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Woman with 70 IQ set for Va. execution

Discussion in 'Sports and News' started by Football_Bat, Sep 23, 2010.

  1. kingcreole

    kingcreole Active Member

    It's also inhumane when the system screws up and executes a person later found to be completely innocent. And rest assured, the system has screwed up plenty.
     
  2. deskslave

    deskslave Active Member

    The most heinous criminals have an underlying brain wiring so fundamentally different from that of "normal" people that this is meaningless. We cannot possibly understand how their brain operates, any more than we can understand how someone can like a food that we hate.

    By the way, the guys who actually did the killing in this case got life. So, you know, fairness and all.
     
  3. deskslave

    deskslave Active Member

    And then of course, there's this, where the state of Georgia is going to great lengths to keep someone from killing himself so that he survives until his execution. It's not really relevant, but it's funny in that black copy editor style of humor.

    http://www.ajc.com/news/atlanta/suicidal-death-row-inmate-619810.html
     
  4. playthrough

    playthrough Moderator Staff Member

    Don't have a link, but the latest Texas Monthly has a long story about a guy on death row for a murder he had no involvement in. Absolutely infuriating.
     
  5. Piotr Rasputin

    Piotr Rasputin New Member

    This site has information on people who have been convicted and later had the conviction overturned, leading to their release from death row.

    http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/

    But I wonder how often an innocent person has been executed. I have no doubt the numbers behind kingcreole's assertion are quite daunting, since I hear this so often. But if anyone happens to provide some statistics beyond the usual anecdotes, that would be appreciated.
     
  6. cyclingwriter

    cyclingwriter Active Member

    As a former cops reporter, there is a much different feel to deathrow than there is to general population. It is eerily quiet. They just sit there and look out the bars. Most are trying to find a way out. Some admit they were wrong and are looking forward to it. Some of them look shit scared because they are/think they are innocent. Some of them look like pure evil and know it.
     
  7. Mizzougrad96

    Mizzougrad96 Active Member

    That was basically the way he described it. They're more repentant and they accept what is going to happen to them. Obviously, not all of them, but in general.
     
  8. RickStain

    RickStain Well-Known Member

    The list of people who have been exonerated on death row is way too long. But I'll admit, I've had pro-capital punishment people challenge me to produce a list of people conclusively exonerated after execution in the United States in the last few decades. There don't appear to be any.
     
  9. Piotr Rasputin

    Piotr Rasputin New Member

    I'm not necessarily pro-capital punishment (though I had little sympathy for the woman who drowned her children deliberately in that discussion here a few years ago). I don't see it as a deterrent, but rather as a punishment that the law allows for, like prison terms. If it were abolished tomorrow, I wouldn't mind. If it stayed on the books forever, I wouldn't mind. I'm sure that similar to people who support a military action or a violent sport until their own child is hurt, I would feel differently if it affected me personally . . .

    There are probably many reasons why it's tough to find numbers regarding executions of innocent people, chief among them possibly being the fact that there aren't a lot of post-death investigations. To me, that means while the point that "justice" can screw up remains, we shouldn't act like there's this overwhelming list of wrongly executed people, as kingcreole has said twice in this thread.

    Better to stick to the fact that there are eyebrow-raising statistics of death row inmates whose convictions were overturned.
     
  10. deskslave

    deskslave Active Member

    I mean, it would depend on your definition of "conclusive," but one obstacle is sure to be that with limited resources, it doesn't make sense to devote effort to something that can't be undone.

    Another would be that I'm pretty sure, other than a posthumous pardon, that it's impossible to legally clear someone after they've been executed. Like, there's no provision in the law for it. Though I could be wrong on that.
     
  11. Small Town Guy

    Small Town Guy Well-Known Member

    The Cameron Todd Willingham case was on its way to being the first time the state admitted executing an innocent person...until politics got involved with the commission officially investigating the case. But they are still investigating, so hopefully a decision comes eventually.

    Again, though, numerous newspaper stories - from Dallas and Chicago, in particular - and the New Yorker piece have documented why it's almost certain he was innocent.
     
  12. expendable

    expendable Well-Known Member

    Here's one:

    Frank: Hey! The missing evidence in the Kelner case! My God, he really was innocent!
    Ed: He went to the chair two years ago, Frank.
    Frank: Well, uh...
     
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