Tuesday, August 16, 2011
Broken / Politics / Clout City Rick Perry, Cameron Todd Willingham, and the death penalty
Posted by Sam Worley on 08.16.11 at 11:55 AM
- Ada Be
Even Edward Cheever, one of the state deputy fire marshals who had assisted in the original investigation of the 1991 fire, acknowledged that Hurst's criticism was valid."At the time of the Corsicana fire, we were still testifying to things that aren't accurate today," he said. "They were true then, but they aren't now.
"Hurst," he added, "was pretty much right on. ... We know now not to make those same assumptions."
Five years later, Grann wrote that such a case—the execution of somebody demonstrably innocent—is “a kind of grisly Holy Grail” for death penalty opponents:
In 2000, after thirteen people on death row in Illinois were exonerated, George Ryan, who was then governor of the state, suspended the death penalty. Though he had been a longtime advocate of capital punishment, he declared that he could no longer support a system that has “come so close to the ultimate nightmare—the state’s taking of innocent life.” Former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor has said that the “execution of a legally and factually innocent person would be a constitutionally intolerable event.”
What does this have to do with Rick Perry? In 2009, the Texas Forensic Science Commission was set to hear a scathing repudiation of the science behind the arson investigation that sent Willingham to the death chamber:
The finding comes in the first state-sanctioned review of an execution in Texas, home to the country's busiest death chamber. If the commission reaches the same conclusion, it could lead to the first-ever declaration by an official state body that an inmate was wrongly executed.
Shortly before the commission was to hear the report, Perry (who declined to grant a last minute stay-of-execution to Willingham in 2004) replaced three of its members, and installed a close ally on the panel. In spring 2011, the commission released a draft report acknowledging that fire science has changed, but abstaining from issuing an opinion on the Willingham case. Perry continued to maintain that "clear and compelling, overwhelming evidence" made the case against Willingham; he called critics of the investigation “latter-day supposed experts.”
Comments (13)
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Seems to me that today's Democrat is akin to the Socialist/Communist Democrats in Europe. Whom ever you vote for in 2012, make sure you look outside the box of the mainstream liberal media and heavily slanted leftist media sources for the candidates backround. The liberal mainstream media will not tell you the whole truth, maybe 1 sixteenth of it. What about Obama's non-experience backround and his communist friends? I don't want a president who puts America Down and bows to Communist dictators and Shieks! I want a person in the presidency in 2012 that is going to get America back on the right track to a republic, not the path Obama is leading America to Marxism, Communism.
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The Tribune, who did the 2004 analysis, is hardly a liberal paper. Rick Perry presided over the state sanctioned killing of a man on dubious evidence. If Perry is such a man of god how does he reconcile his stance on the death penalty.
@Linny - What data do you base your estimate of 1/16 of "the whole truth" upon?
-- MrJM
@Linny Look at all that disgusting rhetoric you write, do you believe everything you're saying? Communist this, Marxist that, this isn't the 1960's. If the only arguments that you have is to blame the "liberal media" and say Obama is a secret communist then you have no argument at all.
You have said nothing in context to this article about Rick Perry and the fact that he allowed the execution of an innocent man, disrupted it's investigation and apologized for nothing. Instead you sprout words that you might find coming from an insane asylum.
"Instead you sprout words that you might find coming from an insane asylum."
It's actually run-of-the-mill propaganda nowadays. You have to claim that Al Gore is a shape-shifting lizard to reach nuthouse status.
CORPORATE MEDIA YOU MEAN
AND socialists STOP WARS,
AND PROSECUTE TORTURERS
PASS SINGLE -PAYER public option healthcare
PASS card check simple majority FOR NEW WORKPLACE UNION CREATION.
so who's the socialist?
WHO'S THE NEO-LIBERAL?
buy a clue PAL
Rick Perry claims to be a Christian. How could he let this innocent man be put to death when the Bible clearly states, "Thou shall not kill"? Considering Perry's flagrant disregard for human life, I find it absolutely frightening that anyone could ever consider Perry a viable candidate for POTUS.
I'd be surprised if Governor Perry even read the report that undermined the arson investigation that convicted Willingham prior to his execution.
Perry's priorities seem to lie in raising campaign money or doing favors for his campaign donors.
If an innocent person is convicted is the judicial system resposible? Should there be more appeal options, longer appeal process? Better trained court appointed attorneys? Everyone in the prison system convicted before the availability of newest technologies should be retried and those who served sentences without benefit of cutting edge technology compensated. The federal government could print a few extra billion for this.
WTF is a "neo-liberal?"
Padarig is just as much a looney (and a bigger illiterate) as Linny is.
Hello Linny, are you here just to troll? An innocent man was executed, and all Rick Perry can do is worry about saving face. He's a disgusting excuse for a human being, putting his own goals before justice, and is unfit to be our President.
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