Oh, Nevermind
[Posted by The Angry Clam]
Do you remember that big deal about the 1992 execution of the alleged rapist/murder in Virginia who swore he was innocent and framed for the crime? Virginia’s Governor Warner had made headlines by ordering new DNA testing a few weeks ago. It was the one where the anti-capital punishment people were salivating, hoping that, finally, they’d have DNA evidence to prove that an innocent man was put to death. After all, like Tookie Williams, he protested his innocence up until the day that justice was served.
As he said in his final statement before he received justice, “An innocent man is going to be murdered tonight. When my innocence is proven, I hope America will realize the injustice of the death penalty as all other civilized countries have.”
Who would have thought that a man on death row would lie about his innocence? My world is shattered.
– The Angry Clam
What about super-reasonable doubt? One in 19 million isn’t certainty.
Only kidding, I think.
Attila (Pillage Idiot) (dfa1f1) — 1/12/2006 @ 2:12 pmCan you take out the alleged as he was convicted, sentenced, executed and his guilt was confirmed by DNA? I don’t know how much guiltier you can get.
LLL (d0a224) — 1/12/2006 @ 2:25 pmIt’s part of the buildup, LLL.
Angry Clam (fa7fff) — 1/12/2006 @ 2:27 pmIt’s a shame that death penalty opponents are going to bed unhappy tonight that an innocent man wasn’t executed.
steve sturm (e37e4c) — 1/12/2006 @ 2:28 pmI think the people who were trumpeting his possible innocence ( blood typing was accurate to 0.2%) should have to write,”I am a fool,”1000 times.
lincoln (f47859) — 1/12/2006 @ 5:14 pmI heard one on the radio state that “for those of us who believed all along in his innocence, this is a bitter pill to swallow” and another who said “I’m not humiliated, but I am disappointed” so they’re feeling pretty dumb.
Angry Clam (a7c6b1) — 1/12/2006 @ 5:20 pmThe most disappointed person is this mess is the soon to be former governor of Va. He was counting on the DNA being tainted enough to show the man could be innocent. He was fishing for the anti-death penalty vote in his run for president. Well he’s a con man so he’ll come up with something else to get the idiot vote. Good luck if he runs and get it. You had better buy a 4 year supply of beanie weenie’s the day he’s elected. He’ll tax you out of your food money in the first year. There is not a tax or fee in Va. that was not raised by him and his buddies so they could have more billions to buy more votes from the welfare crowd.
scrapiron (71415b) — 1/12/2006 @ 6:00 pmHe’ll get it anyway, because he was willing to run the test. Plus, he claims to be pro-death penalty as a general matter, so he can easily be like “I like the death penalty, but we need to be very careful. Look what I did with this guy, about whom there were so many questions. It was a relief that he really did it… etc.”
Angry Clam (a7c6b1) — 1/12/2006 @ 6:04 pm[…] Also sprach: Patterico. by Tom Dunson , Thursday 12 January 2006 at 8:11 pm […]
The Trigger » Told you so (e72e64) — 1/12/2006 @ 6:09 pmInteresting this made the national news but not the item a while back about Clarence Darrow fingering Sacco and Vanzetti.
Pat Patterson (5b3946) — 1/12/2006 @ 7:24 pmWhat percentage, honestly, of the American public these days knows, or cares, who those two anarchists were?
Angry Clam (a7c6b1) — 1/12/2006 @ 7:25 pmscrapiron, you got that right. So we turned around and elected his Lt Gov. Unbelievable!
Harry Arthur (b318a5) — 1/12/2006 @ 7:46 pmI’m glad to hear that the courts got it right…that time.
Guess that proves that no innocent person has ever been sentenced to death, right?
Oops, other people have in fact been proved innocent after being sentenced to death, haven’t they?
So what exactly were you snickering about again?
John M. Burt (bb6782) — 1/12/2006 @ 10:36 pmOops, other people have in fact been proved innocent after being sentenced to death, haven’t they?
No.
Patterico (929da9) — 1/12/2006 @ 10:41 pmAh, sorry . . . I didn’t read that carefully enough. The answer is yes. But there is no proof any innocent person has been *executed.*
Patterico (929da9) — 1/12/2006 @ 11:02 pmThat said, I’m pleased that the test was done, and I’d support seeing it done in similar cases where the test would be conclusive on the issue of guilt.
Patterico (929da9) — 1/12/2006 @ 11:03 pmYeah, John, re-read it.
I nowhere claim that people don’t get improperly sentenced to death- as with all crimes, from tickets to murder, trials get screwed up.
However, the massive, massive system of appeals and review has, so far, guaranteed that no demonstrably innocent person has been executed.
The hope of anti-justice fanatics was that, finally, they’d be able to demonstrate with this rapist/murderer that these appeals are not enough.
They are.
Angry Clam (a7c6b1) — 1/13/2006 @ 4:56 amDeath penalty opponents, of whom I am one, make a huge mistake (one which I have thus far avoided) when they try to tie their arguments into the purported innocence of a particular individual sentenced to death; not only does it make their arguments fail when he is actually guilty, but it concedes the argument that those who are guilty of capital crimes should be executed.
Dana (3e4784) — 1/13/2006 @ 5:05 amDana, if you can’t support opposition to the death penalty with evidence that a few innocent persons are executed along with the many guilty ones, with what argument do you hope to persuade the public that the death penalty is poor policy?
TNugent (6128b4) — 1/13/2006 @ 6:18 amI’m shocked, shocked.
Scott (57c0cc) — 1/13/2006 @ 6:37 amI think the Clam gets a little overzealous with the tar brush here.
It’s a little too easy to use this to batter Warner for ordering the test. Why did it even take an executive order to have the truth out? In many cases the prosecution’s reasons for opposing examination of exculpatory post-conviction DNA are very thin and show that they value political expedience over the truth.
Moreover, all reasonable people, including DP opponents, were relieved to find out that the DNA bore out the conviction, even if they disagreed with the sentence.
biwah (f5ca22) — 1/13/2006 @ 7:53 amWhat struck me as odd was that the anti-death penalty zealots were disappointed in the test results. The results proved that justice was served and they were disappointed!? Why would they be disappointed if justice was served? If they really cared about justice they would be equally pursuing for all “innocent” people regardless of punishment, not just the ones on death riow.
Ron Olliff (096a64) — 1/13/2006 @ 8:07 amI’m not trying to batter Warner, that came up in the comments. I’m enjoying beating up on all the anti-justice people who’ve spent years complaining that this man was innocent and wrongly executed, and that, by God, they were going to prove it, and, by proxy, the wrongness of justice being served in every capital case.
Angry Clam (fa7fff) — 1/13/2006 @ 8:07 amI stand corrected – not an unusual state of affairs here. I read too fast.
Dana is right that pushing for exoneration in individual DP cases takes much of the wind out of the anti-DP movement’s moral sails.
What Warner did was not to push for exoneration, nor anything as radical as Gov. Ryan’s moratorium. It seemed very principled, and the pro-execution arguments would be strengthened if all new DNA evidence was compared to the original forensics as a matter of course in death row cases, instead of requiring the enormous delay and funds to bring, contest, and rule on post-con motions.
DNA is a sea change in criminal evidence. You’d think it would provide a swath of common ground where the prosecution- and defense-minded agree that it should be utilized.
biwah (f5ca22) — 1/13/2006 @ 8:20 am…point being, DNA is likely to give us a window into at least a few errors by prosecutors, juries, and defendants’ supporters. as long as we can agree that the certainty it provides has high inherent value, those mistakes should (mostly) be mutually forgiven, on the ground that the different parties were sincere in their beliefs/advocacy.
biwah (f5ca22) — 1/13/2006 @ 8:23 amTo Harry Arthur. You point is well taken but part of the statement is incorrect, ‘We’ did not elect his Lt. Governor. Idiots did (even knowing he wants a floating 25 cent per gallon tax on gasoline, on top of what’s already there), but ‘we’ indicates we did it…I’d vote for the old coon that raids my garbage can every night before i’d vote for that sucker. Ha Ha
scrapiron (71415b) — 1/13/2006 @ 9:20 amI’m not sure I see the point in these post-execution tests. Had it turned out that he was innocent, what then? Do we stop executions but leave people languishing in prisons, knowing that they might be innocent?
As we’ve seen in wrongful conviction cases like that portrayed in the documentary The Thin Blue Line, the fault can often (if not always) be traced to fraud on the part of the prosecution and/or lying by witnesses and/or neglect of duty by the defense. Our time and money would be better spent pursuing and severely punishing anyone whose actions result in the wrongful conviction of another person. Holding people accountable would do more to maintain integrity in the system – and keep innocent people out of prison in the first place.
Carol (2687c2) — 1/13/2006 @ 10:03 amMr Nugent wrote:
My argument is a pro-life one: we should never kill unless it is absolutely necessary. In the case of a condemned prisoner, if we can execute him, he is, by definition, already in prison. If he’s already locked up, it is no longer necessary to kill him to defend society from him.
That argument in no way assumes that people like Tookie Williams and Mumia abu-Jamal aren’t (weren’t) scumbags.
Dana (3e4784) — 1/13/2006 @ 10:23 amTell that to the family members of Clarence Ray Allen’s last three victims.
Xrlq (816c74) — 1/13/2006 @ 1:47 pmDana, saying that imprisonment renders execution unnecessary assumes that we execute murderers primarily to prevent them from killing again. That’s not the justification or at least not the primary one. We execute murderers to exact retribution and we do that because we value life — the life of the victim. If the justification for capital punishment were to protect society, then Tookie Williams would have been executed for his gang membership alone, not the fact that he behaved as we would expect a gang member to behave.
The only good argument to disavow retribution as a reason for killing murderers is a religious one — such as, vengeance isn’t allowed to us, because it’s reserved to God, or that the value of each life has been established by divine authority and we are not permitted to take something of such value except, as you would say, when “necessary.” Those are principled defenses of abolition. But absent the appeal to higher authority, that is, if it’s just us making the rules and deciding on how to enforce them, then there’s no moral case to be made for abolishing capital punishment for murderers. Without any religious element, it’s utterly unpersuasive to suggest that the life of a Roger Keith Coleman or Tookie Williams is too precious to end despite his crimes.
TNugent (6128b4) — 1/13/2006 @ 2:18 pmMr Nugent, I’m a pretty faithful Catholic, so there is certainly some of the religious element in my position, but I don’t employ that in my arguments: basing an argument on my being Catholic immediately makes it irrelevant to those who are not Catholic.
But I don’t see that one requires a religious element to say that live is precious. Without such a belief, none of us is better than Tookie Williams.
Dana (3e4784) — 1/14/2006 @ 4:34 amBut I don’t see that one requires a religious element to say that live is precious. Without such a belief, none of us is better than Tookie Williams.
Yes, life is precious, that is why we reserve the ultimate sanction as a denial of that precious gift to one who would take it from another in a particularly agregious manner. But to conflate the taking of life by the state as a means of inflicting appropriate punishment upon a justly convicted murderer with the taking of life by that murderer, thereby suggesting or implying any level of moral equivalence is IMHO a poor argument.
As far as the religious argument goes. Fine. I’m a protestant myself but I find no compelling argument, when taken in its proper context, in the Bible, our common source of spiritual enlightenment, proscribing the death penalty.
I am willing to posit that true life without the possibility of parole, preferably at hard labor, would probably satisfies society’s demand for justice, thereby also ensuring we never excecute an innocent person.
Harry Arthur (b318a5) — 1/15/2006 @ 2:27 pm“…none of us is better than Tookie Williams.”
Oh, yes we are. Those of us who don’t kill others in cold blood are way better human beings than that murdering thug.
Tookie got what just he deserved.
Black Jack (d8da01) — 1/15/2006 @ 2:56 pm