>And in the same vein, when was the last time that anyone has heard of an innocent person being executed for a crime they didn't commit?<
The pioneering academic study of innocent prisoners convicted of capital crimes was an article in the November, 1987 Stanford Law Review by Professors Hugo Bedau and Michael Radelet. They found that 23 innocent prisoners, from the beginning of the century through the publication date of the study, had been executed.
There are more stories - more recently.
http://www.justicedenied.org/executed.htm
>When is the last time we heard of someone who got the death sentence later to be found innocent?<
Texas in particular, has sentenced many people to death row, despite the proven fact that the defense attorney was drunk, on drugs or asleep. And they kill 'em then too.
175 people have been exonerated through the Innocence Project - that's just the ones where there is conclusive DNA evidence to get these men out.
Even if these men aren't angels, that doesn't mean they should be in prison or worse, dead, for a crime they didn't do. Thomas Jefferson - It's better to let 10 guilty men go free than to imprison one innocent man. That's the principles on which this country was built.
But the worst part is that if an innocent man is convicted, the guy that did it is still out there and free. For me, that's the biggest danger.
For instance, Steven Avery was no angel. But he didn't rape that woman!! DNA MATCHED another man, a convicted rapist, who looked similar to Avery, who was in the area at the time. BTW - b/c the cops were so determined to frame Avery, this other guy was able to run around free, raping other women, for years after Avery was convicted. That should make us mad too.
Finally, the Innocence Project has to pick their battles with the limited resources they have. But torturing a cat does not equal rape, and certainly does not allow anyone to predict that Avery would kill. Animal abuse is pretty ugly, but most prisoners don't have an absolutely clean record. (And he was never formally charged with the running the woman off the road incident, etc. Whether that incident is true or not, Avery had a very minor record before the false rape conviction) The Project has to be savvy about who they get out - my former classmate, Chris Ochoa, was an honors student before he was wrongly convicted of murder. Obviously the Project would choose him before investigating the potential innocence of a 5 time drug dealer or rapist. It's much better for their image. Same with Avery - it's just that we have hindsight and now know how serious of an indicator the cat was.
I cannot stand aside and have the motives or intent of the people in the Project questioned. It is upsetting to hear that "they should find something better to do" - especially when they find cases every day of a minority kid who was railroaded into confessing by police who had tunnel vision and just wanted to arrest someone, whose defense attorney didn't care, and who was convicted by an all white jury. If you spent just a little time looking at our "justice" system, you'd see that the poor, the minority, the mentally ill, the least able to cope are the ones that are wrongfully convicted and sentenced to life in prison or death. That isn't fair, and there are people who care enough to want to fix that. They should be commended, not condemned.
The pioneering academic study of innocent prisoners convicted of capital crimes was an article in the November, 1987 Stanford Law Review by Professors Hugo Bedau and Michael Radelet. They found that 23 innocent prisoners, from the beginning of the century through the publication date of the study, had been executed.
There are more stories - more recently.
http://www.justicedenied.org/executed.htm
>When is the last time we heard of someone who got the death sentence later to be found innocent?<
Texas in particular, has sentenced many people to death row, despite the proven fact that the defense attorney was drunk, on drugs or asleep. And they kill 'em then too.
175 people have been exonerated through the Innocence Project - that's just the ones where there is conclusive DNA evidence to get these men out.
Even if these men aren't angels, that doesn't mean they should be in prison or worse, dead, for a crime they didn't do. Thomas Jefferson - It's better to let 10 guilty men go free than to imprison one innocent man. That's the principles on which this country was built.
But the worst part is that if an innocent man is convicted, the guy that did it is still out there and free. For me, that's the biggest danger.
For instance, Steven Avery was no angel. But he didn't rape that woman!! DNA MATCHED another man, a convicted rapist, who looked similar to Avery, who was in the area at the time. BTW - b/c the cops were so determined to frame Avery, this other guy was able to run around free, raping other women, for years after Avery was convicted. That should make us mad too.
Finally, the Innocence Project has to pick their battles with the limited resources they have. But torturing a cat does not equal rape, and certainly does not allow anyone to predict that Avery would kill. Animal abuse is pretty ugly, but most prisoners don't have an absolutely clean record. (And he was never formally charged with the running the woman off the road incident, etc. Whether that incident is true or not, Avery had a very minor record before the false rape conviction) The Project has to be savvy about who they get out - my former classmate, Chris Ochoa, was an honors student before he was wrongly convicted of murder. Obviously the Project would choose him before investigating the potential innocence of a 5 time drug dealer or rapist. It's much better for their image. Same with Avery - it's just that we have hindsight and now know how serious of an indicator the cat was.
I cannot stand aside and have the motives or intent of the people in the Project questioned. It is upsetting to hear that "they should find something better to do" - especially when they find cases every day of a minority kid who was railroaded into confessing by police who had tunnel vision and just wanted to arrest someone, whose defense attorney didn't care, and who was convicted by an all white jury. If you spent just a little time looking at our "justice" system, you'd see that the poor, the minority, the mentally ill, the least able to cope are the ones that are wrongfully convicted and sentenced to life in prison or death. That isn't fair, and there are people who care enough to want to fix that. They should be commended, not condemned.
