DNA test shows Texas/Geo W. Bush probably executed an innocent man

[Undertoad]

http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/dna...+Beltway+|+OTB)

Claude Jones always claimed that he wasn’t the man who walked into an East Texas liquor store in 1989 and shot the owner. He professed his innocence right up until the moment he was strapped to a gurney in the Texas execution chamber and put to death on Dec. 7, 2000. His murder conviction was based on a single piece of forensic evidence recovered from the crime scene—a strand of hair—that prosecutors claimed belonged to Jones.

But DNA tests completed this week at the request of the Observer and the New York-based Innocence Project show the hair didn’t belong to Jones after all. The day before his death in December 2000, Jones asked for a stay of execution so the strand of hair could be submitted for DNA testing. He was denied by then-Gov. George W. Bush.

A decade later, the results of DNA testing not only undermine the evidence that convicted Jones, but raise the possibility that Texas executed an innocent man.

Way to go TX/W.

[glatt]

"Oh well. He was probably guilty of something else anyway" [/Bush thought bubble]

[Clodfobble]

That's funny. I thought this was going to be about a different, currently high-profile case in which Texas almost certainly executed the wrong man.


From a moral standpoint, I don't have a problem executing the guilty. Not in the slightest. But I'm against the death penalty, not only because it leaves room for horrendous errors like these, but because it ends up costing a bajillion times more than just locking them away for life with no chance for parole.

[Spexxvet]

Originally Posted by Clodfobble

From a moral standpoint, I don't have a problem executing the guilty. Not in the slightest. But I'm against the death penalty, not only because it leaves room for horrendous errors like these, but because it ends up costing a bajillion times more than just locking them away for life with no chance for parole.

Bingo! We have a winner!

[xoxoxoBruce]

Geo W. Bush probably executed an innocent man.

One of millions.

...but because it ends up costing a bajillion times more than just locking them away for life with no chance for parole.

That's 'cause them bleeding heart liberals drags it out. Now if they strung 'em up from the nearest tree when they caught 'em... and used a hemp rope... we could spend those bajillions on partyin'.

[HungLikeJesus]

Originally Posted by Clodfobble

... From a moral standpoint, I don't have a problem executing the guilty. Not in the slightest. But I'm against the death penalty, not only because it leaves room for horrendous errors like these, but because it ends up costing a bajillion times more than just locking them away for life with no chance for parole.

But that's a bajillion dollars injected into the local economy.

Plus, there's this:

Claude Jones was no saint. Born in Houston in 1940, he was arrested numerous times and spent three stints in prison on robbery, assault and theft charges. While serving an eight-year sentence in a Kansas prison, Jones allegedly doused another inmate with lighter fluid and set him on fire. But Jones wasn’t executed for his previous crimes. He was put to death for what allegedly happened on the afternoon of Nov. 14, 1989.


Jones and an accomplice named Kerry Daniel Dixon pulled into Zell’s liquor store in the East Texas town of Point Blank, about 80 miles northeast of Houston. They had a .357 magnum revolver given to them by a third man, Timothy Jordan.


Either Jones or Dixon remained in the pickup truck, while the other went inside and shot the store’s owner, 44-year-old Allen Hilzendager, three times and made off with several hundred dollars from the cash register.

[Clodfobble]

Originally Posted by HungLikeJesus

But that's a bajillion dollars injected into the local economy.

Nah, it goes to lawyers, and lawyers generally fall into the category of people rich enough to save rather than spend. Either the government could use the money for something better, in which case it would still be an injection into the local economy, or the taxpayers would get to keep it in the first place, most of which would fall into middle-to-lower income brackets and they'd go spend it on groceries, also stimulating the economy.

[xoxoxoBruce]

But the locals would send most of it out of the country via walmart, whereas the lawyer might invest the extra in the stock market. who would send it to tax havens