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AUSTIN, Texas — A Texas judge will consider this week whether a man the state executed in 2004 for killing his three toddlers in a house fire was actually innocent of the crimes.
If the court exonerates Cameron Todd Willingham he will be the first person officially declared innocent after being executed in the modern era of US capital punishment.
"This is a watershed case that may break some new ground," said Richard Dieter, director of the Death Penalty Information Center.
Good intentioned and all, but this just seems a redundant waste of resources.
All it takes is a single wrongful execution to make the state guilty of murder.
Innocent people will always slip through the cracks and get convicted. It doesn't matter whether we have the death penalty or not, because innocent people will still have their lives and their reputations ruined and many of them will die in jail before they can be exonerated. A lot more people would die if we didn't have a justice system at all.
The best thing we can do is improve the process so that fewer mistakes get made, and prevent the disgusting politicization of the process that prevents proper investigations to occur.
This, of course, is the infamous case where Governor Rick Perry replaced the Forensic Science Board, as they were about to investigate the case, with 3 political appointees, who then shut down the investigation.
This is also why I am against the death penalty. If it were infallible, I would be the first to volunteer to "throw the switch" on the condemned. But the death penalty is not worth the state-sanctioned murder of innocent people. Not even if it were only one. I don't support murder, legal or otherwise, and that is exactly what this execution was - A murder.
Article is here.
"This is a watershed case that may break some new ground," said Richard Dieter, director of the Death Penalty Information Center.
This, of course, is the infamous case where Governor Rick Perry replaced the Forensic Science Board, as they were about to investigate the case, with 3 political appointees, who then shut down the investigation.
This is also why I am against the death penalty. If it were infallible, I would be the first to volunteer to "throw the switch" on the condemned. But the death penalty is not worth the state-sanctioned murder of innocent people. Not even if it were only one. I don't support murder, legal or otherwise, and that is exactly what this execution was - A murder.
Article is here.
Hell of a lot more innocent people die in war. People are always going to die, and there's nothing we can do about it. You can't make an omelette without cracking eggs, and you can't make a society without cracking skulls.
Yes, but a person who's been in jail for 20 years, and is found innocent still has a chance to live, while an executed person doesn't have that chance. IMO, it's not worth the risk of killing just one innocent person to keep the death penalty going.
You don't go to war and purposely kill civilians. They're casualties of war and yes, they make the state just as complicit in the deaths of innocent people but I find intent plays a crucial role.
I guess what I'm trying to say I see your argument as essentially saying 'all loss of innocent human life is equal and all has the same room for error'. I strongly disagree with that view. Likewise, you could argue that the death penalty was not designed to destroy innocent people but I think the fact that we have far more control over the death penalty than over who may die during a war makes a huge difference.
Who the hell dies if a person in is in a cement casket while breathing instead of a wooden one while not?
What the hell's even the point of the death penalty.
Come against why couldn't they prove his innocence before his execution?
That's what everyone harps on when they oppose it (or, one thing they harp on) that it takes *years* and they have to prove and prove again that they're guilty - and it takes lots of money, lots of court tango.
So why didn't they have time or evidence before his execution to prove his innocence during all this court tango and time?
If they're *just now* coming up with evidence after all this time to prove that he's *innocent* I say they're horrible at their jobs (yes - like his lawyer) and everyone should be investigated for an immense lack of give-a-****.
I watched a special on TV where they said that after exonerating an inmate with solid DNA evidence, it still took almost three years to get them out of prison. The reason? The prosecutors don't like to admit mistakes.
Come against why couldn't they prove his innocence before his execution?
Other prisoners. Possibly other people, after the prisoner has served their sentence, or escaped, or otherwise been released.
Some people are too dangerous to exist. The death penalty removes them.
Hell of a lot more innocent people die in war. People are always going to die, and there's nothing we can do about it. You can't make an omelette without cracking eggs, and you can't make a society without cracking skulls.
You know one thing though.
If you gave me the option of death now, or 20 years in prison. I'd choose the death now.
A guy who looks like me I think would be a reciever if you get my drift.
However, give me the choice between 20 years in prison and then death, or life in prison with the possibility of being released, and I'd choose the latter.
Life imprisonment in supermax is both cheaper and reversible if it turns out the conviction was wrong.
When we execute a person wrongly, we make a greivous error that can't really be made right. Not even remotely.
You're both operating under the horribly mistaken assumption that releasing a person from prison "makes amends" for the years of their life that have been stolen and the damage to their reputation and the trauma they've endured. When you convict a person wrongly, no matter what the sentence, you cannot make it right. There is nothing that society can do to make it right. That means, regardless of what criminal sentences we use, the only way to have justice is to make sure our justice system makes as few mistakes as possible in the first place.
Yes, but a person who's been in jail for 20 years, and is found innocent still has a chance to live, while an executed person doesn't have that chance. IMO, it's not worth the risk of killing just one innocent person to keep the death penalty going.
personally, If I was wrongly convicted, I think i would rather be executed quickly than have to spend the next 30-40 years in prison.
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