to execute an innocent man.”
The ACLU and TIN argued that Soffar was denied the constitutional right to defend himself because Soffar’s trial judge refused to admit evidence that another man confessed to committing the murders. This man, Paul Reid, formerly of Houston, also committed a series of highly similar robbery-murders and now awaits execution on Tennessee’s death row. A photograph of Reid, taken in Houston nine days after the bowling alley incident, strongly resembles the police’s composite sketch based on the description of the crime’s sole witness. The ACLU and TIN also charged that Soffar was denied his constitutional rights when, during his second trial, the court refused to allow him to show that media reports of the crime contained all of the details in his false confession. The prosecution claimed that these details—although broadcast throughout Texas—could only be known by the person responsible for the crime.
Soffar was known by the police in 1980 as an unreliable and feeble-minded informant who often traded information for police assistance or money. Shortly after the bowling alley crimes took place, Soffar fingered his friend, Latt Bloomfied, as the perpetrator. Soffar also told police that he and Bloomfield had burglarized the same bowling alley the night before the incident – a crime the press reported as potentially related to the robbery-murders. The police soon learned that Soffar’s confession to the burglary was false and arrested others for that crime; yet even after Soffar’s first false confession, law enforcement continued to rely on another confession of his that implicated Soffar and Bloomfield in the robbery-murders. After his initial arrest, Bloomfield was quickly released and has never faced charges for the crime.
“Max Soffar has been on Texas’s death row for almost three decades for a crime he did not commit,” said David Dow, Head of the Texas Innocence Network and one of Soffar’s attorneys. “We urge the court to do the right thing and strike down Mr. Soffar’s wrongful conviction. Too many innocent people have been executed as a result of mistakes in the system. The risk of executing an innocent man is unacceptable in a just society.”
John Holdridge added, “False confessions are far more common than the public realizes. According to the Innocence Project, innocent defendants made incriminating statements, delivered outright confessions or pleaded guilty in more than 25% of DNA exoneration cases.”
More information on Max Soffar’s case is available at: www.aclu.org/capital/innocence/29715res20070430.html
Lawyers on this case are Holdridge and Brian Stull of the ACLU Capital Punishment Project and Dow and Jared Tyler of the Texas Innocence Network
i don't mean to single out texas but they have more on death row. virginia is just as bad if not worse our appeals process used to be fubar only recently changed
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any of you guys know what happened with this case? find it in your research?
Final execution case with Bush as Texas governor under scrutiny
The Associated Press
Monday, September 10, 2007
HOUSTON: A Texas judge on Monday sided with an anti-death penalty group seeking to find out whether an inmate was wrongly executed, ruling that officials must keep a 1-inch (2.5-centimeter)-long piece of hair that was a key piece of evidence in the man's murder trial almost two decades ago.
The Innocence Project wants to know whether Claude Jones was wrongly executed in December 2000. Jones was the last of a record 40 inmates executed in America's busiest capital punishment state that year and the last of 152 inmates put to death during now-President George W. Bush's time as Texas governor.
The piece of hair led to Jones' conviction and execution for the 1989 shooting death of a liquor store owner in San Jacinto County, about 75 miles (120 kilometers) north of Houston.
State District Judge Elizabeth Coker set a hearing for Oct. 3 to consider whether DNA testing should be performed on the hair.
The Innocence Project, a legal clinic affiliated with the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University in New York, was among plaintiffs seeking the court order and the mitochondrial DNA testing, which was not available when Jones was tried.
"This was a case that really cried out for DNA testing because the physical evidence was so central to the conviction and it's very clear DNA testing can establish either way whether or not Claude Jones was wrongfully executed," Innocence Project attorney Nina Morrison said.
"Especially now that he's already been executed, the public interest really is in determining whether the procedures that were in place for determining innocence or guilt and whether someone should be executed were correct," she said.
At Jones' trial, an expert in hair analysis linked the hair to Jones. With his execution imminent, the inmate filed, and later asked to withdraw, an 11th-hour state court plea seeking DNA testing.
Other than the hair, the primary evidence against Jones was testimony from an accomplice, Timothy Jordan, who said Jones told him he committed the murder. Jordan and another man, Kerry Dixon, initially were arrested for the slaying. Jones was arrested later. Jordan got a 10-year prison term and Dixon a 60-year sentence. In an affidavit in 2004, Jordan said everything he said about the robbery and killing at the trial he learned from Dixon and that he testified against Jones to get a lighter sentence for himself.
The single strand of Jones' hair, found at the murder scene, was supposed to have been destroyed with the case long resolved but inexplicably was not.
"It's really a miracle it's preserved at all," Morrison said.
and why wouldn't the state want to test it and know? end the speculation? unless they are worried what they will find out
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You seem to have assumed that I concede the point that "execution = justice". I do not, and thus consider your first point invalid.
I have made no such assumption. I am under no illusion that you will accept my argument. I merely wish to make clear that a different point of view exists, based on different assumptions than your own.
As for percentages and such, I hold that even one is too many.
"Even one is too many." I disagree, and thus consider that point invalid.
If you really put yourself into that position; really spend a few minutes imagining what it must be like for the innocently executed and his family, it ought to be pretty hard to blithely dismiss it.
I could just as easily flip that around, and accuse you of blithely dismissing the anguish of victims' families, whose suffering you have not spent "a few minutes imagining what it must be like." But since you don't know what I have or have not imagined, and have no evidence on which to charge me with being "blithe," and I have no such grounds to make similar charges, perhaps such lines of argument are best left alone.
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I have made no such assumption. I am under no illusion that you will accept my argument. I merely wish to make clear that a different point of view exists, based on different assumptions than your own..."Even one is too many." I disagree, and thus consider that point invalid.
I meant only to point out that you were basing a secondary point on what I believe to be a faulty underlying principle.
I could just as easily flip that around, and accuse you of blithely dismissing the anguish of victims' families, whose suffering you have not spent "a few minutes imagining what it must be like." But since you don't know what I have or have not imagined, and have no evidence on which to charge me with being "blithe," and I have no such grounds to make similar charges, perhaps such lines of argument are best left alone.
I apologise for calling your response "blithe". As for the suffering of the families of crime victims, a close relative of mine was raped and murdered and her murderer put to death. In my case, at least, I draw little satisfaction from it, as the relative is still dead and raped. The price -- innocents put to death -- for that small satisfaction is too high, in my view.
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I thank you for the apology, and I am sorry for your family. But allow me to point out that, so far as I can tell, no innocents were put to death in order to execute said murderer. As others have pointed out, the deaths of innocents are the fault of the process, not of the death penalty itself. One cannot be un-deaded, but one cannot be given back years of life, nor un-horse-whipped in the public square. Even a monetary punishment cannot always be fully corrected.
More importantly, the murderer was not (or should not have been) put to death for your satisfaction, or that of your family. Revenge has no place in law. The appropriate motivation is that justice may be served. Again, I know this will make little headway with you. I only wish to expose a straw man which is commonly raised by your side of the argument. One which is libelous, in my view, though not usually intentionally so.
It sounds as if we both have our minds made up on this issue. Since we're unlikely to accomplish any real research on an internet forum, we can probably agree to disagree.
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But allow me to point out that, so far as I can tell, no innocents were put to death in order to execute said murderer. As others have pointed out, the deaths of innocents are the fault of the process, not of the death penalty itself.
Ah, but the two are inextricable. The process cannot be perfect, therefore the process will occasionally result in an incorrect outcome. Incorrect outcomes are the price we pay for allowing the process.
One cannot be un-deaded, but one cannot be given back years of life, nor un-horse-whipped in the public square. Even a monetary punishment cannot always be fully corrected.
Taking away a percentage of a life is not equivalent to taking away all of it.
More importantly, the murderer was not (or should not have been) put to death for your satisfaction, or that of your family. Revenge has no place in law. The appropriate motivation is that justice may be served. Again, I know this will make little headway with you. I only wish to expose a straw man which is commonly raised by your side of the argument. One which is libelous, in my view, though not usually intentionally so.
You introduced "the anguish of victims' families" into the discussion. I responded to it. I don't see the strawman.
It sounds as if we both have our minds made up on this issue. Since we're unlikely to accomplish any real research on an internet forum, we can probably agree to disagree.
Noooo!!! :laugh:
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Kennedy Brewer of Macon, Mississippi, a mildly retarded, Black defendant, was convicted of raping and killing a 3-year-old girl and sentenced to death in 1992. In 2002, he was cleared by DNA, but he wasn't released. He has spent the past 5 years in the local jail, awaiting retrial. Because you can bet, the local authorities plan to get another conviction and another death sentence. The Sheriff says he can't look for a DNA match because Mississippi doesn't have a DNA database -- which is news to the state's crime lab director. The prosecutor will bring back his star witness, dentist Dr. Michael West, whose bite mark testimony has been disproven by DNA in other cases, and who resigned from professional forensic dentistry groups to avoid expulsion. Prosecutors are so sure they're right about Kennedy's guilt that they're willing to bet his life on it.
UPDATE: 2/9/08 - Kennedy Brewer and Levon Brooks, both convicted of killing 3-year-old girls in Noxubee County, Mississippi, and both cleared by DNA, are slated to be released. What did it take to reach this point? Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood had to take the prosecutions of these murders away from the Noxubee County DA, something almost unheard of in the state's history. The Attorney General has charged Albert Johnson with the murders of both children.
the one guy was cleared by dna 5 years ago this isn't ancient history the guys still in jail
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A judge in Oklahoma City has dismissed murder charges against Curtis McCarty, who was sentenced to death three times in the 1982 slaying of a teenager -- convictions that were based largely on testimony from a police department chemist who was fired for fraud and misconduct in 2001. Curtis was prosecuted by Oklahoma County DA Robert H. Macy, who sent 73 people to death row, more than any other prosecutor in the U.S. Macy has publicly said that he believes executing an innocent person is a sacrifice worth making in order to keep the death penalty in the United States.
a great american
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Consider the pitiful case of Cesar Fierro, who has been on death row since 1980 for the murder and robbery of El Paso taxi driver Nicholas Castanon. Fierro, who was not considered a suspect until months after the February 1979 murder, was convicted on the basis of two things: the shaky testimony of an alleged co-conspirator and his own confession, which many now conclude was coerced. Fierro, whose landlord testified the accused was home on the night of the killing, confessed to the crime because he was told his mother and stepfather would be tortured by the police in a jail in Ciudad Juárez, where they lived. After his parents were released from the Juárez jail, Fierro recanted. Without that confession, Fierro would not be sitting on death row today. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ruled no harm had been caused by the extorted confession.
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Nov. 21, 2005, 4:34PM
THE CANTU CASE: DEATH AND DOUBT
Did Texas execute an innocent man?
Eyewitness says he felt influenced by police to ID the teen as the killer
By LISE OLSEN
Copyright 2005, Houston Chronicle
Texas executed its fifth teenage offender at 22 minutes after midnight on Aug. 24, 1993, after his last request for bubble gum had been refused and his final claim of innocence had been forever silenced.
Ruben Cantu, in photo taken on the day of his execution
Ruben Cantu, 17 at the time of his crime, had no previous convictions, but a San Antonio prosecutor had branded him a violent thief, gang member and murderer who ruthlessly shot one victim nine times with a rifle before emptying at least nine more rounds into the only eyewitness — a man who barely survived to testify.
Four days after a Bexar County jury delivered its verdict, Cantu wrote this letter to the residents of San Antonio: "My name is Ruben M. Cantu and I am only 18 years old. I got to the 9th grade and I have been framed in a capital murder case."
A dozen years after his execution, a Houston Chronicle investigation suggests that Cantu, a former special-ed student who grew up in a tough neighborhood on the south side of San Antonio, was likely telling the truth.
Cantu's long-silent co-defendant, David Garza, just 15 when the two boys allegedly committed a murder-robbery together, has signed a sworn affidavit saying he allowed his friend to be falsely accused, though Cantu wasn't with him the night of the killing.
And the lone eyewitness, the man who survived the shooting, has recanted. He told the Chronicle he's sure that the person who shot him was not Cantu, but he felt pressured by police to identify the boy as the killer. Juan Moreno, an illegal immigrant at the time of the shooting, said his damning in-court identification was based on his fear of authorities and police interest in Cantu.
Cantu "was innocent. It was a case of an innocent person being killed," Moreno said.
These men, whose lives are united by nothing more than a single act of violence on Nov. 8, 1984, both claim that Texas executed the wrong man. Both believe they could have saved Cantu if they had had the courage to tell the truth before he died at 26.
Second thoughts
Presented with these statements, as well as information from hundreds of pages of court and police documents gathered by the Chronicle that cast doubt on the case, key players in Cantu's death — including the judge, prosecutor, head juror and defense attorney — now acknowledge that his conviction seems to have been built on omissions and lies.
"We did the best we could with the information we had, but with a little extra work, a little extra effort, maybe we'd have gotten the right information," said Miriam Ward, forewoman of the jury that convicted Cantu. "The bottom line is, an innocent person was put to death for it. We all have our finger in that."
Sam Millsap Jr., the former Bexar County district attorney who made the decision to charge Cantu with capital murder, says he never should have sought the death penalty in a case based on the testimony of an eyewitness who identified Cantu only after police officers showed him Cantu's photo three separate times.
"It's so questionable. There are so many places where it could break down," said Millsap, now in private practice. "We have a system that permits people to be convicted based on evidence that could be wrong because it's mistaken or because it's corrupt."
No physical evidence
The Chronicle found other problems with Cantu's case as well. Police reports have unexplained omissions and irregularities. Witnesses who could have provided an alibi for Cantu that night were never interviewed. And no physical evidence — not even a fingerprint or a bullet — tied Cantu to the crime.
Worse, some think Cantu's arrest was instigated by police officers because Cantu shot and wounded an off-duty officer during an unrelated bar fight. That case against Cantu was dropped in part because officers overreacted and apparently tainted the evidence, according to records and interviews.
During eight years on death row, Cantu repeatedly insisted he was innocent of murder. In 1987, he wrote to the Board of Pardons and Paroles, saying: "I was tried and convicted on bogus evidence."
But on the day he finally was strapped to a gurney and readied for a lethal injection, Cantu said nothing as his attorney watched him die through a special one-way viewing window.
Outside the prison gates, his mother, Aurelia Cantu, held a candle in a small crowd of protesters: "He's resting now, he's free. But he should not have been here in the first place."
That night, in another Texas prison, his old friend and convicted accomplice, Garza, listened to news reports of the execution on a radio in his cell and wept for things left unsaid.
"Part of me died when he died," Garza said in an interview with the Chronicle. "You've got a 17-year-old who went to his grave for something he did not do. Texas murdered an innocent person."
That same day, at his small home on a street near the railroad tracks in east San Antonio, the surviving eyewitness got a phone call telling him that the man he had accused would soon die. But Moreno, a still-scarred robbery victim who barely survived the 1984 attack, felt no relief. Just unsettling guilt.
After the Chronicle showed her new statements about the Cantu case, jury forewoman Ward, who still lives in the suburbs of San Antonio, said she also is disturbed by her part in his fate: "When the pieces come together in the wrong way, disaster happens. That's not the way our legal system is supposed to work. Ruben Cantu deserved better."
Tough part of town
Almost painfully quiet, Cantu grew up as an eager-to-please kid who often watched TV until well after midnight and sucked his thumb far longer than other children.
His mother had married a man 24 years her senior when she was only 13. Ruben was the fourth of five children born to Aurelia and Fidencio "Fred" Cantu.
Aurelia raised her boys and a daughter mostly alone while her husband worked long hours as a maintenance man at Market Square, a popular tourist attraction. By the time Ruben turned 14, his mother left her husband and moved 30 miles away to Floresville, a sleepy, mostly Mexican-American town of 5,000 near her parents' rancho.
His mother asked Ruben to come along, but he chose to stay with his father in his tiny trailer park on Briggs Street in the ragged southern fringe of the city, a place where drug dealers, smugglers, fences and thieves lived and worked in houses pockmarked with bullet holes.
But while his father worked, often long hours into the night, Cantu was skipping school and learning different lessons on the street.
Bad reputation
Cantu's south San Antonio neighborhood was controlled by the so-called Grey Eagles, the tough kids who roamed it and relentlessly guarded its boundaries. Though small for his age and slow in school, Cantu became one of the leaders. He began sampling the drugs readily available through neighborhood dealers and stole cars for joy rides.
By the time he turned 15, he was recruited into an auto-theft ring. Sometimes he disappeared for days, driving hot cars and pickups to the border and coming back with $2,000 or $3,000 in cash. Surrounded by grinding poverty, Cantu could spend all he wanted on video games, movies and drugs.
He learned quickly to avoid the San Antonio police, a force that in some of its darkest days in the 1980s was plagued by scandals related to drug-dealing officers and vigilantes who took justice into their own hands.
Cantu grew up believing that no police officer could be trusted. Already a quiet child, he quickly mastered the neighborhood code of silence: You never ratted on anyone — no matter the cost to yourself. Cantu practiced this art to an extreme. His silence, even in a neighborhood known for its secrets, remains a local legend.
Neighborhood officers knew and disliked Cantu, and they had arrested his older brothers on drug and theft charges. But they had never successfully pinned a crime on Cantu.
It was against this backdrop of mutual suspicion that Cantu soon emerged as a leading suspect after a violent murder and robbery occurred on Briggs Street on Nov. 8, 1984.
That night, Juan Moreno, a skinny, hard-working teenager fresh from a Mexican rancho in Zacatecas, was camping out in a house almost directly across the street from Cantu's trailer.
Moreno and his friend, Pedro Gomez, had eaten dinner and gone to sleep inside the virtually empty brick house they were helping to build for Moreno's brother and his wife. They were guarding it because burglars recently had stolen a water heater.
Inside the shell of a house, there was a pair of mattresses on the floor in the front room. The only water was stored in empty beer cans. The only light came from the bare 75-watt bulb of a single lamp powered by an extension cord connected to a neighbor's outlet. Both men, Moreno, 19, and Gomez, 25, worked construction and were paid in cash. That night, they slept in their clothes with wallets containing a total of about $1,000.
Suddenly, both awoke to the lone light being switched on by a pair of Latino teenagers; the older of the two carried a .22-caliber rifle. They demanded money, and Gomez, the father of three little girls back in Mexico, handed over his wallet with $600 inside. Then he turned over the mattress, and reached toward a .38-caliber revolver hidden in rags.
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The older teen opened fire, shooting nine times at Gomez, who fell facedown on the floor. Then the teen turned his weapon on Moreno and fired again and again. When Moreno blacked out, the pair fled. Near death, Moreno managed to stumble outside for help.
At 11:58 p.m., a police officer found Moreno bleeding on the seat of a pickup in front of the house. His wallet and his money were untouched. But Moreno could barely speak. The description he gave of his attackers fit almost all of the male teens in the neighborhood: two Mexican-Americans who he thought lived nearby.
Meeting with Moreno
Homicide Detective James Herring, an officer with 15 years on the force, had only that vague description to work with when he was assigned the case. And Herring, who knew no Spanish, needed others to help him speak with Moreno, a Mexican national who had been in the U.S. less than a year.
Herring first attempted to speak to Moreno at Wilford Hall Hospital on Lackland Air Force Base the day after the murder.
But Moreno remained in critical condition on a breathing machine — unable to talk and unable to write because of massive internal injuries. Eventually, he lost a lung, a kidney and part of his stomach.
In another visit six days after the murder, Moreno "could barely talk," Herring wrote in his report. But Moreno gave Herring a few more details on his attackers: two Latin-American males, one 13 or 14 and the other 19. He said he had seen the younger teen around the neighborhood. It wasn't much.
Then a neighborhood beat officer passed along a rumor from the halls of South San Antonio High School, where Cantu was in ninth grade. A shop teacher reported that three kids had been involved in the robbery and murder of Gomez and that students were saying Cantu had done the killing.
Based on that information, Herring and a Spanish-speaking detective returned to Moreno on Dec. 16, 1984. This time, Herring showed Moreno photographs of five Hispanic men, including Cantu.
Moreno, who still trembled from his injuries and showed emotion that the officers interpreted as fear, did not identify Cantu as his attacker.
Police records show that Herring made no more reports on the case. Near the end of the year, he received a promotion and transferred out of homicide.
The Gomez murder case appeared closed.
That all changed on March 1, 1985.
After midnight, Cantu was shooting 35-cent pool games at the Scabaroo Lounge, a fluorescent-lit local hangout about a mile from his father's home.
An off-duty police officer who was a stranger to Cantu was playing at another table with a cousin. Officer Joe De La Luz wore two guns under his civilian clothes, according to records.
Cantu also was armed. Both had been drinking, based on court testimony and interviews.
De La Luz later claimed under oath that Cantu shot him four times in a completely unprovoked attack. "I remember a person standing in front of me firing an unknown caliber weapon at me," De La Luz said.
Cantu claimed they argued over the pool game and he fired only after De La Luz showed him a gun in his waistband and threatened him. Cantu never denied to his friends and his family that he shot De La Luz, though he told them he learned only afterward that De La Luz was a policeman.
Yet Cantu never was convicted of shooting the officer, despite a bar full of witnesses and his own admissions. "There was an overreaction, and some of the evidence may have been tainted. It could not be prosecuted," said former homicide Sgt. Bill Ewell, who oversaw the investigation. Defense attorneys claimed that police illegally searched Cantu's home the night of the shooting.
But Ewell was a friend of De La Luz, the injured officer, and said the attack prompted him to reopen the unsolved Briggs Street murder case in which the only surviving eyewitness had previously failed to identify Cantu.
Cantu "shot an officer who worked with me," Ewell told the Chronicle. "It was difficult to get (the witness) to make the identification. We weren't able to get him for the police shooting, but we were able to get him for the murder."
Another visit
For two months, Moreno, recovering at his brother's home, had received no visits or calls from San Antonio police.
But on March 2, 1985, Ewell sent a seasoned bilingual homicide detective to show Cantu's photo to Moreno for the second time. In the kitchen of his brother's house, Moreno still did not identify Cantu, though at some point he learned that Cantu had shot a police officer.
Santos "Sam" Balleza, the now-retired detective who interviewed Moreno that day, told the Chronicle he doubted that Moreno could have made a reliable identification: It had been dark, he had been afraid for his life, and he had previously declined to identify the same suspect. "It was real tricky to show the same person a photo array more than once," he said. "It would look like you were pressuring them."
But the next day, Ewell consulted with De La Luz and then sent out a different bilingual detective to show Cantu's photo to Moreno for the third time. This time, the detective, Edward Quintanilla, brought Moreno, an illegal immigrant, back to the police station and again showed him Cantu's photo along with four other mug shots. The officer's report indicates that this time Moreno picked out Cantu, then signed and dated the back of the photo.
But the photo submitted into evidence at trial was not dated on the back, according to a trial transcript. Nor does Moreno recall that anyone translated for him a statement in English that identifies Cantu as his attacker and bears his signature.Was he pressured?
Quintanilla, the detective who questioned Moreno on March 3 and obtained the identification, could not be reached for comment. A San Antonio police spokesman said department policy does not allow officers to discuss old closed cases. Balleza, who worked with Quintanilla in homicide, called the longtime officer a straight shooter. Both he and Quintanilla later testified that they thought Moreno had been afraid to identify Cantu.
At the time, Ewell was a seasoned senior officer who had recently been promoted to lead the homicide division. Ewell, who is now retired from the department, told the Chronicle, "I'm confident the right people were prosecuted."
Moreno said he felt compelled to do what the officers wanted, even though he knew it was wrong.
"The police were sure it was (Cantu) because he had hurt a police officer," Moreno said in a recent interview. "They told me they were certain it was him, and that's why I testified. ... That was bad to blame someone that was not there."
Emotional testimony
Bruce Baxter, the prosecutor who handled Gomez's murder case, said he could believe that Moreno lied under the circumstances.
However, Baxter, now an attorney in Washington state, said he privately interviewed Moreno before the trial in 1985 to try to determine whether he had made the ID just to please police. At the time, Baxter said he believed Moreno was sincere.
Baxter's entire case depended on it because there were no confessions, no murder weapon and no fingerprints for him to use against Cantu. Garza, the 15-year-old arrested as Cantu's accomplice, had refused to implicate Cantu even to help himself. What Baxter had was a one-witness case against a teenager.
But Baxter also knew, just as the defense attorneys feared, that the word of Moreno, then a 19-year-old who had been badly injured, could sway a jury.
In both a pretrial hearing and during the trial, Moreno testified over and over that Cantu had shot him and killed his friend.
"Do you see in the courtroom the man who poked you with the rifle and woke you up?"
"Yes."
"And where is that person?"
"That is Ruben Cantu."
"Who shot you?"
"Ruben."
His emotional testimony in Spanish about how he watched his friend get killed and nearly died himself was the key evidence presented against Cantu during the guilt phase of the July 1985 trial.
'I have been framed'
Defense attorney Andrew Carruthers, an experienced lawyer though he had never before handled a death case, tried to discredit the identification without attacking Moreno, who was a sympathetic witness.
"I'm not saying Juan Moreno is lying; I'm saying that he did not get a good look at who shot him. He didn't get a good look at them, and the police tried to substitute their opinion for his," argued Carruthers, now a Bexar County magistrate.
But it was Moreno's damning words that resonated with jurors. They found Cantu guilty.
Then in the punishment phase of the trial, prosecutors presented another star witness — De La Luz, the officer shot by Cantu three months after the Gomez murder. Without that bar shooting, prosecutors would have been left to try to argue for death based on street rumors about Cantu's gang activities and a pending marijuana-possession charge.
But De La Luz testified that Cantu had shot him without provocation. It was all that the jurors really needed to convince them that Cantu, though still a teenager, was so dangerous that he should be put to death.
Cantu's attorneys did not want him to testify, and so Cantu, as had been his custom nearly all of his life, sat silently before his accusers. He wept only after prosecutors asked the jury to sentence him to die.
Days later, he wrote the letter that he addressed to the "Citizens of San Antonio."
"I have been framed in a capital murder case. I was framed because I shot an off-duty police officer named Joe De La Luz."
For years, defense attorneys who handled Cantu's appeals attacked the reliability of Moreno's identification, insisting that police inappropriately influenced him.
On the first round of appeals, even the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ruled that the identification process was improperly suggestive, though the court upheld the in-trial identification and did not overturn Cantu's conviction. "In the abstract the process of showing Juan several arrays on different occasions, all containing the appellant's photograph is a suggestive procedure. Such procedure tends to highlight a particular defendant since the witness sees the same face repeatedly. Such reoccurrence of one particular face might suggest to the witness that the police think the defendant is the culprit," a February 1987 opinion read.
But none of the defense attorneys who represented Cantu during his appeals ever attempted to find Moreno, who they assumed had returned to Mexico.
Still feeling pain
Moreno had moved on — but only to another neighborhood in San Antonio.
In two decades, his life has morphed from that of a traumatized newly arrived Mexican teenager into that of an independent Texas contractor, husband and father of a teenager of his own. Moreno now insists a Hispanic teen with very curly hair shot him. Police never showed him a photo of that man, he said. Moreno said police never threatened him but influenced him in subtle ways.
In his heart, though, he always knew what he was doing was "bad," he said. His wife, Anabel, who met and married him years after the attack, said that when she asked about his scars, he always told her that the wrong man had been sent to death row.
Moreno did not know Cantu or his family before the time of the murder trial in 1985. In the years after the attack, Moreno said, he has had no contact with them or anyone connected with the case. He said he thinks that someone from Cantu's family tried to telephone him around the time of the 1993 execution, but he was not at home.
Moreno says he has nothing to gain by talking about the attack. The horror of the night that he watched his friend Gomez die facedown in a pool of blood has not left him. He still feels pain from his own injuries. Despite that, he said, he is no longer afraid to speak because he wants people to know the truth about Cantu.
"I'm sure it wasn't him," Moreno said. "It was a case where the wrong person was executed."
lise.olsen@chron.com
pretty cool the way that cop got to reopen the case when his friend got shot and they did some ugly police work and hada let him go. i guess thats the style?
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and what a fair and impartial investigation into the possible wrongdoing no one could accuse em of a coverup or at least they couldn't if it weren't for that pesky tape recorded phone call funny the cop shoulda know it was being recorded but i guess the kinda investigation they do he wasn't worried
July 22, 2006, 10:58PM
Candid phone calls cast doubt on Cantu review
Investigators are heard mocking the claim of wrongful execution, but DA denies any bias
By LISE OLSEN and MARO ROBBINS
Copyright 2006 Houston Chronicle AND San Antonio Express-News
SAN ANTONIO - The Bexar County district attorney's investigation into a possibly wrongful execution had barely started earlier this year, but already DA investigators were scoffing at the three witnesses who contend Texas sent an innocent man named Ruben Cantu to his death.
"They're lying. They're all lying, and they know they're lying," Mike Beers, the senior DA investigator, told the retired sergeant who drove the homicide investigation against Cantu and whose actions, along with other officers in that case, are under review by the DA's office.
That was in February, before DA investigators had spoken with two of the three witnesses who say Cantu was innocent. By March, another top investigator was forecasting the outcome:
"It's going to go forward with the fact that it was justified and everything was correct, and that's the way it is," James Moore, one of the primary DA investigators on the case, told Bill Ewell, the retired sergeant, on a routinely recorded phone line March 7.
Obtained through a public-records request, these recorded conversations open a window into one of the highest-profile and politically polarizing investigations under way in Texas, a review of allegations that the state made a mistake when it executed Cantu for a 1984 robbery and murder.
Both DA investigators ridicule the case and openly mock the notion that Cantu might have been innocent. They describe the witnesses as liars and bastards; one dismisses the possibility of a future wrongful-execution lawsuit as "chicken *expletive deleted*it."
Together, the recorded statements stand in contrast to public assurances that the Bexar County DA's Office will fully and fairly examine assertions that Cantu played no part in the 1984 robbery that left one man dead and another bleeding from nearly a dozen wounds.
A spokesman for District Attorney Susan Reed characterized the conversations as harmless "shop talk" and speculation, sprinkled with the salty language of tough cops. First Assistant District Attorney Cliff Herberg said any doubts about the case are natural, because two of the witness who vouch for Cantu are ex-convicts and liars.
Herberg said the investigators did not disclose any confidential information or violate ethical rules and would not be disciplined. Yet, he did say he regretted the remarks had been made on a publicly recorded telephone line because they could imply that his office had "prejudged the case."
"We want people to have confidence in the integrity of the investigation. This obviously does not help that," Herberg said. "But all of the people that are involved are professionals ... and they will do the job that needs to be done to the best of their ability regardless of what their personal opinions may be."
Several ethicists and lawyers asked to review the information are more skeptical.
"I do think (the DA) needs to determine whether or not the lead investigators have done a good job, based on these phone calls. Because it sounds to me that this important team has prejudged the case," said Linda Eads, an ethicist and former prosecutor who is chairwoman of the professional disciplinary rules committee for the State Bar of Texas.
Investigators Beers and Moore work under the direction of Herberg and other attorneys in the DA's office. Through Herberg, both refused to comment but stressed they had done nothing improper. Herberg quoted Moore as saying: "There is no conspiracy by us to cover up any actions by anybody." Ewell, through an attorney, also declined to comment.
At the time of the conversations, Ewell served as police chief for the North East Independent School District, which routinely records calls on its police-department phone line. Ewell, who is now retired from the school district as well as the San Antonio Police Department, is not the target of any criminal investigation, Herberg said, though the actions of officers involved in the Cantu case are under review.
'They're all lying'
In 1985, it was Ewell and his detectives who, on the third attempt, obtained the key evidence against Cantu, an eyewitness identification from the lone surviving victim of the robbery, a witness who now says police pressured him to identify Cantu.
Reed reopened the case in December after the Houston Chronicle published wrongful-execution claims made by the shooting victim, along with Cantu's convicted co-defendant and a potential alibi witness who says Cantu was in Waco stealing cars about the time of the murder.
Reed testified in June that she hadn't formed any conclusions, but months earlier, her senior investigator already had given his opinion.
"They're all lying," said Beers, the DA's senior investigator, in that February phone conversation.
"Yeah, I think so. I mean I know so," Ewell replied. "But, I mean, I hope the DA knows that."
"Oh yeah," Beers assured him. "All they're just trying to show is that ... the case was handled ethically and it was done correctly."
A month later, Moore, the head investigator in the DA's white-collar-crime section, gave Ewell information and advice.
In one conversation, Moore, who informally interviewed Cantu's co-defendant David Garza, dismissed Garza with an expletive. In another call, he predicted the investigation would prove everything was "justified" and "correct."
In an interview, Herberg, the first assistant district attorney, said that he understood Moore's dislike of Garza, a convicted felon who through the years has flip-flopped about what happened the night of the murder. But Herberg said Moore's "forward looking" and "optimistic" prediction about the case was premature and did not reflect his bosses' views.
"We're not ready to make that kind of statement," Herberg said.
Legal experts and attorneys for the witnesses have challenged the DA's objectivity in the case because in her previous job as judge, Reed denied one of Cantu's appeals and set his execution date. But no one has previously questioned the staff's conduct in the case.
Beers is a former motorcycle cop and mayoral driver who joined the SAPD in 1969, two years after Ewell. The former colleagues occasionally lunch together, according to the taped conversations.
Five days after his formal interview with the DA's office about the Cantu execution, Ewell invited Beers to lunch. Ewell told his friend he wanted "to see what you've heard."
Beers oversees all DA investigators but has played only a minor role in the Cantu review — retrieving some documents — and would know only what he read in the newspaper or heard around the office, according to Herberg. Still, when Ewell worried aloud about whether the Cantu case might later result in a wrongful-death lawsuit, Beers replied:
"That just tells me a whole lot about people like that. Y'know, just money-hungry sorry bastards."
Police not suspects
Moore had been the one who formally interviewed Ewell for the Cantu investigation Feb. 1. After that, Moore talked with Ewell on the phone several times.
On March 28, Ewell had a question for Moore.
"Am I being investigated, or what are we doing here? That's, that's my concern," Ewell said. "Does the DA's office think that I'm guilty of some wrongdoing?"
"No," Moore said. "Not that I'm aware of, no."
Later, Moore added , "There's no investigation by us ... or anybody else that I'm aware of."
What Moore meant, Herberg said in an interview, is that the police officers are not suspects because the recanting eyewitness, Juan Moreno, who has not been interviewed by the DA's office since the case was reopened, has never publicly claimed that police did anything illegal.
But the DA has said Moreno could be prosecuted for the unusual crime of murder by perjury if he lied during Cantu's trial.
Ewell began contacting friends soon after the Chronicle and San Antonio Express-News published investigations about new innocence claims in the Cantu case in late November, recordings show. He called the outgoing SAPD chief, a couple of deputy chiefs and the former judge in the Cantu trial, Roy Barrera Jr., among others.
First of many conversations
Ewell, who has refused to give an interview about his role in the Cantu case, gave his official sworn account to the DA's office Feb. 1.
The meeting introduced Ewell to Moore, who had joined the DA's office after years as an investigator with the state pharmacy board. Other calls followed.
In one conversation, Moore described his informal interview with Garza, one of the men who now claims Cantu was wrongly executed.
Garza was convicted at 15 of being Cantu's accomplice in the 1984 murder and robbery of a Mexican-born contractor. He originally pleaded not guilty, later entered a guilty plea on the robbery charge but never testified about the murder.
Last year, Garza signed a sworn statement saying Cantu was innocent and named another teen as the killer. But when the DA's team went to interview Garza, then in prison for an unrelated crime, he initially refused a lie-detector test, Moore told Ewell.
"We went down there and interviewed that little bastard," Moore, laughing, told Ewell. " ... He's very anti-death penalty."
In an interview, Herberg said he understood Moore's low opinion of Garza.
"David Garza is an admitted Mexican Mafia member. He's an admitted liar. He's an admitted participant in a capital murder. He's a three-time convicted felon," Herberg said. "What would you call him? I would not call him a Boy Scout."
Garza refused to cooperate with the DA's office when he was in prison because he claimed its investigators and prosecutors are biased.
Now out on parole, Garza gave an interview to the DA's office June 28 after having been summoned to testify in front of a grand jury.
In another March conversation, Moore called Ewell to give him a "heads-up" at Herberg's direction. A Chronicle reporter had requested the DA's file on the 1981 robbery in which Ewell and others arrested two innocent people.
Moore told Ewell that reporters were "trying to smear you ... is what it looks like, trying to ... raise a bunch of doubt and all this stuff."
"Well, how does Judge Reed feel about me?" Ewell asked.
Moore again reassured him. "She doesn't pay any attention to that."
Reed refused to be interviewed for this report through Herberg, her spokesman.
Defending the investigation
Instead, Herberg offered a nuanced defense of the investigators in a two-and-a-half-hour interview about the recordings, which the newspapers provided for his review.
Herberg said he agreed with most of what the investigators said but described their remarks as idle speculation that doesn't warrant public airing. He also insisted that the investigation's outcome has not been predetermined even as he acknowledged that some in the office may have a bias toward Cantu's guilt.
The investigators also have another predisposition: They're reluctant to believe ex-cons who, presumably, aim to discredit or abolish the death penalty, he said.
"The problem with this article is it's going to make out this point that somehow this has been prejudged. ... We're looking at everything," Herberg stressed. "But we are adults, we do have a little experience here and didn't fall off the turnip truck yesterday."
He said officials have yet to speak to the most intriguing witness, Moreno. Unlike the others, Moreno isn't an ex-con. Instead, he's a shooting victim who visibly bears the scars of the attack and whose testimony put Cantu on death row.
In the recorded conversations, investigators also dismissed Moreno as a liar or speculated he'd been hoodwinked into recanting.
But Herberg insisted that no one's mind is made up.
"I hope, at least, the article conveys we understand the sensitivity of the investigation," he said. "I wish these (recordings) were not public. I wish they had not occurred. But that said, the officers can do their job. And will do their job."
lise.olsen@chron.com
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you folks who think the system isn't seriously flawed confuse me ;/
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and this "officer of the court" is still a prosecutor after the judge labeled what he did prosecutorial misconduct. and the guys still on death row even though the judge named the real killer.
how many other guys he railroad in more than 20 years as prosecutor
and what about the homicide cop screwing the the dead guys wife thats professional the fact that she was also screwing the first guy convicted just makes it better
DEATH ROW INMATE'S APPEAL CHAMPIONED BY LEGAL GIANT
The petition to save Florida Death Row inmate Billy Kelley has been submitted to the U.S. Supreme Court, familiar territory for powerhouse attorney Laurence Tribe.
Miami Herald By Meg Laughlin
March 5, 2005
In the wee hours of the morning, a third-year Harvard law student of professor Laurence Tribe's sat staring at his laptop on his grandmother's 1930 dining-room table in a drafty Victorian house. He wore the same green flannel pajamas he had put on two days before, and had not slept since. At 2:30 a.m. Thursday, he clicked the ''send'' icon on his screen.
With this gesture, he began the last step in an adversarial process that is the bedrock of the American justice system: the right of the criminally convicted to overturn grave error.
And, so, a petition was on its way to the U.S. Supreme Court.
At stake: The life of Billy Kelley on Florida's Death Row. Twenty-one years ago, a jury convicted him for the murder of Sebring citrus grower and cattleman Charles Von Maxcy -- which occurred 39 years ago.
From Cambridge, Mass., Tribe's 40-page plea went by e-mail to a Boston print shop, which made 40 copies and sent them overnight to Washington, D.C., for a Friday arrival at the high court.
LEGAL TWISTS, TURNS
In 2002, Broward U.S. District Judge Norman C. Roettger, who died in 2003, granted Kelley a new trial. State prosecutors said they could not retry Kelley, clearing the way for his release from prison.
Roettger, known as a champion of the death penalty, said he believed Kelley was innocent. He also named the likely killer (now dead) in court documents, and signed an order saying Kelley could leave Florida's Death Row and go live with his brother in Tewksbury, Mass.
''Billy had his toothbrush packed,'' said Texan Jimmy Lohman, one of Kelley's appellate lawyers.
But a three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta overturned Roettger's decision and reinstated Kelley's conviction. Chief Justice Gerald Tjoflat wrote the opinion.
Now the only thing standing between Kelley, 62, and a lethal shot of potassium chloride is the petition to the U.S. Supreme Court by Tribe -- a legal giant who represented Al Gore in the recount battle after the 2000 election.
Charles Von Maxcy was stabbed to death in the bedroom of his Sebring ranch house in October 1966. In 1967, a jury convicted Boston mobster John Sweet, the secret lover of Maxcy's wife, Irene, for the murder after Irene testified against him.
But Sweet was released from prison a year later after Irene admitted having an affair with the lead homicide detective in the case. By 1981, Sweet, who died in 1989, was facing a hefty prison sentence for running theft and fraud rings in Massachusetts. To save himself, he offered to name the hitmen in the Von Maxcy murder in exchange for immunity. One was dead; the other, he said, was Kelley, a small-time Boston crook.
`NOTHING TO GAIN'
At Kelley's second murder trial in Sebring -- the first ended in a mistrial -- the only evidence against him was Sweet's testimony. No witnesses, no blood samples, no hair, no fingerprints connected Kelley to the murder. After closing arguments, the jury was so confused about Kelley's possible role in the murder that the foreman sent a note to the judge questioning Sweet's motives for implicating Kelley and asking the prosecutor if Sweet had anything to gain by his testimony.
The prosecutor, Hardy Pickard, now a prosecutor in Polk County, responded that ``Sweet had nothing to gain by his testimony.''
In 2002, after Kelley had been on Death Row for 18 years, Roettger ruled that Kelley should be given a new trial because Pickard ''misled the jury'' about the immunity deal and was guilty of ''prosecutorial misconduct'' for ``withholding evidence.''
But a year later, the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reinstated the conviction.
The primary reason: The appellate panel did not think the jury needed Pickard's clarification on the immunity deal to consider Sweet a ''sullied witness'' because of information already revealed by cross-examination about Sweet's dishonesty.
In the petition ''for writ of certiorari'' that Tribe filed to the Supreme Court, he argued that in a capital case no evidence should be overlooked because ``withholding even a single item of exonerating evidence might well tip the scales against the accused . . .''
To further entice the court, Tribe wrote that the Kelley ''case is a fitting vehicle'' for the high court ''to address [a] circuit split'' -- a difference of opinion in federal appellate courts across the country -- about whether additional impugning evidence should be introduced.
''If Billy's case had been heard in Washington, D.C., or the Ninth Circuit [which consists of nine western states], he would have been set free. A life shouldn't depend on geography,'' Tribe said.
A FIRST FOR TRIBE
Although Tribe has argued 36 cases before the U.S. Supreme Court -- 22 of them successfully -- he has never involved himself with a capital case before Kelley's.
His main reason for this involvement, he said, is to answer this question: ``How much should prosecutors be permitted to suppress key evidence and get away with it, especially when they deceive the defense, the judge and the jury?''
Tribe does not lack backup legal firepower. He sought the advice of top experts on the death penalty, including Anthony Amsterdam, who directed the legal challenge that invalidated the death penalty in 1972.
For the high court's previous term -- October 2003 through June 2004 -- the justices received 8,883 petitions from Death Row inmates. They heard only 91.
Said Kelley from Death Row: ``If I lose, I'll just appeal to the Big Guy.''
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Martin Soto-Fong and the DA with Killer Instincts [pdf format]
Last year, former Pima County, AZ DA Kenneth Peasley was disbarred for intentionally presenting false evidence in death-penalty cases—something that had never before happened to an American prosecutor. In a 1992 triple-murder case, Peasley introduced testimony that he knew to be false; three men were convicted and sentenced to die. Peasley was convinced that the three were guilty, but he also believed that the evidence needed a push. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, since the mid-nineteen-seventies a hundred and seventeen death-row inmates have been released. Defense lawyers, often relying on DNA testing, have shown repeatedly how shoddy crime-lab work, lying informants, and mistaken eyewitness identifications, among other factors, led to unjust convictions. But DNA tests don’t reveal how innocent people come to be prosecuted in the first place. The career of Kenneth Peasley -- and the case of Martin Soto-Fong -- do.
pretty special a da fudging to give the evidence a "push" and why isn't he in a cell? professional courtesy?
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great police and lawyer work here always great to hear an officer of the court say innocence doesn't matter
Infamous injustice
DNA frees an innocent man; who will pay?
By Martin Dyckman, Columnist, St. Petersburg Times
August 22, 2004
TALLAHASSEE - Mistakes happen, so Wilton Dedge won't be the last innocent man sent to prison. The young Brevard County woman who accused him of savagely raping and slashing her won't be the last victim to identify the wrong guy.
That's why we need appeals courts and independent judges. That's why we need activists like the Innocence Project, whose persistence finally freed Dedge this month after he had spent 22 years - more than half his life - behind Florida bars.
But what happened to Dedge went beyond honest error. It got as bad as anything I have seen Florida do. It calls for every citizen's disgust, anger and determination. Somebody needs to pay, and we're all to blame if we let such things happen again.
Dedge's case was already infamous for prosecutorial arrogance. It took Dedge five years to get the DNA test he wanted. After the DNA proved that it wasn't his pubic hair that the jury had been led to believe he left in the victim's bed, the state fought for three more years to deny him a new trial.
To Robert Wayne Holmes, the chief assistant state attorney, and to his allies in Tallahassee, arcane rules and timetables trumped Dedge's possible innocence. Last spring, an assistant attorney general told the 5th District Court of Appeal that even if she knew Dedge to be innocent, it wouldn't matter.
"That is not the issue," she said.
It was to the court, which ordered a new trial. This time, the state wanted a DNA test, on a badly degraded semen sample that the defense feared might be ambiguous. In fact, it conclusively cleared Dedge. The results, received last Wednesday, made him the 148th person to be exonerated postconviction by DNA.
The DNA evidence that conclusively proved him innocent also made a liar out of the jailhouse snitch who helped prosecutors send him back to prison, with a worse sentence - for life - after he had won a new trial 20 years ago.
The same thug, Clarence Zacke, put Gerald Stano in the electric chair after a jury that had heard nothing but Stano's unsupported confession couldn't agree whether it was true.
Both men were tried in Brevard County, by some of the same prosecutors. In both cases, the state needed stronger evidence for retrials. In both cases, Zacke miraculously turned up to say the defendants had boasted of the crimes.
" "I just raped and cut some old hog,' " he said Dedge told him. The victim was 17. Zacke also said Dedge threatened to kill her if he ever got out. The judge tried to make sure he wouldn't.
Conveniently for the state, Zacke had been alone with both defendants - in Dedge's case, in a prison transport van - so there was nobody else to dispute what he said. In each case, Zacke knew details that he could have learned only from someone who knew a lot about the crimes.
"Were you surprised at this defendant opening up to you and telling you all these things?" asked Dedge's prosecutor.
"No sir," said Zacke, lying through his teeth.
Zacke was sent to prison for 180 years for a litany of thuggery including conspiracy to murder the brother of an assistant state attorney. For turning on other defendants in that case, he got his sentence cut to 60 years. He swore that he had "asked for nothing and I've been offered nothing" to testify against Dedge but admitted he hoped his testimony would help him get parole.
Zacke did not get parole, but with time off for good behavior he is to be released in March 2006 after serving only 25 years, just three more than Dedge. The statute of limitations on his perjury ran out long ago.
"Zacke is no friend of mine," says Norman Wolfinger, Holmes' boss, who became the state attorney after the Stano and Dedge trials.
Wolfinger concedes that Zacke lied about Dedge, but not that there should be an investigation. He says he is "absolutely" satisfied that nobody connected with his office told Zacke what to say.
I do not understand how he can be so confident. Only an independent investigation could lay that suspicion to rest. Gov. Jeb Bush has yet to say whether there will be one.
Such an investigation would be unwelcome in many places. If Zacke lied about Dedge - as we know he did - did he also lie about Stano? If so, did anybody who worked for the state put Zacke up to it?
Wolfinger - who was in the public defender's office when it represented Stano - says he doesn't think Dedge's case has "any implication" for Stano's. He rationalizes that Stano, unlike Dedge, confessed to police, and that the Florida Supreme Court decided to let Stano die despite the transcript of an interview in which Zacke told a freelance writer that he had been "programmed" to lie.
On March 20, 1998, the court turned down Stano's last appeal on the premise that Zacke's unsworn recantation would not persuade a jury to disregard Stano's confessions. Stano was electrocuted three days later, leaving a statement that said "I am innocent. . . . Now I am dead and you do not have the truth."
Stano confessed to stabbing, strangling and shooting 41 women in three states, but there was never a shred of forensic evidence to confirm what he said. Some of the confessions were so transparently false that prosecutors refused to accept them. His last attorney, Mark Olive, contends Stano was a sick man who had been deceived by a shrewd cop and condemned by a perjurer.
"What a wretched system," Olive said. "Gerry was executed because of what prosecutors had Zacke say. We now know for certain that Zacke was a cold-blooded liar. No jury would convict Gerry knowing that Zacke was a cold-blooded liar."
With the proof in hand that Dedge was innocent, Wolfinger couldn't wait even for Dedge's parents to be told before springing him from the Brevard jail. They were at choir practice when their pastor heard Wolfinger on the news, thanking God for DNA.
Dedge, 42, left the jail with his belongings in a plastic bag. Hurricane Charley hit two days later, but his parents' home lost only power for three days and "some banana trees and a limb here or there." When I talked with Dedge, he was still learning how to use a cordless phone and trying to get accustomed to his mother's driving at 70 mph.
The prisons had trained him to operate a water treatment plant. He has job offers in that field and others. He thinks Florida should reimburse what his parents spent for lawyers out of their retirement fund, more than $100,000, before Innocence Project volunteer Milton Hirsch of Miami took his case pro bono. Florida has no mechanism to compensate the wrongfully convicted, so if the Dedges are to get anything, the Legislature will have to agree to it.
Whatever it turns out to be, it won't be enough.
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Is death row convict guilty of killing Johnstown woman?
'Innocence' reporters: Simmons case had holes
Detective who put Simmons on Death Row is in prison himself
Ernest Simmons at his trial in 1993
Sunday, January 25, 2004
This story was written by Nathan Crabbe and Jamie Keaney of the Innocence Institute of Western Pennsylvania under the supervision of Post-Gazette staff writer and institute Director Bill Moushey
He seemed like a logical suspect. After all, Ernest Simmons had spent most of his adult life behind bars and his last prison stretch was for beating and robbing two elderly men.
So in May 1992, when 80-year-old Anna Knaze was found robbed and brutally murdered in her Johnstown home, suspicion quickly focused on Simmons. In short order, he was arrested, convicted and condemned to death row, where twice he has narrowly escaped execution.
In the past, Simmons had always pleaded guilty to his crimes. But this time, he swore he was innocent -- even when he was being secretly taped by his girlfriend.
An investigation by the Innocence Institute of Western Pennsylvania at Point Park University and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette shows he may be right.
At the very least, the jury that convicted him lacked key evidence and information that challenged witnesses' stories.
Jurors didn't know that police withheld hair tests that didn't match Simmons' hair. They never heard the secret tape recordings made by his girlfriend, which were hidden by police. They didn't know that two witnesses against him escaped time behind bars in return for their testimony.
Most significantly, the jury didn't know that the state's star witness lied on the stand when she identified Simmons as the killer -- a falsehood she admitted just months ago to reporters from the Innocence Institute.
A federal judge will hear arguments Friday on whether Simmons, now 46, deserves a new trial or should stay on death row. While they wouldn't comment on specifics of the case, police and prosecutors maintain they have the right man.
After a series of violent crimes against the elderly in Johnstown 12 years ago, older residents were warned to be cautious. Still, Anna Knaze didn't hesitate to help a stranger in her close-knit neighborhood of older residences and warehouses.
After neighbors hadn't seen her for a day and her mail was untouched, Knaze's son came to check on her. He found her body slumped on a hallway floor in the late afternoon of May 6, 1992. An autopsy uncovered the horrors of her final minutes. Her spine was severed, all her ribs were broken and she had been strangled. Her purse, the only article missing from the home, would never be recovered.
The detective assigned to the case, Sgt. Richard Rok, had just worked his way up to detective after two years on the Johnstown police force.
Early in the investigation, neighbors reported they last saw Knaze inviting a black man, who claimed his car had broken down, into her home. With information he received about Simmons' past, Rok quickly pegged him as the probable killer.
Crime-ridden life
It's easy to see why Simmons was a target.
Born in 1957 to a 13-year-old mother in Philadelphia, he was sexually abused as a child and allowed to roam the streets to find his meals in Dumpsters. After child welfare agencies took him, he bounced among foster homes until a Harrisburg preacher and his wife adopted him. His stepmother later told his lawyers he was their most grateful foster child, but said the couple "got to him too late. He had spent too many years on the street just trying to survive."
By the time he was 27, Simmons had pleaded guilty to 19 charges of theft and had received four different prison terms. His most serious conviction came in 1984 in Harrisburg, where he admitted attacking and robbing two elderly men and was sentenced to seven to 15 years in prison.
Harrisburg police also suspected that he was responsible for killing two other elderly Harrisburg residents, but they lacked proof.
In prison, Simmons earned a barber's certificate before his parole in August 1991 at age 34. He chose Johnstown for a fresh start and soon found a job cutting hair.
Just six months later, Simmons called police and reported he had stumbled upon an 83-year-old man with a knife in his neck in his apartment complex. The man later died without identifying his attacker. Police believed Simmons killed the man, but as with the Harrisburg slayings, they had no evidence.
Nine days after Knaze's murder, Simmons was imprisoned on a technical parole violation.
When police questioned him about Knaze's killing, he insisted he had an alibi. He told police that on the day of the slaying, he drove his girlfriend to an appointment in downtown Johns-town, then took some friends of hers to an auto shop and stopped at a bank on the way back. He was late picking up his girlfriend, arriving around 11:45 a.m.
If the murder occurred around 11 as the autopsy suggested, Simmons argued, his tight schedule wouldn't have given him time to commit the crime. Rok believed Simmons had just enough time, a belief bolstered when two workers from a day-care center near Knaze's home picked out Simmons' mug shot as the man they saw walk past at the time.
A month into Rok's investigation, a next-door neighbor told the detective her son also could identify Simmons. The mother of Gary Blough said her son saw Simmons talking to Knaze, but didn't notify police because he was dodging a warrant for his own arrest for violating parole on a two-year prison sentence.
After the warrant finally caught up with him, Blough identified Simmons as the man who had been near Knaze's home. His statement would free him from jail, but jurors would never find out about his early release.
Secret taping
Rok had only circumstantial evidence. Nine partial fingerprints found in Knaze's home didn't match Simmons'.
So the officer stepped up his pursuit of Simmons' girlfriend, LaCherie Pletcher, figuring she knew more than she was letting on. He talked her into taping telephone and face-to-face conversations with Simmons. The gambit yielded no evidence against him, and the tapes then remained hidden for years.
She also told Rok that weeks before Knaze's killing, she had looked in Simmons' wallet and found the license of another elderly woman. Rok used the tip to locate a police report from Margaret Cobaugh, who reported her purse stolen around that time. He then found a later report from Cobaugh, in which she claimed she was raped just 13 hours after Knaze's murder.
Cobaugh, then 61, was a friend of Knaze and lived nearby. She told police she was attacked as she walked home after helping her next-door neighbor. In her initial statement, Cobaugh said she called an ambulance company to help the neighbor, who was having trouble breathing, then left as the vehicle approached. A man grabbed her from behind and threatened to kill her if she screamed, she said.
She told police she didn't get a good look at her attacker. She didn't get medical attention and didn't tell her husband that night what had happened. Instead, she destroyed possible evidence by soaking her underwear in the toilet and waited until the next day to call police.
It took weeks of questioning before Rok took a formal statement from Cobaugh about the incident. By then, she had changed 13 elements in her original story.
Most critically, she now claimed her attacker had warned her not to "open your ... mouth" or she would "get the same thing Anna Knaze got" -- even though that was before Knaze's body had been discovered.
She also claimed she saw her attacker's face, and it was Simmons.
As the trial neared, private investigator James Porreca, a retired Philadelphia police officer helping Simmons' defense, found that two of the purported eyewitnesses were hedging.
Of the two day-care workers who had identified Simmons in front of Knaze's home, one told Porreca she wasn't sure Simmons was the man because "all blacks look alike." The other said she told police she saw the same man again at a time Simmons was already in jail.
The investigator also found that no ambulance company within 20 miles had responded to a sick neighbor's home on the night Cobaugh said she was raped. In fact, the neighbor said Cobaugh admitted concocting the tale.
Porreca testified that when he went to confront Cobaugh, he first encountered her wheelchair-bound husband, Donald, who asked, "What happens if they find out my wife was telling a lie?" When Margaret Cobaugh walked into the room, her husband said: "Tell him the truth! Tell him the truth!" before she stopped the interview by wheeling him away.
Porreca never found out what Cobaugh's husband meant. Neither would Simmons' jury.
Threat crucial at trial
When Simmons' trial began June 1, 1993, Cambria County Assistant District Attorney Gary Costlow emphasized the threat that Cobaugh said she heard -- that she should keep quiet or she would get "the same thing Anna Knaze got."
"You will realize that the statement reveals the identity of the murderer in this case," he told jurors.
Simmons' lawyer, Cambria County Assistant Public Defender Michael Filia, told the jury that police had engaged in a "target-oriented investigation" of Simmons.
After testimony from the people who said they saw Simmons near Knaze's home, Cobaugh took the stand. Defense lawyers were able to show that she had continually altered her story, but one juror later said she believed that was just the result of the stress Cobaugh had experienced.
Yet the jury never heard a key piece of evidence about Margaret Cobaugh herself.
As a younger woman, Cobaugh had served an 11-year prison sentence for theft. A few days after the alleged rape, she bought a gun, lying on the purchase form about being a convicted felon. State police charged her with the crime until Rok intervened and got the state to drop the case so she could be a witness against Simmons. Cobaugh thus avoided the threat of at least five more years in prison.
And the jury certainly never heard Cobaugh say what she admitted to reporters from the Innocence Institute in recent months.
Cobaugh, now 73, said she named Simmons because Rok "was positive that Ernest Simmons did it but he had no proof of it. ... He didn't have a witness."
She said she told Rok she "could not positively identify anyone," but he continued to interrogate her. "I think Detective Rok wanted a conviction more than anything. He wanted Ernie Simmons bad," she said.
She finally agreed to identify Simmons as her attacker -- even though she now admits she never saw the man's face.
The trial jury, which included only one black member, took just five hours to find Simmons guilty of murder and robbery. One juror, Rose Kaiser, now says she likely would have voted differently if she had known about the flaws in Cobaugh's story and other withheld evidence.
Prosecutors offered Simmons life in prison if he would plead guilty and admit to other crimes. He refused and entered the death penalty phase of the case, represented by yet another public defender who hadn't even attended the trial. The public defender spoke for only two hours with Simmons before the penalty hearing and didn't present family members or a mental health expert as witnesses.
After the prosecution presented witnesses who detailed Simmons' past crimes against the elderly, jurors deliberated less than three hours before condemning him to death.
Simmons dodged his first date with death through appeals, before Gov. Tom Ridge signed a death warrant setting the execution for April 14, 1996. Four days before that, Simmons was granted another stay.
Soon, the Defender Association of Philadelphia, which represents death row inmates on appeal, found for the first time that his former girlfriend, Pletcher, had helped police secretly tape-record Simmons.
After denying repeatedly on the witness stand that any such tapes had been made, Rok later admitted that they existed. On the tapes, Simmons declared his innocence to Pletcher 19 separate times.
The appeal also brought out the fact that Rok never told defense attorneys that Cobaugh was unable to pick Simmons' picture out of an array of mug shots on her first attempt and that Rok helped her avoid the gun purchase charges. Prosecutors also admitted helping witness Gary Blough obtain early release from his parole violation.
Even more significantly, Rok admitted that he never told the defense that Cobaugh's clothes were tested for forensic evidence and yielded hair samples that didn't match Simmons'.
Despite all of those admissions, Cambria County Common Pleas Judge Thomas Swope refused to grant Simmons a new trial.
Now his only hope is the hearing Friday before U.S. District Judge Sean McLaughlin.
In a recent letter, Simmons said he wasn't surprised that Cobaugh now admits she never could identify him.
"It's something that I've been saying for years, to the point that I felt like the boy who cried wolf," he wrote. "She just can't keep changing her story when she wants to, and think that she's going to get away with it."
Cambria County District Attorney David Tulowitzki, who was not in office during the Simmons trial, refused to comment, as did Rok and the prosecutors who handled the case.
Simmons' attorneys wouldn't allow him to be interviewed for this story. But in a letter, he wrote:
"During my life there have been crimes for which I have been in prison and for which I served my time and for which I am sorry. However, now I am waiting my turn on death row for a crime which I did not commit."
cop in this one is a real stand up guy....
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and look where that standup guy ended up
Ex-detective in prison for assaulting suspect
Sunday, January 25, 2004
Johnstown Police Sgt. Richard Rok was known for busting drug dealers and solving other high-profile cases during his 13-year career. But he also was accused of abusing his authority, and it led to his downfall.
Today, Rok, 42, sits in a federal prison in Missouri, serving a one-year sentence for assaulting a handcuffed suspect.
The former detective helped convict Ernest Simmons of murder in 1993. In the years afterward, Rok was accused of misconduct in that case and of assaulting suspects, conducting searches without warrants and pushing a witness to make false identifications.
U.S. District Court records show Rok was accused of persuading an elderly witness in 1998 to falsely identify a robbery suspect. After the suspect was acquitted, he sued Rok and Johnstown police for false arrest, witness tampering and destroying evidence. The case was later dismissed.
Also in 1998, Rok helped apprehend a man in a domestic dispute. While the man was handcuffed on the ground, Rok kicked him in the face and broke his nose, then stepped on his groin, according to an action filed in U.S. District Court.
After a federal investigation, Rok avoided charges by pleading guilty in 2002 to a misdemeanor civil rights violation. After a hearing in which two other criminals said they were attacked by the detective, he was sentenced to one year in prison and quit the force.
Using the light sentencing of officers in the Rodney King case as an example, he appealed the sentence as too harsh. A judge upheld the sentence in September 2003.
Suffering from a lifelong kidney ailment that forced a transplant, he was sent to a federal medical prison in Missouri. He didn't reply to requests for comment.
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First, I think a number of us have said there are problems with the process.
Second, the plural of anecdote is not data.
Third, an unjust punishment is unjust whether it is death or 30 years of your life.
We should fix the system: how that is to be accomplished is a question I cannot answer as ANY system will have men involved and man is, by nature, a fallible, selfish creature.
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we've cut loose 135 innocent folks off death row since the 70's
Were they innocent or merely found 'not guilty'? Would they have been found if it wasn't for the extra scrutiny of death penalty convictions?
I have to agree with makattak - Our criminal justice system has serious flaws, and it's NOT confined to DP cases. For example, try looking around for cases where DNA evidence have cleared men convicted of rape and THEIR difficulties in getting out of prison and their names cleared.
Oh, and I think that hiding evidence, falsifying evidence, etc... Should expose the one doing it to a sentence up to and including the one they attempted to convict by the malfeasance.
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It sounds like a better use of time would be to go after prosecutors, judges, and law enforcement officials who break the law or withhold evidence to get convictions. That would be much more productive and better for our justice system than to waste time whining about the death penalty itself.
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Oh, and I think that hiding evidence, falsifying evidence, etc... Should expose the one doing it to a sentence up to and including the one they attempted to convict by the malfeasance.
oh but it dioesn't one officer of the court to another they extend "professional courtesy."
the reason these abuses are more prevalent in capital cases has to do with human nature they are high profile emotional cases they get assigned to the most aggressice ambitious folks. both cops and land sharks. and the results are important to them careerwise and for land sharks are often a political springboard. and the public wants SOMEONE punished and really isn't gonna ask too many questions about whether they got the right one. some is systemic, i'm not from texas, only had one miserable experience with the courts there, how do you guys figure/explain that one attorney has 11 folks on death row. a demonstrably poor attorney. we keep allowing this crap to go one we will continue to lose death penalty states. each major fubar can cause a illinoes effect.
oh and the 135 was for folks exonerated and released
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Ah, but the two are inextricable. The process cannot be perfect, therefore the process will occasionally result in an incorrect outcome. Incorrect outcomes are the price we pay for allowing the process.
As is true of any form of punishment, most of which cannot be undone. Again, you have incorrectly claimed that an innocent person has died, in order to kill that particular murderer. Assuming he was truly guilty, this would be incorrect.
Taking away a percentage of a life is not equivalent to taking away all of it.
No one ever claimed it was. Why do you bring this up?
You introduced "the anguish of victims' families" into the discussion. I responded to it. I don't see the strawman.
I spoke of victims' families, merely as a counter-point to your bringing up the families of those wrongfully executed. The point being, that feelings will be offended either way. The straw man is the idea that my side wants the death penalty for revenge, or to make victims' families feel better. Of course, one might also ask why the death penalty is thought to be more vengeful than other forms of punishment.
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most of these bad cases required the cooperation of several people inorder to screw up then cover up the screw up. in the one case the officer that usede the murder as a chance to avenge his friend was so assured that the "impartial investigator" was a brother officer that he had that outrageous phone call and he knew that calls were recorded. when you have prosecutors going on record with "his innocence doen't matter" or "i've convicted less guilty guys than him" when faced with the system failing you have a systemic falure at the most fundemental levels. and i npredict that we are gonna say bye bye to capital punishment as a direct result of that cavalier attitude. its mirrored on this site by some of the posters.
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Is it wrong to say I actually see this from both sides? I'm in agreement that the state having the ability to kill people (including those who may not be guilty of the crimes for which they are charged) is cause for concern. On the other hand, dead murderers can't kill again.
As far as deterrence, I don't think most of the geniuses who commit these crimes plan to get caught, and if they do the long-term consequences of their actions are probably the last thing running through their head while their doing the deed.
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most of these bad cases required the cooperation of several people inorder to screw up then cover up the screw up. in the one case the officer that usede the murder as a chance to avenge his friend was so assured that the "impartial investigator" was a brother officer that he had that outrageous phone call and he knew that calls were recorded. when you have prosecutors going on record with "his innocence doen't matter" or "i've convicted less guilty guys than him" when faced with the system failing you have a systemic falure at the most fundemental levels. and i npredict that we are gonna say bye bye to capital punishment as a direct result of that cavalier attitude. its mirrored on this site by some of the posters.
I guess I am just of the opinion that the form of punishment is not relevant to the fact that those things do need to be found and corrected. My last comment was more directed at political groups seeking the end of the death penalty. I think their time would be better spent publicizing and helping prosecute those cases, or at least working to get some of those guys disbarred. However, I am not sure there is a whole lot worth arguing about.
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Is it wrong to say I actually see this from both sides? I'm in agreement that the state having the ability to kill people (including those who may not be guilty of the crimes for which they are charged) is cause for concern. On the other hand, dead murderers can't kill again.
As far as deterrence, I don't think most of the geniuses who commit these crimes plan to get caught, and if they do the long-term consequences of their actions are probably the last thing running through their head while their doing the deed.
I agree that stupid criminals don't think about consequences, but if there are no consequences, I doubt crime will go down. So how much and how severe do the consequences need to be? I guess we all disagree on that. :)
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i support capital punishment but our nonexistent punishment of those who clearly abuse the system and in fact break the law in so doing will spell the end for it. its incumbent on us to punish the abusers severely to "encourage the others" and "professional courtesy" prevents that. i think a prosecutor who witholds evidence and gets someone wrongfully sentenced should serve that sentence when hes caught. likewise a cop who does the same.
we look the other way and when the death penalty is abolished it will be our fault. so no whining when that happens
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Is it wrong to say I actually see this from both sides? I'm in agreement that the state having the ability to kill people (including those who may not be guilty of the crimes for which they are charged) is cause for concern. On the other hand, dead murderers can't kill again.
Yeah. I'm not exactly working up any tears over the execution of these monsters. I'm all for execution on the spot, by the people who were intended as the victims. I just don't believe that taking life when no life is saved by it is appropriate, considering how much power that puts into the hands of the state.
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Better would be corporal punishment for crimes against persons, theft etc. And the old noose for those crimes that warrant it. But this business of creating special catagories like "... with a firearm" are a political ruse. Robbery is robbery, murder is murder, aggravated assault is aggravated assault, etc etc. Punishment should be decisive and the same whether it is a gun, a knife, a brick or anything else used to do it.
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http://gtr5.com
http://ssunitedstates.org
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Oh, and I think that hiding evidence, falsifying evidence, etc... Should expose the one doing it to a sentence up to and including the one they attempted to convict by the malfeasance.
I agree with that completely. Lying or falsifying evidence in a death penalty case in order to get a conviction amounts to murder in my eyes.
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and yet when it happens the "officers of the court" don't get even a slap on the wrist in most cases.
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and yet when it happens the "officers of the court" don't get even a slap on the wrist in most cases.
I do believe that most of us have lamented that in some form in this thread.
I think we're getting into the 'murder by gun is worse than other types of murder' type territory.
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make the penalty for deliberate malfeasance or withholding exculpatory evidence to where the
'officer of the court" gets the sentence that was formerly the innocent guys . sentence one or two and i predict a big improvement in behavior from the rest. heck have some ticked off former inmate cap one would work too. maybe make em register like sex offenders