This is what America needs

usamamasan1 wrote:

Byrnzie wrote:

So you obviously didn't bother to read the LONG article I just posted (CUT & PASTED) above.

Fixed

So that's a 'No' then.

Yep, this is what America needs:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/se ... th-penalty

Rick Perry in the spotlight as Texas sets to work on controversial executions


Texas governor and Republican presidential candidate faces appeals for clemency in two highly charged death row cases


Ed Pilkington in New York
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 13 September 2011


Rick Perry, the frontrunner to become the Republican candidate in next year's presidential election, has just hours left to prevent a man being put to death in Texas in a case in which the jury was told the prisoner was a danger to the public – and should therefore be executed – because he was black.

Duane Buck is one of four men scheduled to die by lethal injection in Texas, where Perry is governor, over the next eight days – an exceptional rate even in this execution-happy state. At Buck's sentencing hearing, the jury that set his punishment was informed by a psychologist that black people had a higher rate of violent behaviour, a statement used by the prosecution as its key argument against giving him an alternative penalty of life imprisonment.

On Tuesday night, another hotly contested case is scheduled to reach its climax with the execution of Steven Woods, who was sentenced to death for a double murder, even though an alleged accomplice later confessed to having pulled the trigger.

How Perry reacts to the demands for commutation and clemency in these two highly controversial cases will give an indication of how he proposes to deal with the death penalty issue, which has welled up in the presidential race for the first time. Perry, as governor of Texas, has presided over more executions than any other US official in modern times.

Perry was questioned about his enthusiasm for the death penalty at a televised Republican debate last week. When the TV moderator put it to him that his state had executed 234 prisoners since he became governor in 2000, the Republican studio audience cheered.

Perry said he had never lost any sleep worrying that some of those individuals might have been innocent. "I've never struggled with that at all," he said.

When asked how he felt about the audience applauding so many deaths, he replied: "I think Americans understand justice."

Lawyers for both Buck and Woods are engaged in frenzied last-minute lobbying to Perry and to the courts to try to put off the executions. If their efforts fail, Woods's execution on Tuesday night will be followed by Buck's on Wednesday night.

Responsibility for the execution going ahead, despite the controversy over the racially-tinged testimony, is now falling squarely on the shoulders of Perry. The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles has cleared away one of the last impediments to the ultimate penalty going ahead by refusing to recommend that Buck should be granted clemency.

That leaves Perry, who has power to issue a 30-day reprieve but who has very rarely done so.

Buck, 48, shot and killed Debra Gardner, his former girlfriend, and a friend of hers, Kenneth Butler, in a drunken explosion of jealousy in July 1995. His guilt is not in dispute, but the testimony presented to the jury at his sentencing is.

At the hearing, a psychologist, Dr Walter Quijano, was called by the defence and testified that he did not believe Buck would be a future danger as the murders had been a one-off crime of passion. But under cross-examination, the prosecution pressed him about Buck's ethnicity as an African-American.

"You have determined that the … race factor, black, increases the future dangerousness for various complicated reasons. Is that correct?" the prosecution asked.

"Yes," replied Quijano.

The prosecution later exhorted the jury to make their decision on the basis of Quijano's testimony. The jury found that Buck did pose a future danger of violence, and put him on death row.

In 2000, the then attorney general in Texas, John Cornyn, admitted that the racial testimony of Quijano had wrongfully been allowed to prejudice sentencing in seven separate cases. Six of those cases were reheard as a result, but, in a legal oversight, Buck's never was.

Buck's lawyer, Katherine Black, is petitioning Perry to commute his execution to allow resentencing. "This case violates the US constitution and undermines our moral values. A person has a right to be sentenced based not on the colour of their skin," the petition reads.

Further pressure has been brought to bear on Perry by a senior Texas lawyer who acted as prosecutor in Buck's original trial. Linda Geffin has written to Perry calling on him to delay the execution. "It is inappropriate to allow race to be considered as a factor in our criminal justice system," she wrote.

Steven Woods, 31, who will die barring a last-minute stay of execution, was one of two men accused of murdering Ronald Whitehead and Bethena Brosz in a drugs turf war in May 2001.

Woods was brought to trial in August the following year. The prosecution alleged that he had planned and carried out the shootings, and he was convicted and sentenced to death.

Three months later, his alleged accomplice, Marcus Rhodes, who had cut a deal with prosecutors, was given a life sentence, despite having confessed that he had personally carried out the shootings. Rhodes was given life imprisonment, while Woods remained on death row.

Amnesty International has issued an urgent action alert, accusing Texas of treating Woods unfairly in a case "where one defendant receives a death sentence and another who pled guilty to personally shooting the two victims receives a life sentence".

Mary O'Grady, a specialist in death row based in Austin, said that under the so-called "law of parties" in Texas, death penalties can be inflicted even on those who did not pull the trigger. Being present at a murder, knowing that an accomplice intended to kill, is sufficient.

"A lot of people with no blood on their own hands get executed in Texas," O'Grady said.

The prospects of Perry granting clemency for Woods are not great. The governor has only once in 11 years shown clemency to a death row inmate unless forced to do so by the courts.

"When it comes to death row, Perry is completely unfeeling and unemotional," said Ray Hill, who runs the Execution Watch website and radio show in Texas.

"It never strikes him that he should value the lives of those who are accused, even wrongfully."

Next week two further executions are scheduled, of Cleve Foster on Tuesday and Lawrence Brewer on Wednesday.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree ... tion-texas

Rick Perry executes justice, Texas-style

Perry may have lost no sleep over Texas's 234 executions during his tenure, but the death penalty panders to crude bloodlust


Amanda Marcotte
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 13 September 2011


When Rick Perry threw his hat into the ring for the Republican presidential nomination, it set off such a collective cringe among liberal Texans that it likely scored on the Richter scale. Being a native Texan with basic respect for modern civilisation means living in a constant state of low-grade humiliation, as the state's size provides an interrupted stream of news stories highlighting the cranks and Bible-thumpers who win state and local offices – but a presidential campaign means exponentially expanding the amount of national and international attention paid to the streak of mean-spirited ignorance that rules Texas politics. With Rick Perry, this means a whole lot more coverage of the fact that Texas is the "killingest" state in the entire union, having executed more than four times as many prisoners as the next contender in this gruesome contest.

Of course, we of the non-barbaric sort do hope that all this attention paid to Rick Perry's willingness to execute anyone on death row – no matter how obviously screwed over by an imperfect and often unjust judicial system – could somehow provoke enough national shame that we actually do away with the death penalty. Which we really need to do, not because we have any great love for vicious murderers, but because the death penalty is a known destroyer of a fair and sober-minded justice system.

Once you have the right to kill people, the voters start expecting semi-regular bloodshed as proof that you're doing your job, creating incentives for prosecutors and politicians to cut corners to get those voter-pleasing cadaver numbers up. Each new generation of prosecutors and politicians feels pressure to "best" their predecessor in the number of executions carried out, lest they face accusations of being soft on crime. Which explains why they soon find themselves where Rick Perry stands, having executed 234 people, many of whom had highly corrupt trials and at least one of whom is most likely innocent.

For those who haven't read the tale of Cameron Todd Willingham, I implore you to read the New Yorker article recounting the case of a man executed for killing his three children based on shoddy evidence and prosecutorial willingness to introduce Willingham's love of Iron Maiden and Led Zeppelin as evidence in order to stoke the prejudices of a Bible Belt jury that was high on fundamentalist tall tales about the Satanic influence of rock music. When presented with an opportunity to spare Willingham's life, Perry declined, and in 2004, Willingham was executed by lethal injection. His case has come to symbolise the circus atmosphere around capital murder cases, and the way that the eagerness to see someone pay the ultimate price for the loss of innocent human life causes law enforcement and politicians to make a mockery out of the idea of justice.

Since Rick Perry, by his own admission, has never lost sleep over the execution of a likely innocent man, you can bet justice doesn't stand a chance when it comes to cases where the fact of homicide is indisputable. The public's desire to get blood for blood – especially if they can view the accused as an outsider – turns concerns about due process to dust for anyone whose job depends on a high conviction rate. Subsequently, death penalty cases where the prosecution won a clean conviction without relying on shoddy evidence or a jury's unfair prejudices are the rare gems in a sea of corruption. The case of Duane Buck, scheduled to be executed this week, demonstrates how the death penalty is more about hustling prisoners to the execution chamber to score points with the public than it is securing just and safe outcomes.

Even hyper-conservative Senator John Cornyn, once Texas's attorney general, wanted Buck's case reviewed, due to a prosecutorial witness's claim that Buck was more likely to be violent in the future because he's black. That someone's race was overtly invoked as a reason to kill him during trial should be indicator enough that the death penalty has meaning for the public beyond alleviating concerns about violent crime. But evidence of racism invoked during the trial probably won't bother Perry: if he had a conscience about signing off on overtly unfair executions, it probably stopped bothering him somewhere much earlier in his run of 234 executions as Texas governor.

The death penalty is wrong not because murderers deserve better, but because the death penalty appeals to the worst instincts of humanity. We see innocent people die, and our lizard brains want to believe that it won't be right until someone pays for blood with blood. That desire starts to overrule all other priorities. Our desire for a fair trial system and our desire to treat people equally despite racial differences are the first to go. But given enough time, we're even willing to send a man to the death chambers for what appears to have been an accident. Three small children are dead, and we want someone to pay, no matter the innocence of the someone we select.

Perry's willingness to execute a man who was almost certainly innocent comes uncomfortably close to regressing to the days of human sacrifice. Sacrificing an innocent man won't prevent other houses from accidentally catching fire and killing the innocent people inside, but it's clear that Perry will not hesitate to pander to voters who cling to hopes that periodic blood-letting will somehow save us all.

usamamasan1 wrote:

http://www.google.com

think much lately?

234 people under his watch. justice served. COLD. Don't go to Texas and think you are going to get away with fucking up....

"The state of Texas," Perry explained, "has a very thoughtful [and] very clear process in place. When someone commits the most heinous of crimes against our citizens, they get a fair hearing. They go through an appellate process; they go up to the Supreme Court of the United States if that's required."

And it helps if they happen to be white.

usamamasan1 wrote:

I don't think your racist comments belong on this forum. You have been reported.

haha. kidding. I wouldn't report you. You still got lots of learning to do. I will help.



my very own charity case.

Your graph shows blacks and Hispanics at the bottom end of the spectrum.

Anyway, I was referring to the death penalty, not education.