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Thread: The death penalty: it's time for capital punishment to become Texas history

  1. #1
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    The death penalty: it's time for capital punishment to become Texas history

    HOUSTON CHRONICLE
    Jan. 1, 2011, 4:32PM

    The death penalty in Texas is fraught with demonstrable error, and the people of the state seem more willing to deal with that fact than their leaders.

    Events of the past year have convinced us that defendants have been executed on the basis of invalid evidence. They may or may not have been guilty, but the fact that we have convicted people based on faulty evidence leads inexorably to a horrible likelihood — that we have executed innocent people. The high number of death row prisoners eventually exonerated makes a strong case that other innocent but less fortunate prisoners have been wrongfully put to death.

    We don't lose sleep over the execution of guilty murderers. But the possible or probable execution of the innocent should trouble every Texan.

    The freeing of Anthony Graves after 18 years in prison, many on death row, for a false murder conviction is only the most recent example of how badly the system is broken. His ordeal underlines how long the victims of wrongful death sentences must suffer in the cases where the errors are discovered before execution.

    Two men, Cameron Todd Willingham, convicted of murder by arson, and Claude Jones, convicted of murder during a robbery, were executed on the basis of evidence later shown to be questionable or false.

    We are heartened by figures showing that Texas and Harris County juries are sending fewer defendants to death row. Once known as the death penalty capital of the United States, Harris County has relinquished that grim title in recent years. If Texas were a nation, it would have been among the top state executioners in the world in past decades, in the company of judicial pariahs like China and Iran.

    Since executions resumed in 1976, 464 have been carried out in Huntsville. Texas still led the nation in 2010 with 17 executions, more than twice the number of runner-up Ohio. This past year juries in Texas sentenced only eight people to die, while Harris County has had only two capital punishment sentences handed down.

    Legal experts attribute the drop in death judgments to the availability of a life-without-parole statute passed by the Texas Legislature in 2005, and to the escalating costs to counties of the appeals process involving capital sentences. The exoneration of 11 Texas death row residents has undoubtedly made the public - and potential jury pools - more aware of the possibility that a death sentence could be an irreversible mistake.

    Still, even as Texas juries show increased restraint in utilizing capital punishment, Texas elected officials - including most jurists - seem equally determined not to examine its flaws. When District Judge Kevin Fine attempted to conduct a hearing on the constitutionality of the death penalty as practiced in Texas, Harris County District Attorney Pat Lykos first ordered her prosecutors to stand mute in court and then successfully appealed to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals to halt the hearing. More than 60 people, including former Texas Gov. Mark White, have filed a brief with the high court in support of allowing the death penalty hearing to go forward.

    When the state Forensic Science Commission attempted to investigate whether Willingham was executed for the murder of his three children based on faulty arson evidence, Gov. Rick Perry replaced the commission chairman and several board members. A protracted and inconclusive investigation followed. An attempt by an Austin judge to conduct a hearing on the Willingham case has also been stymied by an appeals judge, who ruled that the jurist should have recused himself.

    The accumulating evidence indicates that the current application of the death penalty in Texas involves an unacceptably high risk of killing innocent people. Yet even as the evidence of false convictions and wrongful executions piles up, only the participants at the base of the Texas criminal justice system, jury members, seem to be waking up to the reality of this evil.

    Some opponents have called for a moratorium on executions in Texas until new, unspecified safeguards are in place to protect the innocent. Yet it's difficult to imagine a fail-safe route to execution.

    Besides, we already have the ultimate safeguard on the books: the sentence of life without parole. Spending the rest of one's days in prison is as terrifying a deterrent to most people as quick execution. By ending state-sanctioned killing, in the future when a jury makes a mistake, resurrection won't be required to remedy it.

    http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/...l/7362050.html

  2. #2
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    Houston Chronicle Readers Response

    bobaloo
    1:19 AM on January 2, 2011
    Let's see someone kils an innocent person, or worse yet a 12 year old boy on Christmas Eve, and you think they don't deserve to pay with their life????? Lif without parole costs the taxpayers too much, when one considers all the benefits convicts have" medical, dental, we even pay for sex change, tv, cable, exercise rooms, etc. They enjoy more priviledges that most taxpayers. Nope give them the needle and they are permanently reabilitated.

    ratherbgolfin
    1:30 AM on January 2, 2011
    The Comical has become a liberal rag. They no longer print the news, they print their warped opinion pieces. Why don't you liberal morons stick to printing the news and leave the opinion spouting to the Olbermann's and Madcow's? I will be cancelling my subscription.

    PersianCowboy
    1:57 AM on January 2, 2011
    It's great to see that the state's largest newspaper has joined the Dallas Morning News and Austin American-Statesman and calling for an abolition of the death penalty in Texas. This is not an easy decision, as calling for abolition of the slavery was not an easy decision for many newspapers of the time not very long ago.

    The fact that innocent people might have been executed should shake the soul every Texan. If we're not going to abolish the death penalty in the coming legislative session, we need to issue a moratorium on the death penalty while we investigate why innocent people are being convicted.
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    SINEQUANON
    5:40 AM on January 2, 2011
    Good grief! Bring back public hangings.
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    NoWhining
    8:53 AM on January 2, 2011
    Death penalty needs to keep right on ticking until murders stop. Hey, that's an idea, why doesn't the Comical plead for an end to murders???
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    Popularity: 9

    reaoldscotty
    9:07 AM on January 2, 2011
    I have been around a few years and I've heard these arguments many times. The people that advocate the session of the death penalty don't seem to realize that 'mad dogs' need to be destroyed. I've heard the "we can't execute the innocent". We cause the death of
    'the innocent' by the thousands during war but it is necessary for the well being of our citizens. More 'innocent' die in auto accidents unfortunate. There is no guarantee of a flawless legal system, but we still need to destroy the "mad dogs'
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    JMKUBICA
    10:48 AM on January 2, 2011
    We could do away with the death penalty and protect society at the same time.

    All that is needed in a sentence of Life Without Parole

    AND

    Make the prison system self-supporting through prison indusrties the way it was 25 years ago.
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    QueenLeary
    12:50 PM on January 2, 2011
    At least three local murderers of this past week deserve the death penalty:
    They include Mona Yvette Nelson, if found guilty of the murder of 12-year-old Jonathan Foster. Robbers who murder during the commission of a robbery also deserve the death penalty. There have been at least two such murders during the past week.

    It is UNJUST for killers to languish in prison while the dead victim decomposes in the grave. Liberals do need to understand that.

    In the case of Willingham, he was the type, I believe, to murder the children to punish the wife. Experts may disagree on the cause of a fire. Just because death penalty foes found an expert who said the fire wasn't arson, that doesn't mean that it wasn't. Moreover, he had reportedly admitted his guilt to his ex wife and mother of the dead children.

    Claude Jones participated in an armed robbery in which the store owner was murdered. He had murdered previously and was also a bank robber. Good riddance to that piece of trash.
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    The comments go on and on, and not 1 comment in support of the Houston Chronicle's opinion editorial made me think hmm...

  3. #3
    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
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    Houston Chronicle now opposes death penalty

    11:21 AM Sun, Jan 02, 2011
    Michael Landauer/Editor

    I am thrilled to see that the Houston Chronicle chose New Year's Day to come out against the death penalty. What's more, their reasons and ours for opposing the use of the death penalty are similar:

    The accumulating evidence indicates that the current application of the death penalty in Texas involves an unacceptably high risk of killing innocent people. Yet even as the evidence of false convictions and wrongful executions piles up, only the participants at the base of the Texas criminal justice system, jury members, seem to be waking up to the reality of this evil. Some opponents have called for a moratorium on executions in Texas until new, unspecified safeguards are in place to protect the innocent. Yet it's difficult to imagine a fail-safe route to execution.

    http://deathpenaltyblog.dallasnews.c...w-opposes.html

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