pushing me ever closer to agreeing that we should ban the death penalty…
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/radleybal…
A disturbing new report casts doubt on a recent execution in Texas.
In a withering critique, a nationally known fire scientist has told a state commission on forensics that Texas fire investigators had no basis to rule a deadly house fire was an arson — a finding that led to the murder conviction and execution of Cameron Todd Willingham.
The finding comes in the first state-sanctioned review of an execution in Texas, home to the country’s busiest death chamber. If the commission reaches the same conclusion, it could lead to the first-ever declaration by an official state body that an inmate was wrongly executed.
Indeed, the report concludes there was no evidence to determine that the December 1991 fire was even set, and it leaves open the possibility the blaze that killed three children was an accident and there was no crime at all — the same findings found in a Chicago Tribune investigation of the case published in December 2004.
Willingham, the father of those children, was executed in February 2004. He protested his innocence to the end…
Among Beyler’s key findings: that investigators failed to examine all of the electrical outlets and appliances in the Willinghams’ house in the small Texas town of Corsicana, did not consider other potential causes for the fire, came to conclusions that contradicted witnesses at the scene, and wrongly concluded Willingham’s injuries could not have been caused as he said they were.
The state fire marshal on the case, Beyler concluded in his report, had “limited understanding” of fire science. The fire marshal “seems to be wholly without any realistic understanding of fires and how fire injuries are created,” he wrote . The marshal’s findings, he added, “are nothing more than a collection of personal beliefs that have nothing to do with science-based fire investigation.”
Beyler is the ninth forensic arson specialist to review the case. The other eight came to similar conclusions…
Yow.
If we can’t trust the government to enforce the speed limit or issue liquor licenses fairly, how can we trust it to kill citizens fairly ?
August 28th, 2009 at 4:31 am
The death penalty is, unlike most bills signed into law, irreversible.
August 28th, 2009 at 10:24 am
How about this: in order to invoke the death penalty, the primary government personel involved in the prosecution (the lead DA, the primary investigator, etc) must be so sure of the facts that they must be willing to face the consequences of being wrong. In this case above, the incompetant fire marshal would be charged with involuntary manslaughter for issuing incorrect testimony that lead to the death of an apparently innocent man.
If they aren’t sure enough to risk that, then they should not request the death penalty.
August 28th, 2009 at 11:26 am
I like this idea.
August 28th, 2009 at 4:15 pm
I agree with TPRJones.
In fact, one of the local Dallas-area talk radio shows was talking about this yesterday evening. His position was that you shouldn’t put someone on death row without incontrovertible evidence.
He had an example, too: James Broadnax, who killed two people outside a recording studio, then gave *4* separate TV interviews where he bragged about it. Happily, his trial ended last week, and he got the death penalty on two counts of capital murder. He proceeded to laugh in the face of the mother of one of the victims.
August 29th, 2009 at 1:46 am
It simply cannot be the standard, “that unless something works perfectly, it shouldn’t be done at all.”
But I’ll be happy to do without the death penalty, if, in return, there is on and only one sentence for each crime; and there are no paroles, no furloughs, no sentence reductions, no judges ordering releases for unconstitutional overcrowding, etc.
Important note: no punishment is reversible. Try reversing a mistaken fifty-year imprisonment. How about thirty? twenty? one? Guess we can’t imprison anyone, either.
August 29th, 2009 at 11:03 pm
Guess we can’t imprison anyone, either.
Works for me.