Kidnapped girl found 18 years later

[jinx]

It varies by state Dana. Here's Oklahoma's process though (came up first in google)

[DanaC]

Oh heck, this is worrying:

All discoverable mistakes must be presented in this appeal--they cannot be brought up at a later step in the appeal process, even if they hadn’t been discovered at the time of the direct appeal. It’s a "now or never" situation.

Y'know. I'm not sure which I find more worrying: the idea of a judge making the sentencing decisions, or the idea of a jury making the decision ( I realise the jury makes a recommendation, but it would appear the judge's decision is a formality based on that recommendation). Especially if the appeals proces is as difficult as it would appear from this page. I realise it's a partisan reading of the system, but the 'routine' dismissing of applications for appeal at each of the different stages that this describes has a horrible ring of truth to it. Fits with the attitudes my own system had towards the Birmingham Six for most of their sentence. It's all very well people saying they have many chances to appeal, but if it's not acually given much of a hearing, or is routinely dismissed then it's not much of a safeguard.

I know from my own country's use of an appeals process in asylum decisions how fraught that can be and hhow easily barriers can be placed on the process. For example: a second appeal on an asylum decision can only be brought if 'new' evidence is available. Which means that evidence that has been seen and summarily and unfairly/disingenuously dismissed cannot be reviewed. Prior to that law being passed, it was very common for asylum cases to fall at the first and second hearings and pass on the third, when it was heard at a higher level. Which suggests that the first and second hearings were often faulty decisions.

Actually I should fact check that. It may be that the first appeal now requires 'new evidence' I know that was in the pipeline. Particularly concerning after a parliamentary commission found that the Home Office asylum system (which deals with the initial hearings) had 'a kafkaesque culture of disbelief'. So when good evidence is routinely dismissed and has to go through two and three appeals to be taken seriously, our response was to make it virtually impossible to get to that second and third appeal and allow the initial poor reading of the evidence to stand.

Fuck. Now I've drifted into a topic I really feel angry about. I know so many people who've been unfairly denied asylum, and whose cases have been dismissed despite very clear physical evidence of torture and brutality. I know several (one of whom was a volunteer who worked with mum) who've been refused and deported back to their country of origin only to vanish suspected of being imprisoned or killed; two we actually know were killed.

So...I don't trust 'appeals systems' as a true safeguard against miscarriages of justice. I know only too well how they can be skewed against actual usefulness.

[jinx]

Why?

[lookout123]

Present me with the facts of a case where an innocent person was executed. Together we can go through the details on how the system failed and you can change my viewpoint.

[DanaC]

Sorry Jinx, I went back and added some stuff. Didn;t think anyone had posted in the meantime, and got carried away as I got onto a subject that's a bit of a sore one for me

[jinx]

Here's Alabama's process. (pdf)

[DanaC]

Originally Posted by lookout123

Present me with the facts of a case where an innocent person was executed. Together we can go through the details on how the system failed and you can change my viewpoint.

Unfortunately that's not all that likely. How many lawyers are going to fight to get a conviction overturned posthumously? Surely their main concern wold be to work on cases where they might have a chance of getting a conviction overturned before the sentence of death is carried out.

Interestingly, on the wiki page that shows overturned convictions where the death penalty has been passed, there are no posthumous examples given for the USA. There are however, a number of cases where the death penalty has already been commuted and the person is serving a life sentence. One of these was overturned 9 years after he was convicted when new DNA evidence which was not available at the time of his conviction showed he coulld not have committed the crime. Had his sentence not been commuted, there is a good possibility he;d already have been executed by the time DNA evidence was available. There are several such cases of people whose sentence had previously been commuted to life sentences and then later were cleared by new evidence.

It wuold be interesting to find out how many appeals are either sought or granted after execution has been carried out.

What I can point you to is a few examples of convictions where the death penalty has been carried out and where serious doubts as to the safety of the convictions have been raised. The site is partisan, but some of the testimonial evidence from people involved in the trials is fairly disturbing. Including jury members and witnesses for the prosecution:

http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/exec...sibly-innocent

Here's one example from the list:

Ruben Cantu Texas Convicted: 1985, Executed: 1993
A two-part investigative series by the Houston Chronicle casts serious doubt on the guilt of a Texas man who was executed in 1993. Ruben Cantu had persistently proclaimed his innocence and was only 17 when he was charged with capital murder for the shooting death of a San Antonio man during an attempted robbery. Now, the prosecutor and the jury forewoman have expressed doubts about the case. Moreover, both a key eyewitness in the state's case against Cantu and Cantu's co-defendant have come forward to say that Texas executed an innocent man.



Juan Moreno, who was wounded during the attempted robbery and was a key eyewitness in the case against Cantu, now says that it was not Cantu who shot him and that he only identified Cantu as the shooter because he felt pressured and was afraid of the authorities. Moreno said that he twice told police that Cantu was not his assailant, but that the authorities continued to pressure him to identify Cantu as the shooter after Cantu was involved in an unrelated wounding of a police officer. "The police were sure it was (Cantu) because he had hurt a police officer. They told me they were certain it was him, and that's why I testified. . . . That was bad to blame someone that was not there," Moreno told the Chronicle.

In addition, David Garza, Cantu's co-defendant during his 1985 trial, recently signed a sworn affidavit saying that he allowed Cantu to be accused and executed even though he wasn't with him on the night of the killing. Garza stated, "Part of me died when he died. You've got a 17-year-old who went to his grave for something he did not do. Texas murdered an innocent person."

Sam D. Millsap, Jr., the Bexar County District Attorney who charged Cantu with capital murder, said he never should have sought the death penalty in a case based on testimony from an eyewitness who identified a suspect only after police showed him Cantu's photo three seperate times.

Miriam Ward, forewoman of the jury that convicted Cantu, said the jury's decision was the best they could do based on the information presented during the trial. She noted, "With a little extra work, a little extra effort, maybe we'd have gotten the right information. The bottom line is, an innocent person was put to death for it. We all have our finger in that." (Houston Chronicle, November 20 & 21, 2005 and Associated Press, November 21, 2005).

[jinx]

Originally Posted by DanaC

Oh heck, this is worrying:
Y'know. I'm not sure which I find more worrying: the idea of a judge making the sentencing decisions, or the idea of a jury making the decision
...
So...I don't trust 'appeals systems' as a true safeguard against miscarriages of justice. I know only too well how they can be skewed against actual usefulness.

So the judge, jury, and the appeals process are crap. What then? Just take the accused's word for it... or just don't bother having laws at all?

[DanaC]

*chuckles* no. But don't have an irreversable sentence. I am not arguing against laws. I am arguing against capital punishment. Political situations change. Views on race and class change. Standards of evidence change, as do types of evidence as new techniques are developed.

Georgia Board to Pardon Woman 60 Years After Her Execution - The Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles has announced that it will issue a formal pardon this month for Lena Baker (pictured), the only woman executed in the state during the 20th century. The document, signed by all five of the current board members, will note that the parole board's 1945 decision to deny Baker clemency and allow her execution was "a grievous error, as this case called out for mercy." Baker, an African American, was executed for the murder of Ernest Knight, a white man who hired her . Baker was tried, convicted, and sentenced to die in one day by an all-white, all-male jury. Baker claimed she shot Knight in self-defense after he locked her in his gristmill and threatened her with a metal pipe. The pardon notes that Baker "could have been charged with voluntary manslaughter, rather than murder, for the death of E.B. Knight." The average sentence for voluntary manslaughter is 15 years in prison. Baker's picture and her last words are currently displayed near the retired electric chair at a museum at Georgia State Prison in Reidsville. (Atlanta Journal-Constitution, August 16, 2005).

Since this woman's conviction and execution times have changed. Likewise in the period that the Birmingham Six were convicted in Britain, English attitudes towards the Irish changed. Their conviction didn't survive that change in racial attitudes.

The man who was cleared of a crime 9 years after he was convicted because of new DNA evidence was released. The new evidence was because of scientific advances during that 9 year period.

The point I was making about appeals, is that they are not a gurantee that someone wrongly convicted will get a fairer hearing. Nor are they a guarantee that they won;t. There are many deathrow convicts whose cases are heard and whose convictions are overturned on appeal. But...we don;t know how many people are wrongly executed. So no, I am not arguing against having laws. Nor am I saying that removing the death penalty removes the potential for miscarriages of justice: clearly it doesnt. There will no doubt be people who will unfairly serve long sentences for crimes they did not commit. People who fall through the gaps in the system: all justice systems are flawed, because all rely on us, flawed human beings. But where miscarriages are discovered the wrongly imprisoned can be released, the wrongly executed cannot be revived. And, we are less likely to discover the miscarriage once the victim of that miscarriage is executed. Whilst they remain alive and incarcerated there is an impetus for the legal system to review new evidence as and when it arises, or as and when the political winds change direction.

[jinx]

Ya, that's a good argument Dana...

Originally Posted by lookout123

Present me with the facts of a case where an innocent person was executed. Together we can go through the details on how the system failed and you can change my viewpoint.

A highly emotional case in Texas where a man was convicted of intentionally setting his house on fire with his three young kids inside:

Cameron Todd Willingham was executed in 2004 for starting a house fire in Corsicana 13 years earlier that killed his three young daughters. From the time of his arrest until a lethal injection ended his life on a prison gurney in Huntsville, Willingham maintained his innocence, refusing to enter a guilty plea at trial in exchange for a life sentence.

At the time of his state-inflicted death, it appeared Willingham's fate was to be remembered as a monster who burned his children alive for no conceivable motive. With the release of a report by renowned arson expert Craig Beyler, commissioned by the Texas Forensic Science Commission, history may hold him in a very different light: the first person executed since capital punishment resumed in the United States in 1974 who was posthumously proven innocent.

Beyler's report doesn't flatly say that, but it demolishes the findings by arson investigators that the fire was deliberately set. According to Beyler, they had “poor understanding of fire science” and misread burn patterns....

...Shortly before his execution, a well-known arson investigator, Gerald Hurst, examined the evidence that led to Willingham's conviction and came to the conclusion that the original finding of arson was wrong. All of the indications cited as proof of a deliberate fire could have been caused by a so-called flashover, when intense heat triggers flame bursts that can mimic arson.

Hurst's report was submitted as part of last-minute appeals to the state Board of Pardons and Paroles and Gov. Rick Perry to stay Willingham's execution. The appeals were denied....

...Whether or not it officially acknowledges that Willingham was wrongfully executed, the members of the Forensic Science Commission deserve thanks for their willingness to launch a thorough and impartial investigation. Since there are no do-overs where capital punishment is involved, the commission's next step should be formulating recommendations to upgrade and standardize forensic investigations and testing to prevent future miscarriages of justice.

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/...l/6598054.html

Convicted and sentenced to death after a two-day trial....no motive was ever presented by the prosecution.

Additional evidence at the time of his executive that suggested the initial arson investigation was flawed.

And now, more compelling evidence of a wrongful conviction. At the very least, serious doubt.

You can NEVER undue a wrongful execution. The system failed.

A system based on punishing the worst of the worst should never fail those similarly charged but where the facts are in doubt from the very start.

Putting the morality of the death penalty aside with the understanding that morality is subjective, a system of justice should never be based on the worst case but rather on preventing the miscarriage of justice for any case.

[Flint]

I would like to hear the arguments FOR the death penalty.

Considering that we all damn well know that any human institution is prone to glitches and imperfections, what is the payoff that society receives in exchange for granting our government the power to take a human life? What are the benefits?

[Brett's Honey]

Originally Posted by hackhelios

Followup--I just said as much to my wife, and she laid some wisdom on me.

"So let's say the 29-year-old woman turns around and kidnaps a child. Does the same thing to him that was done to her. Do we kill her?"

"That's a different situation," I replied. "This guy inflicted a lot of suffering on this girl for a long time."

She smiled. "How do you know what happened to him when he was a kid?"

I had no reply.

I have a nephew who had shit for parents, now he has a small son and he's a great father. He's determined to be better than what he saw / experienced growing up. So lots of folks do decide to go an entirely opposite route....we all do have choice....(unless, of course, we're completely deranged...!)

[classicman]

Originally Posted by Flint

I would like to hear the arguments FOR the death penalty.
what is the payoff that society receives in exchange for granting our government the power to take a human life? What are the benefits?

We get to save about $50,000 a year. Oh and it works really well as a deterrent. <dripping with sarcasm>

I would like to note that the number of federal death row inmates was infantecimally small. But as we all know, even one is too many.

To add to Redux's post. The problem with this is we cannot nor will we ever be able to legislate morality.

[Undertoad]

What are the benefits?

I'm not in favor but the answer, for those who are in favor, is "perceived justice".