Texas may have executed an innocent man in 2004

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-tc-nw-texas-execute-0824-082aug25,0,5812073.story

In regards to the bolded section I think there is fat chance of admitting an innocent man was murdered, regardless of the findings (keeping in mind this isn't a full official result yet though)

No doubt. Although I believe that most of the innocent people murdered by the justice system are killed out on the streets by cops, just as God intended.

If true it is a regrettable error.

But that means nothing in regards to whether the death penalty should be applied or not.

The justice system is not required to be perfect. Just as fair as possible.

The man had his day in court. Twice if you count sentencing phase.

Oopsie. I'm sure the governor will happily issue a full pardon.

If it turns out that he was wrongly executed (big if, IMO), the state should be absolutely stripped of its power to execute. The state is not God but assumes His power when they take a life. If they can no longer match God's accuracy in determining guilt when life is at stake, then life must no longer be at stake.

I'm sure there are reason-based arguments resulting in the same conclusion, but this came to mind first.

I hope he gets well soon.

J.

In my mind the fairest practical way to do things is to allow innocent inmates to keep the possibility of proving their innocence.

The state may not be God, but I see no reason to suddenly deprive the state's population of justice.
Insist on something better in the law that makes it as near as possible to being perfect when sending someone to death. But don't take the sentence completely out of the running.

Words fail me.

It would appear that it might not be 'justice' you are depriving them off.

By that post you cannot currently support the death penalty without being heartless and blood thirsty.

The fact that you say there should be something better in the law, when the law already says it should be beyond all reasonable doubt and they get multiple appeals, is hard to understand. Exactly how would you make it better?

Either you are saying that people are being executed under a flawed system which could be better, in which case how can you support execution knowing that innocent people will be killed, or you are saying the system is as good as it can get, which means that you support execution, knowing innocent people may be killed, simply to satisfy a blood lust.

It's both.

And any sentence has an element of vengeance to it.

Dayton, stick any other legal penalty in there and I agree with you.

Death sentence though? Robbing an innocent man of his life can't be justified, and the imperfect justice system is why I'm wary of the DP even though I agree some criminals do deserve death.

Same people who get to decide on any other punishment - the problem you and others have with the DP is it's finality, because most of the same arguments you use against it - who defines 'deserves', there are elements of revenge to it - can be applied to any sentence.

The only argument against the DP is it's finality, because if there's a mistake there is no 'whoops! Our bad!', the state has killed an innocent man.

And in most cases it is, pardon the pun, the killer argument. Mind you, there are cases where the evidence is gold-plated and the little shits should be shuffled off this mortal coil forthwith...

There is no resolution here, there will always be arguments for and against capital punishment. The possibility of killing an innocent person has long been used as reason enough to end the practice.

Yet short of death seems many are content with the current system simply because it allows for undoing a wrong decision. Except that it doesn't. Had Cameron Todd Willingham been sentenced to life instead of death he would be going on his second decade behind bars. And I doubt this much effort would be put into proving his innocence.

I'm sure some will be quick to say "But that's better than death!" perhaps but does that undo decades of wrongful imprisonment? Do the wrongfully convicted get that time back? Of course not. And is "It's better than death" really where we want the set the bar for justice?

This is but another death penalty debate. Nobody will even bother separating the punishment from the trial. Which, if this story is true, is where the mistake was made.

No need to continue, that you see it as murder says it all.

Which could be justifiably punished by death.

when you remove any sentence from the table, you are depriving the people of justice

We are human. We are flawed.
Anything we do will be flawed.
HOWEVER, if someone can show that there was a blatant flaw that caused an innocent person to be put to death, then that flaw should be fixed.

I'm not trying to fulfill a blood lust - I am after justice for all; and sometimes that will mean the death of the perpetrator.

what a ridiculous statement

Okay - from now on, when someone robs you, that person doesn't have to go to jail. Period. After all, s/he might be innocent.
Any murderer gets a pass. They might not really be the murderer.
Hell, we might as well just close down the prisons - you KNOW how many prisoners claim they were innocent and railroaded to the big house by the big bad court system.....


Sarcastic? Yes, I am.

But then I consider your statement just as sarcastic.

Saddam's going to be the new Godwin at this rate...

In the eyes of the law. Same as any sentence.

Want to bet? According to the Lisbon Treaty the DP is permissible across Europe in cases of war, riots and upheaval. So when it's fully ratified we get the DP back!

What the heck?

Who is determining what is "cold blooded murder?" Who is it that is handing out life sentences? I knew some wouldn't be able to separate the determination of guilt and the assigning of punishment.

While that is a good argument, it is not the only one. There is at least one other: The brutality of the punishment. We might all agree that person X deserves to die; that doesn't mean we automatically deserve to be killers. This is quite obvious when we ask why we don't rape rapists.

And of course, because this punishment goes much further in the direction of revenge than justice, it drives bloodlust and sympathy, making it that much harder to remain rational while deciding a case. So it's likely that wrong decisions are more probable when the DP is on the table than when it isn't.

I wish. Then maybe you'd shut up.

At one point in time, the death penalty was punishment for nearly every crime, it no longer is, so lots of people are being denied "justice" by your standard. Then again, so are drug addicts who can no longer be sentenced to rehab instead of prison time.

The issue here is not the validity of the DP in this case, or even others, but the fact that you had key investigators who based their conclusions on what "are nothing more than a collection of personal beliefs that have nothing to do with science-based fire investigation." Because of this, you can have no justice at all, even if you agree with the DP, because you cannot be certain that they have even gotten the fundamentals of the case right. If the fire was arson, how can you be certain that they didn't miss evidence showing that someone else was the arsonist? How is justice served under such circumstances? Justice cannot be served when those entrusted to handing it out are incapable of properly interpreting the evidence.

Of course, if you believe that government doesn't work, then this should serve as proof that your position is the correct one, and as such, the government should be stripped of its rights to enact the DP, because you cannot be certain that it will be properly applied. I do have to wonder, however, if the whole attitude of the government being incapable of getting things right didn't play a part in the fire marshal getting his job to begin with. After all, if you think that the government can only fuck up, then it "doesn't matter" who you put in the position, they're only going to fuck things up. Then again, somebody who has no idea of what they're doing can often times fuck things up far worse than someone who at least has an inkling of what they're supposed to do.