"the death penalty in the United States is a moral and practical failure"

[DMX7]

I fully support the death penalty. Given the number of people who have been executed, has even one person been proven innocent that was executed?

[Winehole23]

They don't hold trials for folks who were already executed, but Todd Willingham might be a good candidate. The prosecutor likely faked do ents, hid evidence favorable to the defendant and suborned perjury. And that's totally disregarding the fact that the forensics linking Todd Willingham to the death of his own children was determined to be pseudoscientific and basically folklorical by a panel of scientists after the fact. Rick Perry knew most of this and refused to pardon Willingham or commute his sentence..

[Winehole23]

The Texas CCA recently stayed Rodney Reed's execution for the killing of Stacey S es. Whether his innocence can be established is neither here nor there...actual innocence is no basis to contest execution post-conviction: in the USA one has to prove the trial was unfair.

[Winehole23]

these guys came very close:

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_a..._spending.html

[Winehole23]

That same Scalia, in an unrelated case before the Supreme Court 20 years ago, name-checked McCollum as the reason to continue to impose the death penalty. In that case, Callins v. Collins, Justice Harry Blackmun famously announced in dissent that he would no longer “tinker with the machinery of death” and would never again vote for the death penalty in any case. As Blackmun put it at the time: “The problem is that the inevitability of factual, legal and moral error gives us a system that we know must wrongly kill some defendants, a system that fails to deliver the fair, consistent and reliable sentences of death required by the Cons ution.”

same

[Winehole23]

As of December 10, 2014 there have been 150 exonerations in 26 different States.

http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/innocence

[CosmicCowboy]

Texas Bar seeks punishment for prosecutor in death penalty conviction

The State Bar of Texas has sought punishment for the prosecutor in a 1992 trial who is suspected of withholding evidence that could have cleared a man convicted of setting a fire that killed his three daughters and was later executed.

Death penalty opponents have said Texas may have executed an innocent man when it sent Cameron Todd Willingham to the death chamber in 2004 after he was convicted of murder in the 1991 house fire, largely on the testimony of a prison informant who told a jury that Willingham had confessed to the crime.

The Texas Bar Association filed a pe ion this month with a district court to discipline the prosecutor in the case, John Jackson, who could be disbarred.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/...e=domesticNews

"could be disbarred"? he committed murder, so execute him

For once, I agree with Boutons. Punishment IS a deterrent to crime. Give this lying prick the needle as an example to other prosecutors to play by the rules.

[spursncowboys]

It is a failure! We need to add child molesters to the kill list!

[boutons_deux]

"Punishment IS a deterrent to crime."

I didn't say that, and obviously it is untrue, but myths and lies are all you right-wingers live by and for.

[Blake]

I fully support the death penalty. Given the number of people who have been executed, has even one person been proven innocent that was executed?

Can't tell if srs...

[TDMVPDPOY]

doesnt matter how many u kill, t heres still plenty of them clowns in prison or in public...

waiting for darwins theory to take effect is very slow, the man needs to outperform darwins theory

[boutons_deux]

Prosecutor Pens Apology to Innocent Man He Sent to Prison for 30 Years: ‘I Wasn’t Interested in Justice’

http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/prosecutor-pens-apology-innocent-man-he-sent-prison-30-years-i-wasnt-interested

[Winehole23]

In a major turn in one of the country’s most-noted death penalty cases, the State Bar of Texas has filed a formal accusation of misconduct against the county prosecutor who convicted Cameron Todd Willingham, a Texas man executed in 2004 for the arson murder of his three young daughters.


Following a preliminary inquiry that began last summer, the bar this month filed a disciplinary pe ion in Navarro County District Court accusing the former prosecutor, John H. Jackson, of obstruction of justice, making false statements and concealing evidence favorable to Willingham’s defense.


“Before, during, and after the 1992 trial, [Jackson] knew of the existence of evidence that tended to negate the guilt of Willingham and failed to disclose that evidence to defense counsel,” the bar investigators charged.
The bar action was filed March 5 without any public announcement. It accuses Jackson of having intervened repeatedly to help a jailhouse informant, Johnny E. Webb, in return for his testimony that Willingham confessed the murders to him while they were both jailed in Corsicana, the Navarro County seat.


Webb has since recanted that testimony. In a series of recent interviews, he told the Marshall Project that Jackson coerced him to lie, threatening a long prison term for a robbery to which Webb ultimately pleaded guilty, but promising to reduce his sentence if he testified against Willingham.


Jackson has repeatedly denied that he made any pretrial agreement with Webb in exchange for his testimony. The former prosecutor acknowledged that he and others made extraordinary efforts to help Webb, but said they were motivated only by concern for a witness who had been threatened by other prisoners because of his testimony.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politi...8ff_story.html

[Winehole23]

SCOTUS slaps Texas, CCA:

For more than three decades, Moore fought his appeals, once coming within hours of execution. Then, in 2017, the Supreme Court handed down a groundbreaking decision, in a 5-3 ruling determining that Texas had been, for years, not properly measuring intellectual disability in cases like Moore's. The ruling booted Moore's claims back to a lower court, where prosecutors switched course and asked for a life sentence.


But - even though the district attorney's office agreed to the more lenient outcome - the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals didn't, handing down a split decision Moore's lawyers condemned as an "outlier" and "inconsistent" with the higher court.


Last month, Moore's legal team appealed that ruling up to the Supreme Court again, asking the justices to yet again examine the state's standards for intellectual disability, but also asking the high court to consider whether an execution should count as uncons utional if both sides agree that it is.
"As far as counsel is aware, this Court never has permitted an execution when both the prosecutor and the defendant agree that the defendant is intellectually disabled and ineligible for execution," defense attorney Cliff Sloan and Pat McCann wrote in their Supreme Court filing. "For good reason."

https://www.chron.com/news/houston-t...p-13373197.php

[boutons_deux]

TX and other slave states imprisoning, executing blacks who were actually mentally incompetent but ruled competent was just another was of re-enslaving blacks (13th Amendment), or "racially cleansing" them.

[Winehole23]

The CCA and Texas are out of line. This is the second remand on this case -- the prosecutor and the defense agree the defendant isn't mentally competent, and the CCA, for some reason, hasn't followed the relevant SCOTUS ruling.

[boutons_deux]

CCA, for some reason, hasn't followed the relevant SCOTUS ruling.

how about "slave state still disrespecting, warring with the Feds"

(the Republic of) Texas is a long, long way from DC in many Texian heads.

[Winehole23]

how about "slave state still disrespecting, warring with the Feds"

(the Republic of) Texas is a long, long way from DC in many Texian heads.

Doesn't begin to cover it. 30 states still have the death penalty, over-incarceration isn't peculiar to former slave states.

Swing and a miss.

[boutons_deux]

Doesn't begin to cover it. 30 states still have the death penalty, over-incarceration isn't peculiar to former slave states.

Swing and a miss.

Whiney, I addressed TX alone. Are those other 30 states defying SCOTUS?

[Winehole23]

your argument is still weak. muh confederacy doesn't explain the CCA's reasoning or Texas's tuff on crime posturing.

[boutons_deux]

your argument is still weak. muh confederacy doesn't explain the CCA's reasoning or Texas's tuff on crime posturing.

reasoning is the public bull , the real stuff remains private, secret

[Winehole23]

ah, yes, so you can infer anything you want, that's brilliant.

[CosmicCowboy]

TX and other slave states imprisoning, executing blacks who were actually mentally incompetent but ruled competent was just another was of re-enslaving blacks (13th Amendment), or "racially cleansing" them.

Hard to enslave them when you deaded them.

They would be a lot more productive alive.

[Winehole23]

Arkansas murdered the wrong man.

[Winehole23]

more on the practical failure. Oklahoma botched the execution of Clayton Lockett:

http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/state...7a43b2370.html

SCOTUS green-lighted another botched OK execution.