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| Lets Talk Politics - Do you believe in the Death Penality?
Posted: 10/2/2009 12:47:21 PM |
yeah lets hang somebody. we'll all feel better even if it isn't the right guy. funny, thats been the general take in texas since they started growing cotton.
NY Times today
Texas Governor Defends Shakeup of Commission
By JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr.
Published: October 1, 2009
HOUSTON — Just before he was executed in 2004 for setting a fire that killed his three children, Cameron T. Willingham declared, “I am an innocent man convicted of a crime I did not commit.” Now his words seem to be echoing in the race for governor of Texas.
Gov. Rick Perry defended his replacement of three members of a commission looking into the case.
In what some opponents say looks like a political move and Gov. Rick Perry says was “business as usual,” the governor replaced the head of the Texas Forensic Science Commission and two other members on Wednesday, just 48 hours before the commission was to hear testimony from an arson expert who believes that Mr. Willingham was convicted on faulty testimony, a conclusion that has been supported by other experts in the field.
Mr. Perry’s decision to shake up the commission and put one of his political allies in charge has, at the least, delayed the inquiry into the Willingham case. While Mr. Perry says he has no political motive for the move, his opponents have called for the commission to finish its inquiry.
“If a mistake was made in this case, we need to know it,” Tom Schieffer, a Fort Worth businessman and a Democratic candidate for governor, said in a statement. “No one in public life should ever be afraid of the truth.”
Mr. Perry’s opponent in the Republican primary, Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, also questioned what harm the hearing could do. “I am for the death penalty,” Ms. Hutchison told The Dallas Morning News, “but always with the absolute assurance that you have the ability to be sure, with the technology that we have, that a person is guilty.”
Mr. Perry denied Thursday that the changes he had made at the commission were intended to quash the investigation. At a news conference for his re-election campaign, he said, “Those individuals’ terms were up, so we’re replacing them.”
He said the commission was “going to take a look at any new information that anybody has,” adding that “to make a statement now that it was not arson is a little premature.”
The governor was in office when Mr. Willingham was executed on Feb. 17, 2004. He denied the condemned man a reprieve even after a detailed report by an arson expert said the evidence that Mr. Willingham had set the fire was flimsy and inconclusive.
Last month, Mr. Perry expressed confidence that Mr. Willingham was guilty and played down reports casting doubt on the original investigation, calling the authors “supposed experts,” while making a quotes gesture with his fingers.
Mr. Perry, facing the primary challenge from Ms. Hutchison, has been working to shore up his support among conservatives, who usually decide the Republican primary here.
Mr. Willingham, an unemployed auto mechanic with a history of petty crime, was convicted of setting his house in Corsicana on fire in 1991. His three small daughters died in the blaze, and he maintained right up to his death that he had tried to save them. The police doubted his story partly because his bare feet had not been burned.
Local arson investigators testified at his trial that, judging by the charring and fracture patterns of broken glass left by the blaze, someone had poured a flammable liquid under the children’s beds, along the hallway and out the front door. The jury took less than an hour to convict Mr. Willingham.
In 2004, however, Gerald L. Hurst, an Austin scientist and fire investigator working in Mr. Willingham’s behalf, reviewed the evidence and determined the investigators had relied on several outdated and discredited methods to reach their conclusions. Most of the evidence could be explained by an accidental fire, Dr. Hurst said.
That conclusion was confirmed six weeks ago by an independent arson expert hired by the Forensic Science Commission, which was created in 2005 to investigate mistakes in crime laboratories after scandals rocked the one in Houston. The expert, Craig L. Beyler, of Baltimore, said in his August report that “the investigators had a poor understanding of fire science” and that the evidence they cited did not support a finding of arson.
Mr. Beyler was to testify before the commission in Dallas on Friday. But the newly appointed chairman, John M. Bradley, the district attorney in Williamson County, canceled the hearing, saying he did not know enough about the inquiry. “I felt I had been asked to take a final exam without having an opportunity to study for it,” he said.
Mr. Bradley said he did not know if he would continue the inquiry into the Willingham conviction that his predecessor had started. He said he wanted to consult with the lawmakers who created the commission about its mission. | |
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| Lets Talk Politics - Do you believe in the Death Penality?
Posted: 10/2/2009 4:28:55 PM | Wudger get off of it. Texas kicks ass, blue states are used to being on their knees. The death penalty is great. Be a bad person, commit a heinous crime, get the death penalty......and if you're in Texas--get it quickly.
Only libtards try and protect the worst society has to offer. | |
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granz
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Joined: 6/22/2009
Msg: 230 | |
| Lets Talk Politics - Do you believe in the Death Penality?
Posted: 10/2/2009 8:17:02 PM | No. Serious offenders should be exiled to lawless nations. Let them murder one another, or attempt to form fickle alliances and make restitution for their crimes. 
We could deter any need for prison systems by recording and cataloging the DNA of every birth, and then terminating pregnancies with genome patterns similar to those of known criminals. | |
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| Lets Talk Politics - Do you believe in the Death Penality?
Posted: 10/7/2009 8:02:07 AM |
Wudger get off of it. Texas kicks ass, blue states are used to being on their knees. The death penalty is great. Be a bad person, commit a heinous crime, get the death penalty......and if you're in Texas--get it quickly.
yeah, the hell with that evidence stuff. long as we hang somebody.
its not the death penalty, its the death because...we're kind of in a bad mood today penalty. | |
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| Lets Talk Politics - Do you believe in the Death Penality?
Posted: 10/7/2009 8:28:14 AM | | I am all for the death penalty! I personally knew a guy back home who called the cops and told them he was going to kill his wife. When the cops got there, he let the kids go and shot her with a 12ga shotgun. To this day we do not know why he did it. It was cold and calculated..he deserved the death penalty...glad he got it! | |
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| Lets Talk Politics - Do you believe in the Death Penality?
Posted: 10/7/2009 3:32:34 PM | I have no religious concerns at all. I have thought long, and studied the subject, and have concluded that for entirely PRACTICAL reasons, the death penalty should be ended.
1. No more accidental termination of innocents.
2. We are currently finding and stopping more serial killers, BECAUSE we stopped killing them. They are in prison, available for study. I'll pay additional taxes, if need be, to be able to use the criminals to catch other criminals.
3. I have no certain knowledge, but it is frequently reported that life without parole is cheaper than the death penalty.
One important concern that I don't know how to address: some prison officials have said that the only thing that prevents some prisoners from attacking and killing their jailers, is the fact that the death penalty can be added to their sentence. Additional protection for our penal officers will have to be provided, if we are to do away with the death penalty. | |
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| Lets Talk Politics - Do you believe in the Death Penality?
Posted: 10/8/2009 4:01:05 PM | In a case where there is UNDENIABLE evidence and this does NOT count 'one' eye witness accounts but if there's 100's of eyeballs on the crime..
But if you kill without a doubt in anyones mind, you should DIE...
If I lived in the states I'd be farther to the left then the middle but I'm for the death penalty...and likely for some crimes that would surprise you....like child rape for one | |
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