Last last meal

[Miles]

Miles

Could they have commuted his sentence to life w/out parole, sure would that have served the public better, I have no idea. I have few answers and lots of questions.

That is the point really there is enough question (especially if coercion was a factor) to make the finality of the death penalty highly questionable as a just end.

In a previous post by Scooter he stated that.

If they have changed their story their testimony is no longer reliable

In that line of thought then their testimony at the time of the trial makes them unreliable and he should not have been convicted in the first place. You really can't have it both ways.

Is the death penality just? I think so. How it's implimented is the key issue. If you kill someone why do you deserve to live yourself? What makes you more important than the person you deprived of life? In my life time I have seen death in almost all it's forms and truely understand the finallity it represents and I truely believe it is the most evil that one human being can visit upon another. Even in war the act of taking a life has a profound effect on the soul. If you can take the life of an inocent person without remorse and then expect others to rally to your cause to escape the ultimate punishment that is a travisty.

As to the question of what criteria would I use to determine a sentence I expect that would depend on the law and how it applies to the situation. As I stated previously I don't have anywhere close to all the answers but I do have opinions which does not imply answers.

[Scooter]

In a previous post by Scooter he stated that.

If they have changed their story their testimony is no longer reliable

In that line of thought then their testimony at the time of the trial makes them unreliable and he should not have been convicted in the first place. You really can't have it both ways.

If you could reconstruct that into something that makes sense one might be able to respond to it. How is it "having it both ways" to recognize that testimony that has been recanted is no longer reliable? Do you mean that it makes the version they are telling now unreliable, and thus we cannot know which version to believe? You would be right, and that would mean that the orginal verdict should be thrown out.

[BoSoxGal]

Miles, eyewitness testimony is also notoriously unreliable. The studies done on this issue are extensive and chilling, when one considers the number of offenders who are imprisoned on eyewitness testimony alone. We have a tendency to think that if somebody testifies that they 'saw it with their own eyes', we must be able to rely upon that testimony as though it were bedrock. In fact, eyewitness testimony is some of the least reliable testimony upon which to base a conviction.

One of the reasons Governor Ryan commuted the sentences of so many on death row in Illinois was due to his acknowledgment that a practice of police corruption over several years had resulted in coerced confessions (elicited via torture) and coerced witness testimony.

Just because witnesses said something at trial doesn't mean it is true. Personally if we are to have the death penalty (and I oppose it as a taxpayer, on the moral grounds that I don't wish to be responsible for the death of any other human being) it should at least only be imposed when actual physical evidence of guilt exists.

[Miles]

OK, as I stated I don't have answers. Our legal system has many holes that clever lawyers use over and over to get clients aquited when the evidence is quite solid. In this particular case I really don't have any incite into what really happened and I think most of the rest of you are in the same situation. You have opinions about the death penality as do I. Perhaps Monday morning quaterbacking is all we have in which case we should just agree to disagree.

[BoSoxGal]

I respect that.

As food for thought, however, I would point you to two excellent documentaries that you might want to watch sometime:

After Innocence &
Death by Fire

Both are available from Netflix.

The first details the cases of several exonerees released from prison after exoneration by DNA evidence. Actually innocent men, who spent decades in prison.

One case involves Ronald Cotton, who was imprisoned on the eyewitness testimony of his rape victim - except she wasn't; she mis-identified him (in good faith), a fact she later acknowledged. Both now campaign to education the public on the injustices that can occur in the legal system, and in particular about the unreliability of eyewitness testimony. Here is a starter link to that case:
http://www.pickingcottonbook.com/eyewitness.html

The second is a Frontline documentary detailing the case of Cameron Todd Willingham, an actually innocent man executed by the State of Texas for the crime of murdering his three children by arson - a crime that wasn't even a crime, according to the consensus of more than a half dozen of the foremost forensic arson investigators in the country.

This is a particularly chilling case - Willingham was not a person without flaws, and some of his behavior was reprehensible, but there simply doesn't exist compelling evidence that he committed a capital crime. Yet he is dead, at the hands of the taxpayers. Rick Perry refused to stay his execution and later disbanded the commission he'd instituted to investigate the issues, when it was on the verge of concluding that an innocent man had been executed.

Like I said, just some food for thought. There is a lot more out there, if you're interested.

[Miles]

Thanks BSG, I will investigate your links with interest.

[Gob]

Here's a report on a similar matter;