these death penalty threads are pretty much ... never mind.
this place makes me laugh and cry at the same time. they close my one very old and very full poetry thread on instant thoughts and say it is all over the all encompassing trip section and doesn't need to be in here (the poetry section.), this instant thought crap. but is the all encompassing trip the god damn poetry section? fuck no it isn't. yet 15 or 7 death penalty threads are alive and well. fucking stupid.
insane really.
and i am for the death penalty btw. just to keep things on topic here. did they smoke those two horrible lowlives yet out east, those two that killed the doctor's family? fry fuckers. that'll be 2 less monsters walking amongst us.
Ther are things in place to try to help people before they get to the point of being a killer. There are guidance counselers and child psychologists in schools, there are laws that require teachers and school administrators to report any suspected abuse, there are peer groups and anonymous organizations out there, there are hotlines to call, there are mental health professionals, there are mental health facilities, and there is medication.
A war vet with PTSD would probably be able to plead insanity and wind up in a mental health facility instead of being on death row unless it could be proven that PTSD had nothing to do with his/her actions. That's not the same as someone who plans out his wife's murder and carries through with it, for example.
i think you miss the point of the discussion associated with ptsd ... the point is simply that our goal should be to not have serial killers ... if being abused as a child can lead to psychological scarring that turns someone into a serial killer - why wouldn't we do something to address that?
focusing on just killing a person doesn't prevent the next person who comes along ...
Ther are things in place to try to help people before they get to the point of being a killer. There are guidance counselers and child psychologists in schools, there are laws that require teachers and school administrators to report any suspected abuse, there are peer groups and anonymous organizations out there, there are hotlines to call, there are mental health professionals, there are mental health facilities, and there is medication.
You questioned why we don't do something to address the psychological problems abuse can cause a child. My point is that we do have systems in place to address those things.
We also have things built into the justice system that allow the defense, prosecution, and jurors to consider the defendant's state of mind. If it can be shown that someone is insane and incapable of understanding right and wrong, then the defendant can plead not guilty by reason of insanity and the jury will be presented evidence to consider that allows them to find the defendant not guilty. The prosecutors can recommend a plea deal if they believe the defendant is legitimately insane. In all of those cases, the defendant would wind up in a mental hospital instead of on death row.
Ther are things in place to try to help people before they get to the point of being a killer. There are guidance counselers and child psychologists in schools, there are laws that require teachers and school administrators to report any suspected abuse, there are peer groups and anonymous organizations out there, there are hotlines to call, there are mental health professionals, there are mental health facilities, and there is medication.
You questioned why we don't do something to address the psychological problems abuse can cause a child. My point is that we do have systems in place to address those things.
We also have things built into the justice system that allow the defense, prosecution, and jurors to consider the defendant's state of mind. If it can be shown that someone is insane and incapable of understanding right and wrong, then the defendant can plead not guilty by reason of insanity and the jury will be presented evidence to consider that allows them to find the defendant not guilty. The prosecutors can recommend a plea deal if they believe the defendant is legitimately insane. In all of those cases, the defendant would wind up in a mental hospital instead of on death row.
that was just the subtext ... the conversation with lukin2006 was about empathy for the murderer ... he said he has not empathy for anyone who murders even if they were abused as a child ... i used ptsd as another example of something shaping a person's behaviour ...
yes ... there are things in place but by that token - there shouldn't be anyone illiterate in america either right? ... especially when you consider the social services in the US - many people will fall through the crack ...
either way - we've somewhat derailed the thread ...
what it boils down to is whether you see killing someone a justifiable form of punishment and whether it, as a state-sponsored act, is beneficial to society as a whole ...
You questioned why we don't do something to address the psychological problems abuse can cause a child. My point is that we do have systems in place to address those things.
We also have things built into the justice system that allow the defense, prosecution, and jurors to consider the defendant's state of mind. If it can be shown that someone is insane and incapable of understanding right and wrong, then the defendant can plead not guilty by reason of insanity and the jury will be presented evidence to consider that allows them to find the defendant not guilty. The prosecutors can recommend a plea deal if they believe the defendant is legitimately insane. In all of those cases, the defendant would wind up in a mental hospital instead of on death row.
that was just the subtext ... the conversation with lukin2006 was about empathy for the murderer ... he said he has not empathy for anyone who murders even if they were abused as a child ... i used ptsd as another example of something shaping a person's behaviour ...
yes ... there are things in place but by that token - there shouldn't be anyone illiterate in america either right? ... especially when you consider the social services in the US - many people will fall through the crack ...
either way - we've somewhat derailed the thread ...
what it boils down to is whether you see killing someone a justifiable form of punishment and whether it, as a state-sponsored act, is beneficial to society as a whole ...
I'm not going to have empathy for those folks you are referring, but I'm not for the death penalty for the folks anyways. I'm for the death penalty for the Bernardo's, the Williams, Olson and the like and for the dude in the national post article because he choose to keep killing even while in jail.
I have certain rules I live by ... My First Rule ... I don't believe anything the government tells me ... George Carlin
"Life Is What Happens To You When Your Busy Making Other Plans" John Lennon
I don't recall hearing in the case of Bernardo or Williams or Olson their lawyers bringing up PTSD, child abuse or the lack of after school programs...I do recall hearing them referred to as psychopaths...so now should we have empathy for psychopaths?
I have certain rules I live by ... My First Rule ... I don't believe anything the government tells me ... George Carlin
"Life Is What Happens To You When Your Busy Making Other Plans" John Lennon
I'm not going to have empathy for those folks you are referring, but I'm not for the death penalty for the folks anyways. I'm for the death penalty for the Bernardo's, the Williams, Olson and the like and for the dude in the national post article because he choose to keep killing even while in jail.
you either have the death penalty or you don't ...
I don't recall hearing in the case of Bernardo or Williams or Olson their lawyers bringing up PTSD, child abuse or the lack of after school programs...I do recall hearing them referred to as psychopaths...so now should we have empathy for psychopaths?
is that pun intended? ...
you do know that psychopathy is a mental disorder right? ... you are essentially describing the same thing ...
Yes, and we have the death penalty for certain types of murder--not all murder. You can't arbitrarily say that it has to be for all murderers or none. There are distinctions to be made when you consider what punishment is suitable.
I'm not going to have empathy for those folks you are referring, but I'm not for the death penalty for the folks anyways. I'm for the death penalty for the Bernardo's, the Williams, Olson and the like and for the dude in the national post article because he choose to keep killing even while in jail.
you either have the death penalty or you don't ...
I don't recall hearing in the case of Bernardo or Williams or Olson their lawyers bringing up PTSD, child abuse or the lack of after school programs...I do recall hearing them referred to as psychopaths...so now should we have empathy for psychopaths?
is that pun intended? ...
you do know that psychopathy is a mental disorder right? ... you are essentially describing the same thing ...
Actually no pun intended...the people I'm referring to ever got out via escape or whatever would do it all over again. I know it's a mental disorder...it's also how the lawyers and psychiatrist describe them...me, I think their just cold blooded killers...it seems we humans always have to put a label on something instead of facing reality that some people are just monsters...
Do other species have serial killers? seems most other species only kill for survival. I know its not a deterrent!!! The serial killers I'm referring to are not human...just cold blooded killers who kill for their own perverted pleasure.
I have certain rules I live by ... My First Rule ... I don't believe anything the government tells me ... George Carlin
"Life Is What Happens To You When Your Busy Making Other Plans" John Lennon
I'm not going to have empathy for those folks you are referring, but I'm not for the death penalty for the folks anyways. I'm for the death penalty for the Bernardo's, the Williams, Olson and the like and for the dude in the national post article because he choose to keep killing even while in jail.
you either have the death penalty or you don't ...
You have can have the death penalty with a set of perimeters that must be applied...and the monsters I'm referring are guilty !00%...a couple video taped their fucking crimes...evil, pure evil monsters.
I have certain rules I live by ... My First Rule ... I don't believe anything the government tells me ... George Carlin
"Life Is What Happens To You When Your Busy Making Other Plans" John Lennon
Actually no pun intended...the people I'm referring to ever got out via escape or whatever would do it all over again. I know it's a mental disorder...it's also how the lawyers and psychiatrist describe them...me, I think their just cold blooded killers...it seems we humans always have to put a label on something instead of facing reality that some people are just monsters...
Do other species have serial killers? seems most other species only kill for survival. I know its not a deterrent!!! The serial killers I'm referring to are not human...just cold blooded killers who kill for their own perverted pleasure.
soo ... you are saying its not a mental disorder!? ...
either way - it's irrelevant really ... you can paint these people however you see fit - it still would not change the crux of the debate ... killing these people accomplishes only one thing - satisfying a lust for a perceived form of justice ...
You have can have the death penalty with a set of perimeters that must be applied...and the monsters I'm referring are guilty !00%...a couple video taped their fucking crimes...evil, pure evil monsters.
well ... then why don't they use those parameters!?? ... why did troy davis die? ... by having that option - it opens up the possibility that justice ultimately isn't served ...
You have can have the death penalty with a set of perimeters that must be applied...and the monsters I'm referring are guilty !00%...a couple video taped their fucking crimes...evil, pure evil monsters.
well ... then why don't they use those parameters!?? ... why did troy davis die? ... by having that option - it opens up the possibility that justice ultimately isn't served ...
I don't know why they don't use a set of parameters. Like I said the people that I would have no problem with capital are proven beyond a shadow of a doubt and in some cases videotaped their crime.
I have certain rules I live by ... My First Rule ... I don't believe anything the government tells me ... George Carlin
"Life Is What Happens To You When Your Busy Making Other Plans" John Lennon
I don't know why they don't use a set of parameters. Like I said the people that I would have no problem with capital are proven beyond a shadow of a doubt and in some cases videotaped their crime.
i understand what you are trying to say ... you are ok with it as long as the crime is heinous enough and the evidence irrefutable ... my point is that you can have capital punishment and you can say it as to meet all these conditions but that doesn't ensure that innocent people wouldn't be killed ... as soon as it becomes an option ... all the lines are greyed and it boils down to many different things ...
but that in it of itself is secondary to the notion that killing someone is a justifiable response ...
Actually no pun intended...the people I'm referring to ever got out via escape or whatever would do it all over again. I know it's a mental disorder...it's also how the lawyers and psychiatrist describe them...me, I think their just cold blooded killers...it seems we humans always have to put a label on something instead of facing reality that some people are just monsters...
Do other species have serial killers? seems most other species only kill for survival. I know its not a deterrent!!! The serial killers I'm referring to are not human...just cold blooded killers who kill for their own perverted pleasure.
soo ... you are saying its not a mental disorder!? ...
either way - it's irrelevant really ... you can paint these people however you see fit - it still would not change the crux of the debate ... killing these people accomplishes only one thing - satisfying a lust for a perceived form of justice ...
I'm not saying that...because I don't know, just curious as to why we seem to be the only specie that kills for other than survival...so other species aren't born or develop these mental disorders...maybe they do I. To me their cold "blooded killers". And it's just like people, we have to attach a label to something...maybe it makes us feel good, maybe it makes some people feel better knowing or thinking these monsters do it because their sick or abused or didn't get hugged.
I have certain rules I live by ... My First Rule ... I don't believe anything the government tells me ... George Carlin
"Life Is What Happens To You When Your Busy Making Other Plans" John Lennon
There are parameters in place. The person must be convicted of first-degree murder for the death penalty to even be an option. Then, it's not a mandatory sentence. The jury or judge (depending on the law of the state prosecuting) will then determine if the murder warrants the death penalty. In states that allow the jury to determine if the death penalty is implemented, the jury must vote unanimously for it to be imposed. That allows for consideration of factors beyond the killer's premeditation when they decide what penalty is handed down (the brutality of the murder, etc.).
You have can have the death penalty with a set of perimeters that must be applied...and the monsters I'm referring are guilty !00%...a couple video taped their fucking crimes...evil, pure evil monsters.
well ... then why don't they use those parameters!?? ... why did troy davis die? ... by having that option - it opens up the possibility that justice ultimately isn't served ...
There are parameters in place. The person must be convicted of first-degree murder for the death penalty to even be an option. Then, it's not a mandatory sentence. The jury or judge (depending on the law of the state prosecuting) will then determine if the murder warrants the death penalty. In states that allow the jury to determine if the death penalty is implemented, the jury must vote unanimously for it to be imposed. That allows for consideration of factors beyond the killer's premeditation when they decide what penalty is handed down (the brutality of the murder, etc.).
honestly ... i am missing what your intentions are in this thread ... you keep posting information we already know ... no disrespect is intended - i just don't get what you are pushing forth!?? ...
the parameters that are in place are faulty as we already know many innocent people have already been killed ... the assumption is that the justice system is perfect and that executing someone can only be done when there is no doubt ... but reality is much more different ...
I'm not pushing anything, just trying to answer the questions you asked and the points you made.
Personally, I don't believe that there are any cases where it's been proven someone was wrongfully executed--at least not in my lifetime since DNA evidence is used whenever there is any usable DNA found at the crime scene. Back in the 50s and 60s there may have been some cases, but I wasn't alive then and it doesn't change what tools and appeals processes are available today. I've seen stories of witnesses changing their testimony years later, but I believe that when people do that they are doing so because they don't want to feel responsible for sending someone to death row to be executed and not because they suddenly have a better memory of events (the brain doesn't work that way). In the example you used earlier of Troy Davis, I don't believe he was innocent. I don't believe any witnesses were told to testify falsely because there was enough time between the alleged police coercion and the actual trial that they could have testified honestly at the trial if they had been pressured during police questioning. Why wait 5-15 years to recant and why didn't Davis call on some of those people to testify at his appeals hearings instead of just presenting affadavits and why didn't some other witnesses change their stories, too (such as the member of the Air Force who identified Davis as the shooter)? If he was innocent, then what was so special about the clothing the police took from his house that the defense successfully argued was inadmissable?
There are parameters in place. The person must be convicted of first-degree murder for the death penalty to even be an option. Then, it's not a mandatory sentence. The jury or judge (depending on the law of the state prosecuting) will then determine if the murder warrants the death penalty. In states that allow the jury to determine if the death penalty is implemented, the jury must vote unanimously for it to be imposed. That allows for consideration of factors beyond the killer's premeditation when they decide what penalty is handed down (the brutality of the murder, etc.).
honestly ... i am missing what your intentions are in this thread ... you keep posting information we already know ... no disrespect is intended - i just don't get what you are pushing forth!?? ...
the parameters that are in place are faulty as we already know many innocent people have already been killed ... the assumption is that the justice system is perfect and that executing someone can only be done when there is no doubt ... but reality is much more different ...
I'm not saying that...because I don't know, just curious as to why we seem to be the only specie that kills for other than survival...so other species aren't born or develop these mental disorders...maybe they do I. To me their cold "blooded killers". And it's just like people, we have to attach a label to something...maybe it makes us feel good, maybe it makes some people feel better knowing or thinking these monsters do it because their sick or abused or didn't get hugged.
this is not true. chimpanzees, by our definition, commit murder too. naturally they dont call it that.
hear my name
take a good look
this could be the day
hold my hand
lie beside me
i just need to say
Personally, I don't believe that there are any cases where it's been proven someone was wrongfully executed--at least not in my lifetime since DNA evidence is used whenever there is any usable DNA found at the crime scene.
Rather than basing your beliefs on this matter on your personal opinion, why don't you look at the facts instead?
You have a computer in front of you, so It wouldn't take very long.
monster rain... people have been wrongly executed in your life time. And DNA testing wasn't used properly until 1992. Also it is very possible to convict with no DNA evidence... esp if there's none that doesn't match either. Also I am amazed that anyone has such blind faith that the justice system is infallible. Really????
How Can We Kill People Who Kill People To Show That Killing People Is Wrong?
I don't mean to offend anyone, a lot of what I say should be taken with a grain of salt... that said for most of you I'm a stranger on a computer on the other side of the world, don't give me that sort of power!
Who says I haven't searched for anything? I've read about cases where people claim to be wrongly convicted and I do not believe them. An overwhelming majority of people in prison claim to be innocent. I understand why some people might believe them, but when people change their stories years after the fact, it seems more than a little suspicious to me. Obviously, not everyone agrees with me and that's fine. We're all entitled to our own thoughts on the matter. If you want to argue that it's immoral to have the death penaly, then I can't really persuade you because those are your beliefs.
Personally, I don't believe that there are any cases where it's been proven someone was wrongfully executed--at least not in my lifetime since DNA evidence is used whenever there is any usable DNA found at the crime scene.
Rather than basing your beliefs on this matter on your personal opinion, why don't you look at the facts instead?
You have a computer in front of you, so It wouldn't take very long.
In reference to the thread that was just locked, I admit that my OP was over the top.
Binfrog's response was pretty sound and I respect his position.
My original comments were made in reaction to the article and those photo's of those young women being led to their deaths.
Things like that really disgust me.
Anyway....
I can get pretty worked up about it too Byrnzie. It happens. its especially sickening that there are laws in place that allow for murder of a convicted drug dealer. I almost cant believe that is a reality in some places of the world in 2011. Bottom line is, the debates circle around an around in here on this issue, and there are some that see it as a just punishment for some crimes (which I dont get), and others want revenge. I find that it toys with our emotions too much because it is the ulitmate sacrifice we're talking about here..
In reference to the thread that was just locked, I admit that my OP was over the top.
Binfrog's response was pretty sound and I respect his position.
My original comments were made in reaction to the article and those photo's of those young women being led to their deaths.
Things like that really disgust me.
Anyway....
I can get pretty worked up about it too Byrnzie. It happens. its especially sickening that there are laws in place that allow for murder of a convicted drug dealer. I almost cant believe that is a reality in some places of the world in 2011. Bottom line is, the debates circle around an around in here on this issue, and there are some that see it as a just punishment for some crimes (which I dont get), and others want revenge. I find that it toys with our emotions too much because it is the ulitmate sacrifice we're talking about here..
Not that I think the death penalty should be abolished simply because innocent people end up getting killed in these state-sanctioned revenge killings, but all the same, this article is interesting:
The wrong Carlos: how Texas sent an innocent man to his death
Groundbreaking Columbia law school study sets out in shocking detail the flaws that led to Carlos DeLuna's execution in 1989
Ed Pilkington in New York
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 15 May 2012
'Los tacoyos Carlos' – Hernandez and DeLuna looked so alike that they were sometimes mistaken for twins. Photographs: Corpus Christi police department/DeLuna family/Hernandez family/Texas dept of criminal justice/Corpus Christi Caller Times
A few years ago, Antonin Scalia, one of the nine justices on the US supreme court, made a bold statement. There has not been, he said, "a single case – not one – in which it is clear that a person was executed for a crime he did not commit. If such an event had occurred … the innocent's name would be shouted from the rooftops."
Scalia may have to eat his words. It is now clear that a person was executed for a crime he did not commit, and his name – Carlos DeLuna – is being shouted from the rooftops of the Columbia Human Rights Law Review. The august journal has cleared its entire spring edition, doubling its normal size to 436 pages, to carry an extraordinary investigation by a Columbia law school professor and his students.
The book sets out in precise and shocking detail how an innocent man was sent to his death on 8 December 1989, courtesy of the state of Texas. Los Tocayos Carlos: An Anatomy of a Wrongful Execution, is based on six years of intensive detective work by Professor James Liebman and 12 students.
Starting in 2004, they meticulously chased down every possible lead in the case, interviewing more than 100 witnesses, perusing about 900 pieces of source material and poring over crime scene photographs and legal documents that, when stacked, stand over 10ft high.
What they discovered stunned even Liebman, who, as an expert in America's use of capital punishment, was well versed in its flaws. "It was a house of cards. We found that everything that could go wrong did go wrong," he says.
Carlos DeLuna was arrested, aged 20, on 4 February 1983 for the brutal murder of a young woman, Wanda Lopez. She had been stabbed once through the left breast with an 8in lock-blade buck knife which had cut an artery causing her to bleed to death.
From the moment of his arrest until the day of his death by lethal injection six years later, DeLuna consistently protested he was innocent. He went further – he said that though he hadn't committed the murder, he knew who had. He even named the culprit: a notoriously violent criminal called Carlos Hernandez.
The two Carloses were not just namesakes – or tocayos in Spanish, as referenced in the title of the Columbia book. They were the same height and weight, and looked so alike that they were sometimes mistaken for twins. When Carlos Hernandez's lawyer saw pictures of the two men, he confused one for the other, as did DeLuna's sister Rose.
At his 1983 trial, Carlos DeLuna told the jury that on the day of the murder he'd run into Hernandez, who he'd known for the previous five years. The two men, who both lived in the southern Texas town of Corpus Christi, stopped off at a bar. Hernandez went over to a gas station, the Shamrock, to buy something, and when he didn't return DeLuna went over to see what was going on.
DeLuna told the jury that he saw Hernandez inside the Shamrock wrestling with a woman behind the counter. DeLuna said he was afraid and started to run. He had his own police record for sexual assault – though he had never been known to possess or use a weapon – and he feared getting into trouble again.
"I just kept running because I was scared, you know." When he heard the sirens of police cars screeching towards the gas station he panicked and hid under a pick-up truck where, 40 minutes after the killing, he was arrested.
At the trial, DeLuna's defence team told the jury that Carlos Hernandez, not DeLuna, was the murderer. But the prosecutors ridiculed that suggestion. They told the jury that police had looked for a "Carlos Hernandez" after his name had been passed to them by DeLuna's lawyers, without success. They had concluded that Hernandez was a fabrication, a "phantom" who simply did not exist. The chief prosecutor said in summing up that Hernandez was a "figment of DeLuna's imagination".
Four years after DeLuna was executed, Liebman decided to look into the DeLuna case as part of a project he was undertaking into the fallibility of the death penalty. He asked a private investigator to spend one day – just one day – looking for signs of the elusive Carlos Hernandez.
By the end of that single day the investigator had uncovered evidence that had eluded scores of Texan police officers, prosecutors, defense lawyers and judges over the six years between DeLuna's arrest and execution. Carlos Hernandez did indeed exist.
Liebman's investigator tracked down within a few hours a woman who was related to both the Carloses. She supplied Hernandez's date of birth, which in turn allowed the unlocking of Hernandez's criminal past as the case rapidly unravelled.
With the help of his students, Liebman began to piece together a profile of Hernandez. He was an alcoholic with a history of violence, who was always in the company of his trusted companion: a lock-blade buck knife.
Over the years he was arrested 39 times, 13 of them for carrying a knife, and spent his entire adult life on parole. Yet he was almost never put in prison for his crimes – a disparity that Liebman believes was because he was used as a police informant. "Its hard to understand what happened without that piece of the puzzle," Liebman says.
Several of the crimes that Hernandez committed involved hold-ups of Corpus Christi gas stations. Just a few days before the Shamrock murder he was found cowering outside a nearby 7-Eleven wielding a knife – a detail never disclosed to DeLuna's defence.
He also had a history of violence towards women. He was twice arrested on suspicion of the 1979 murder of a woman called Dahlia Sauceda, who was stabbed and then had an "X" carved into her back. The first arrest was made four years before DeLuna's trial and the second while DeLuna was on death row, yet the connection between this Hernandez and the "phantom" presented to DeLuna's jury was never made.
In October 1989, just two months before DeLuna was executed, Hernandez was setenced to 10 years' imprisonment for attempting to kill with a knife another woman called Dina Ybanez. Even then, no one thought to alert the courts or Texas state as it prepared to put DeLuna to death.
Hernandez himself frequently told people that he was a knife murderer. He made numerous confessions to having killed Wanda Lopez, the crime for which DeLuna was executed, joking with friends and relatives that his "tocayo" had taken the fall. His admissions were so widely broadcast that even Corpus Christi police detectives came to hear about them within weeks of the incident at the Shamrock gas station.
Yet this was the same Carlos Hernandez who prosecutors told the jury did not exist. This was the figment of Carlos DeLuna's imagination.
Many other glaring discrepancies also stand out in the DeLuna case. He was put on death row largely on the eyewitness testimony of one man, Kevan Baker, who had seen the fight inside the Shamrock and watched the attacker flee the scene.
Yet when Baker was interviewed 20 years later, he said that he hadn't been that sure about the identification as he had trouble telling one Hispanic person apart from another.
Then there was the crime-scene investigation. Detectives failed to carry out or bungled basic forensic procedures that might have revealed information about the killer. No blood samples were collected and tested for the culprit's blood type.
Fingerprinting was so badly handled that no useable fingerprints were taken. None of the items found on the floor of the Shamrock – a cigarette stub, chewing gum, a button, comb and beer cans – were forensically examined for saliva or blood.
There was no scraping of the victim's fingernails for traces of the attacker's skin. When Liebman and his students studied digitally enhanced copies of crime scene photographs, they were amazed to find the footprint from a man's shoe imprinted in a pool of Lopez's blood on the floor – yet no effort was made to measure it.
"There it was," says Liebman. "The murderer had left his calling card at the scene, but it was never used."
Even the murder weapon, the knife, was not properly examined, though it was covered in blood and flesh.
Other photographs show Lopez's blood splattered up to three feet high on the walls of the Shamrock counter. Yet when DeLuna's clothes and shoes were tested for traces of blood, not a single microscopic drop was found. The prosecution said it must have been washed away by the rain.
There appeared to have been an unseemly scramble to wrap up the crime scene. Less than two hours after the murder happened, the police chief in charge of the homicide investigation ordered all detectives to quit the Shamrock and allowed its owner to wash it down, sweeping away vital evidence that could have saved a man's life.
The exceptionally lax treatment of evidence continued even beyond the grave. When Liebman asked to see all the stored evidence in the case, so that he could subject it to the DNA testing that was not available to investigators in 1983, he was told that it had all disappeared.
Having lived and breathed this case for so many years, Liebman says the most shocking thing about it was its ordinariness. "This wasn't the trial of OJ Simpson. It was an obscure case, the kind that could involve anybody. Maybe those are the cases where miscarriages of justice happen, the routine everyday cases where nobody thinks enough about the victim, let alone the defendant."
The groundbreaking work that the Columbia law school has done comes at an important juncture for the death penalty in America. Connecticut last month became the fifth state in as many years to repeal the ultimate punishment and support for abolition is gathering steam.
In that context, Liebman hopes his exhaustive work will encourage Americans to think more deeply about what is done in their name. All the evidence the Columbia team has gathered on the DeLuna case has been placed on the internet with open public access.
"We've provided as complete a set of information as we can about a pretty average case, to let the public make its own judgment. I believe they will make the judgment that in this kind of case there's just too much risk."
As for the tocayos Carloses, Carlos Hernandez died of natural causes in a Texas prison in May 1999, having been jailed for assaulting a neighbour with a 9in knife.
Carlos DeLuna commented on his own ending in a television interview a couple of years before his execution. "Maybe one day the truth will come out," he said from behind reinforced glass. "I'm hoping it will. If I end up getting executed for this, I don't think it's right."
• Main pic: Top (left to right): Hernandez; Hernandez; Hernandez; DeLuna. Bottom (left to right): DeLuna; Hernandez; DeLuna; DeLuna
Comments
this place makes me laugh and cry at the same time. they close my one very old and very full poetry thread on instant thoughts and say it is all over the all encompassing trip section and doesn't need to be in here (the poetry section.), this instant thought crap. but is the all encompassing trip the god damn poetry section? fuck no it isn't. yet 15 or 7 death penalty threads are alive and well. fucking stupid.
insane really.
and i am for the death penalty btw. just to keep things on topic here. did they smoke those two horrible lowlives yet out east, those two that killed the doctor's family? fry fuckers. that'll be 2 less monsters walking amongst us.
"Hear me, my chiefs!
I am tired; my heart is
sick and sad. From where
the sun stands I will fight
no more forever."
Chief Joseph - Nez Perce
ok!??
what's your point?
We also have things built into the justice system that allow the defense, prosecution, and jurors to consider the defendant's state of mind. If it can be shown that someone is insane and incapable of understanding right and wrong, then the defendant can plead not guilty by reason of insanity and the jury will be presented evidence to consider that allows them to find the defendant not guilty. The prosecutors can recommend a plea deal if they believe the defendant is legitimately insane. In all of those cases, the defendant would wind up in a mental hospital instead of on death row.
that was just the subtext ... the conversation with lukin2006 was about empathy for the murderer ... he said he has not empathy for anyone who murders even if they were abused as a child ... i used ptsd as another example of something shaping a person's behaviour ...
yes ... there are things in place but by that token - there shouldn't be anyone illiterate in america either right? ... especially when you consider the social services in the US - many people will fall through the crack ...
either way - we've somewhat derailed the thread ...
what it boils down to is whether you see killing someone a justifiable form of punishment and whether it, as a state-sponsored act, is beneficial to society as a whole ...
I'm not going to have empathy for those folks you are referring, but I'm not for the death penalty for the folks anyways. I'm for the death penalty for the Bernardo's, the Williams, Olson and the like and for the dude in the national post article because he choose to keep killing even while in jail.
"Life Is What Happens To You When Your Busy Making Other Plans" John Lennon
"Life Is What Happens To You When Your Busy Making Other Plans" John Lennon
you either have the death penalty or you don't ...
is that pun intended? ...
you do know that psychopathy is a mental disorder right? ... you are essentially describing the same thing ...
Actually no pun intended...the people I'm referring to ever got out via escape or whatever would do it all over again. I know it's a mental disorder...it's also how the lawyers and psychiatrist describe them...me, I think their just cold blooded killers...it seems we humans always have to put a label on something instead of facing reality that some people are just monsters...
Do other species have serial killers? seems most other species only kill for survival. I know its not a deterrent!!! The serial killers I'm referring to are not human...just cold blooded killers who kill for their own perverted pleasure.
"Life Is What Happens To You When Your Busy Making Other Plans" John Lennon
You have can have the death penalty with a set of perimeters that must be applied...and the monsters I'm referring are guilty !00%...a couple video taped their fucking crimes...evil, pure evil monsters.
"Life Is What Happens To You When Your Busy Making Other Plans" John Lennon
soo ... you are saying its not a mental disorder!? ...
either way - it's irrelevant really ... you can paint these people however you see fit - it still would not change the crux of the debate ... killing these people accomplishes only one thing - satisfying a lust for a perceived form of justice ...
well ... then why don't they use those parameters!?? ... why did troy davis die? ... by having that option - it opens up the possibility that justice ultimately isn't served ...
I don't know why they don't use a set of parameters. Like I said the people that I would have no problem with capital are proven beyond a shadow of a doubt and in some cases videotaped their crime.
"Life Is What Happens To You When Your Busy Making Other Plans" John Lennon
i understand what you are trying to say ... you are ok with it as long as the crime is heinous enough and the evidence irrefutable ... my point is that you can have capital punishment and you can say it as to meet all these conditions but that doesn't ensure that innocent people wouldn't be killed ... as soon as it becomes an option ... all the lines are greyed and it boils down to many different things ...
but that in it of itself is secondary to the notion that killing someone is a justifiable response ...
I'm not saying that...because I don't know, just curious as to why we seem to be the only specie that kills for other than survival...so other species aren't born or develop these mental disorders...maybe they do I. To me their cold "blooded killers". And it's just like people, we have to attach a label to something...maybe it makes us feel good, maybe it makes some people feel better knowing or thinking these monsters do it because their sick or abused or didn't get hugged.
"Life Is What Happens To You When Your Busy Making Other Plans" John Lennon
honestly ... i am missing what your intentions are in this thread ... you keep posting information we already know ... no disrespect is intended - i just don't get what you are pushing forth!?? ...
the parameters that are in place are faulty as we already know many innocent people have already been killed ... the assumption is that the justice system is perfect and that executing someone can only be done when there is no doubt ... but reality is much more different ...
Personally, I don't believe that there are any cases where it's been proven someone was wrongfully executed--at least not in my lifetime since DNA evidence is used whenever there is any usable DNA found at the crime scene. Back in the 50s and 60s there may have been some cases, but I wasn't alive then and it doesn't change what tools and appeals processes are available today. I've seen stories of witnesses changing their testimony years later, but I believe that when people do that they are doing so because they don't want to feel responsible for sending someone to death row to be executed and not because they suddenly have a better memory of events (the brain doesn't work that way). In the example you used earlier of Troy Davis, I don't believe he was innocent. I don't believe any witnesses were told to testify falsely because there was enough time between the alleged police coercion and the actual trial that they could have testified honestly at the trial if they had been pressured during police questioning. Why wait 5-15 years to recant and why didn't Davis call on some of those people to testify at his appeals hearings instead of just presenting affadavits and why didn't some other witnesses change their stories, too (such as the member of the Air Force who identified Davis as the shooter)? If he was innocent, then what was so special about the clothing the police took from his house that the defense successfully argued was inadmissable?
this is not true. chimpanzees, by our definition, commit murder too. naturally they dont call it that.
take a good look
this could be the day
hold my hand
lie beside me
i just need to say
Rather than basing your beliefs on this matter on your personal opinion, why don't you look at the facts instead?
You have a computer in front of you, so It wouldn't take very long.
How Can We Kill People Who Kill People To Show That Killing People Is Wrong?
Binfrog's response was pretty sound and I respect his position.
My original comments were made in reaction to the article and those photo's of those young women being led to their deaths.
Things like that really disgust me.
Anyway....
agreed. Good point.
I can get pretty worked up about it too Byrnzie. It happens. its especially sickening that there are laws in place that allow for murder of a convicted drug dealer. I almost cant believe that is a reality in some places of the world in 2011. Bottom line is, the debates circle around an around in here on this issue, and there are some that see it as a just punishment for some crimes (which I dont get), and others want revenge. I find that it toys with our emotions too much because it is the ulitmate sacrifice we're talking about here..
Right.
a futile debate.
Round and round
One's personal life experiences and personal revelation can change a core belief
this is what I believe.... again believe.
The pros and cons on beliefs can be redundant
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/ma ... -man-death
The wrong Carlos: how Texas sent an innocent man to his death
Groundbreaking Columbia law school study sets out in shocking detail the flaws that led to Carlos DeLuna's execution in 1989
Ed Pilkington in New York
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 15 May 2012
'Los tacoyos Carlos' – Hernandez and DeLuna looked so alike that they were sometimes mistaken for twins. Photographs: Corpus Christi police department/DeLuna family/Hernandez family/Texas dept of criminal justice/Corpus Christi Caller Times
A few years ago, Antonin Scalia, one of the nine justices on the US supreme court, made a bold statement. There has not been, he said, "a single case – not one – in which it is clear that a person was executed for a crime he did not commit. If such an event had occurred … the innocent's name would be shouted from the rooftops."
Scalia may have to eat his words. It is now clear that a person was executed for a crime he did not commit, and his name – Carlos DeLuna – is being shouted from the rooftops of the Columbia Human Rights Law Review. The august journal has cleared its entire spring edition, doubling its normal size to 436 pages, to carry an extraordinary investigation by a Columbia law school professor and his students.
The book sets out in precise and shocking detail how an innocent man was sent to his death on 8 December 1989, courtesy of the state of Texas. Los Tocayos Carlos: An Anatomy of a Wrongful Execution, is based on six years of intensive detective work by Professor James Liebman and 12 students.
Starting in 2004, they meticulously chased down every possible lead in the case, interviewing more than 100 witnesses, perusing about 900 pieces of source material and poring over crime scene photographs and legal documents that, when stacked, stand over 10ft high.
What they discovered stunned even Liebman, who, as an expert in America's use of capital punishment, was well versed in its flaws. "It was a house of cards. We found that everything that could go wrong did go wrong," he says.
Carlos DeLuna was arrested, aged 20, on 4 February 1983 for the brutal murder of a young woman, Wanda Lopez. She had been stabbed once through the left breast with an 8in lock-blade buck knife which had cut an artery causing her to bleed to death.
From the moment of his arrest until the day of his death by lethal injection six years later, DeLuna consistently protested he was innocent. He went further – he said that though he hadn't committed the murder, he knew who had. He even named the culprit: a notoriously violent criminal called Carlos Hernandez.
The two Carloses were not just namesakes – or tocayos in Spanish, as referenced in the title of the Columbia book. They were the same height and weight, and looked so alike that they were sometimes mistaken for twins. When Carlos Hernandez's lawyer saw pictures of the two men, he confused one for the other, as did DeLuna's sister Rose.
At his 1983 trial, Carlos DeLuna told the jury that on the day of the murder he'd run into Hernandez, who he'd known for the previous five years. The two men, who both lived in the southern Texas town of Corpus Christi, stopped off at a bar. Hernandez went over to a gas station, the Shamrock, to buy something, and when he didn't return DeLuna went over to see what was going on.
DeLuna told the jury that he saw Hernandez inside the Shamrock wrestling with a woman behind the counter. DeLuna said he was afraid and started to run. He had his own police record for sexual assault – though he had never been known to possess or use a weapon – and he feared getting into trouble again.
"I just kept running because I was scared, you know." When he heard the sirens of police cars screeching towards the gas station he panicked and hid under a pick-up truck where, 40 minutes after the killing, he was arrested.
At the trial, DeLuna's defence team told the jury that Carlos Hernandez, not DeLuna, was the murderer. But the prosecutors ridiculed that suggestion. They told the jury that police had looked for a "Carlos Hernandez" after his name had been passed to them by DeLuna's lawyers, without success. They had concluded that Hernandez was a fabrication, a "phantom" who simply did not exist. The chief prosecutor said in summing up that Hernandez was a "figment of DeLuna's imagination".
Four years after DeLuna was executed, Liebman decided to look into the DeLuna case as part of a project he was undertaking into the fallibility of the death penalty. He asked a private investigator to spend one day – just one day – looking for signs of the elusive Carlos Hernandez.
By the end of that single day the investigator had uncovered evidence that had eluded scores of Texan police officers, prosecutors, defense lawyers and judges over the six years between DeLuna's arrest and execution. Carlos Hernandez did indeed exist.
Liebman's investigator tracked down within a few hours a woman who was related to both the Carloses. She supplied Hernandez's date of birth, which in turn allowed the unlocking of Hernandez's criminal past as the case rapidly unravelled.
With the help of his students, Liebman began to piece together a profile of Hernandez. He was an alcoholic with a history of violence, who was always in the company of his trusted companion: a lock-blade buck knife.
Over the years he was arrested 39 times, 13 of them for carrying a knife, and spent his entire adult life on parole. Yet he was almost never put in prison for his crimes – a disparity that Liebman believes was because he was used as a police informant. "Its hard to understand what happened without that piece of the puzzle," Liebman says.
Several of the crimes that Hernandez committed involved hold-ups of Corpus Christi gas stations. Just a few days before the Shamrock murder he was found cowering outside a nearby 7-Eleven wielding a knife – a detail never disclosed to DeLuna's defence.
He also had a history of violence towards women. He was twice arrested on suspicion of the 1979 murder of a woman called Dahlia Sauceda, who was stabbed and then had an "X" carved into her back. The first arrest was made four years before DeLuna's trial and the second while DeLuna was on death row, yet the connection between this Hernandez and the "phantom" presented to DeLuna's jury was never made.
In October 1989, just two months before DeLuna was executed, Hernandez was setenced to 10 years' imprisonment for attempting to kill with a knife another woman called Dina Ybanez. Even then, no one thought to alert the courts or Texas state as it prepared to put DeLuna to death.
Hernandez himself frequently told people that he was a knife murderer. He made numerous confessions to having killed Wanda Lopez, the crime for which DeLuna was executed, joking with friends and relatives that his "tocayo" had taken the fall. His admissions were so widely broadcast that even Corpus Christi police detectives came to hear about them within weeks of the incident at the Shamrock gas station.
Yet this was the same Carlos Hernandez who prosecutors told the jury did not exist. This was the figment of Carlos DeLuna's imagination.
Many other glaring discrepancies also stand out in the DeLuna case. He was put on death row largely on the eyewitness testimony of one man, Kevan Baker, who had seen the fight inside the Shamrock and watched the attacker flee the scene.
Yet when Baker was interviewed 20 years later, he said that he hadn't been that sure about the identification as he had trouble telling one Hispanic person apart from another.
Then there was the crime-scene investigation. Detectives failed to carry out or bungled basic forensic procedures that might have revealed information about the killer. No blood samples were collected and tested for the culprit's blood type.
Fingerprinting was so badly handled that no useable fingerprints were taken. None of the items found on the floor of the Shamrock – a cigarette stub, chewing gum, a button, comb and beer cans – were forensically examined for saliva or blood.
There was no scraping of the victim's fingernails for traces of the attacker's skin. When Liebman and his students studied digitally enhanced copies of crime scene photographs, they were amazed to find the footprint from a man's shoe imprinted in a pool of Lopez's blood on the floor – yet no effort was made to measure it.
"There it was," says Liebman. "The murderer had left his calling card at the scene, but it was never used."
Even the murder weapon, the knife, was not properly examined, though it was covered in blood and flesh.
Other photographs show Lopez's blood splattered up to three feet high on the walls of the Shamrock counter. Yet when DeLuna's clothes and shoes were tested for traces of blood, not a single microscopic drop was found. The prosecution said it must have been washed away by the rain.
There appeared to have been an unseemly scramble to wrap up the crime scene. Less than two hours after the murder happened, the police chief in charge of the homicide investigation ordered all detectives to quit the Shamrock and allowed its owner to wash it down, sweeping away vital evidence that could have saved a man's life.
The exceptionally lax treatment of evidence continued even beyond the grave. When Liebman asked to see all the stored evidence in the case, so that he could subject it to the DNA testing that was not available to investigators in 1983, he was told that it had all disappeared.
Having lived and breathed this case for so many years, Liebman says the most shocking thing about it was its ordinariness. "This wasn't the trial of OJ Simpson. It was an obscure case, the kind that could involve anybody. Maybe those are the cases where miscarriages of justice happen, the routine everyday cases where nobody thinks enough about the victim, let alone the defendant."
The groundbreaking work that the Columbia law school has done comes at an important juncture for the death penalty in America. Connecticut last month became the fifth state in as many years to repeal the ultimate punishment and support for abolition is gathering steam.
In that context, Liebman hopes his exhaustive work will encourage Americans to think more deeply about what is done in their name. All the evidence the Columbia team has gathered on the DeLuna case has been placed on the internet with open public access.
"We've provided as complete a set of information as we can about a pretty average case, to let the public make its own judgment. I believe they will make the judgment that in this kind of case there's just too much risk."
As for the tocayos Carloses, Carlos Hernandez died of natural causes in a Texas prison in May 1999, having been jailed for assaulting a neighbour with a 9in knife.
Carlos DeLuna commented on his own ending in a television interview a couple of years before his execution. "Maybe one day the truth will come out," he said from behind reinforced glass. "I'm hoping it will. If I end up getting executed for this, I don't think it's right."
• Main pic: Top (left to right): Hernandez; Hernandez; Hernandez; DeLuna. Bottom (left to right): DeLuna; Hernandez; DeLuna; DeLuna