Posted on 05/03/2006 8:33:25 AM PDT by Crackingham
Four of the nation's top arson experts have concluded that the state of Texas executed a man in 2004 based on scientifically invalid evidence, and on Tuesday they called for an official reinvestigation of the case. In their report, the experts, assembled by the Innocence Project, a non-profit organization responsible for scores of exonerations, concluded that the conviction and 2004 execution of Cameron Todd Willingham for the arson-murders of his three daughters were based on interpretations by fire investigators that have been scientifically disproved.
"The whole system has broken down," Barry Scheck, co-founder and director of the Innocence Project, said at a news conference at the state Capitol in Austin. "It's time to find out whether Texas has executed an innocent man."
The experts were asked to perform an independent review of the evidence after an investigation by the Tribune that showed Willingham had been found guilty on arson theories that have been repudiated by scientific advances. In fact, many of the theories were simply lore that had been handed down by generations of arson investigators who relied on what they were told.
The report's conclusions match the findings of the Tribune, published in December 2004. The newspaper began investigating the Willingham case following an October 2004 series, "Forensics Under the Microscope," which examined the use of forensics in the courtroom, including the continued use of disproved arson theories to obtain convictions.
In strong language harshly critical of the investigation of the 1991 fire in Corsicana, southeast of Dallas, the report said evidence examined in the Willingham case and "relied upon by fire investigators" was the type of evidence "routinely created by accidental fires."
(Excerpt) Read more at chicagotribune.com ...
One of my favorite lines from Godfather, "Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer".
From what I have read about Wilingham, I would say that he falls in the half a brain or less category.
The American criminal justice system is broken. Since the reinstatement of the death penalty in the 1970s, 123 people have been exonerated from death row in 25 states – roughly one for every eight executed. In fact, the most comprehensive study of capital trials ever conducted found that nearly seven of every 10 death sentences handed down by state courts from 1973 to 1995 were overturned due to "serious, reversible error," including egregiously incompetent defense counsel, suppression of exculpatory evidence, false confessions, racial manipulation of the jury, snitch and accomplice testimony, and faulty jury instructions.
http://www.thejusticeproject.org/problem/
In June of 1993, Kirk Bloodsworth's case became the first capital conviction in the United States to be overturned as a result of DNA testing. Bloodsworth, of Cambridge, Maryland, served almost ten years in prison, including two on death row, for the rape and murder of nine-year-old Dawn Hamilton. After years of fighting for a DNA test, evidence from the crime scene was sent to a lab for testing. Final reports from state and federal labs concluded that Bloodsworth's DNA did not match any of the evidence received for testing. On September 5, 2003, the Maryland State's Attorney announced that a DNA match had been made in the nearly 20-year-old case. Another man has been convicted and sentenced in the murder for which Bloodsworth was wrongfully convicted.
After spending more than 10 years on Illinois' death row, Rolando Cruz and Alejandro Hernandez were finally cleared of a crime that another man had confessed to committing a decade earlier. On November 3, 1995, on the basis of DNA evidence, recanted testimony, and lack of any other substantial evidence against him, a circuit judge acquitted Cruz. Hernandez's case was later dismissed on the same grounds. In his ruling, the judge held that the 10-year legal odyssey of both men defied "common sense."
Above are a few very close cases of innocent men almost being executed. How many were executed that really were innocent? Your guess is as good as mine, but the number is not zero. The justice system in this country or anywhere else is not infallible.
Same link as above.
There is more. Go look for it yourself, you lazy bum.
The justice system works when those wrongfully convicted are freed from prison. But, to date, there has not been one name advanced of a wrongfully executed person.
I'm not the one who said there were wrongfully executed people. If you're sure there are, why can't you produce a name?
It probably already has. But the death penalty is still an appropriate sentence for someone found guilty of murder by a jury of his/her peers.
Oh come on. Got any proof of that statement?
Yeah, right.
Just one innocent death kills the death penalty as far as I'm concerned. I'm pro-life/anti-death penalty for this very reason. Juries are not infallible. Especially with DNA advancements.
Here in Wisconsin, Project Innocence got a convicted rapist released from prison and two years later he kidnapped, tortured, raped, murdered, dismembered and BURNED a young woman.
Guys like Dahmer, and Geoghan (a serial killer and a clerical sexual abuser) were dealt prison justice. Unless Moussaoui is put in solitary confinement at Super-Max in Colorado, he will likely experience the same.
Bingo!
I'm not in a position to know with certainty which individuals may have been completely innocent. I simply accept that it is a very real probability. I would be surprised if not a single one of the black men executed in the segrationist-era South was not innocent. Framing of blacks by politicians and law enforcement authorities was rampant, and juries were often eager to go along with it. The political-social environment which produced, to name a famous case, Powell v. Alabama http://www.infoplease.com/us/supreme-court/cases/ar30.html almost certainly resulted in death penalites being carried out on some innocent men. Of course, the authorities often didn't bother with formalities like trials in that era, and just organized lynchings instead.
The Innocence Project has been around since 1992 and this guy wasn't sentenced until 1993.
They couldn't figure out he was innocent in the 11 years prior to his execution.
And what about this guy bragging to other inmates about setting the fire? Was this disproved by these experts as well?
Even if those ten guilty kill ten more innocents? How about 100? 1000? What if I propose it is better to let everyone who does not have their crime on video tape with 10 witnesses go free, lest we make a judicial error against an innocent with 10 lying enemies be jailed? The error you make is that it's not an either/or situation.
The purpose of a trial is to separate the guilty from the innocent. If you can think up a more perfect method to do this, great. But the hard truth is that it is impossible to guarantee the protection of innocent people 100%, just as collateral casualties and friendly fire cannot be 100% eliminated from war. This does not mean we should eliminate just punishment from those that are guilty to every reasonable measure.
So, you would paralyze valid societal actions for fear of making a rare error? Even if it ends up costing more innocents their life due to your inaction? If Clarence Ray Allen had been executed for the first murder he committed, three more innocents would be alive today.
Juries are not infallible. Especially with DNA advancements.
And if the DNA proof is conclusive? If the killer confesses? If the murder was done on live TV, by an assassin?
No, it's not. For every example you can dig up of an authenticated innocent person being executed in the US since the death penalty was reinstated, I'll match you with 100 cases of a freed accused murderer who subsequently killed or had another person killed.
Nobody is saying that. that's why we have the "reasonable doubt" standard. I agree with that standard. But that means that when reasonable doubt is introduced into a case where the defendant "probably' did the crime, if that doubt isn't addressed in the trial, the defendant must be found not guilty.
If you truly believe in that standard, then you have to have faith in the flip side: that, when a jury finds NO reasonable doubt, a punishment may be justly inflicted, including the death penalty. If you cannot trust the jury to judge one way, you cannot trust them the other. Without that the present system is unsupportable.
Truly, I don't recall. Several respondants to me on this thread have said otherwise; consider it a general response to those "if one innocent life is spared" types.
Keep them locked up. Look around, the death penalty certainly hasn't stopped a single murder that I know of. Put yourself in the place of the poor smuck that goes to the gas chamber for nothing. How do you know how rare it is?
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