Over at Forbes I take a look at the reality-show-bread-and-circuses nature of crime sensationalism in the media and some of the ways that can be dangerous, both in our attitudes toward crime and in a very literal sense.
I also talk about Texas which is reviving its anti-TSA bill, but which falls quite short on other civil liberties issues such as the death penalty. Conor has more on the death penalty issue, and how it will come to the fore if Perry runs for president:
The farther he goes, the worse things will get for death penalty supporters, due to a part of his record that his critics are already highlighting: his shocking negligence in the case of Cameron Todd Willingham, a man put to death on his watch who was very likely innocent, and certainly wasn’t guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Perry has presided over a couple hundred executions. Even one of them emerging as a national issue could change the whole political calculus around capital punishment. What if America’s governors were just as fearful of executing an innocent in an age of DNA as they are of granting clemency to someone who goes on to commit another crime?
From a purely political standpoint, I don’t think that this is a battle that Obama would want.
The guy’s own lawyer sez he was guilty. Yet another phony controversy and hit piece on a GOP candidate under the guise of journalism. It’s so fucking predictable.
2006:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/12/02/cameron-todd-willingham-j_n_376580.html
CORSICANA, Texas — David Martin is sickened by the suggestion that Texas executed an innocent man when Cameron Todd Willingham was put to death for setting a fire that killed his three children.
The veteran defense attorney represented Willingham at trial. He looked at all the evidence. And he has no doubt that his client deserved to die.
“I never think about him, but I do think about those year-old babies crawling around in an inferno with their flesh melting off their bodies,” Martin said. “I think that he was guilty, that he deserved death and that he got death.”
…
“God forbid that somebody was executed who was innocent. Nobody wants that to happen,” Martin said. “But for somebody so obviously guilty like Willingham – it’s a travesty to make it seem like it was something other than what it was.”
The court-appointed lawyer that didn’t bother to put on much of a defense because his client was obviously guilty? Yeah, that says a lot of good things about Texas-style justice. Sure it does.
Tom, do more research before you embarrass yourself with this crap.
Ah, Mr. Kain, not embarrassing atall: it lays the ground for the core point that governors are not the judiciary, and aren’t responsible for reaffirming every jury verdict from scratch. This is clearly an untimely dredge-up amounting to a partisan hit piece, although I’m certain a gentleman such as yourself didn’t intend it that way.
As for an effect on capital punishment, perhaps, but not as much as Bill Clinton returning home from campaigning to execute that poor retarded kid in 1992.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389×319623
I wonder how big a deal the NYT made of that one…
“tom van dyke June 28, 2011 at 4:20 pm
Ah, Mr. Kain, not embarrassing atall: it lays the ground for the core point that governors are not the judiciary, and aren’t responsible for reaffirming every jury verdict from scratch. This is clearly an untimely dredge-up amounting to a partisan hit piece, although I’m certain a gentleman such as yourself didn’t intend it that way. ”
1) Actually, Governor Goodhair fired a guy for investigating the case; he took what those of us who know stuff call an ‘active’ role.
“…governors are not the judiciary, and aren’t responsible for reaffirming every jury verdict from scratch. ”
I’m going to call you a liar on this one, because that is not the issue – first, the case in question was not just another jury verdict, but a death sentence, and two, as said above, GG actively intervened to prevent an examination of the evidence by a committee whose job included that.
Im sorry that was intemperate of me. But please do your homework next time.
Mr. Kain, I don’t want to start up with you, but ’twas you who looked at only one side of the case; I was obliged to look up the other side of the story for myself. If it’s to be your style to present only the advocates’ side of issues without questioning them, so be it, but no reader could form an informed opinion on merely the facts as presented here.
My core point remains, that governors are not on the hook to re-judge every capital case. Indeed, even the appellate courts’ function is not to retry the facts, but to review the correctness of the procedures.
For the record, since we’ve made such a joke of capital punishment, and its only possible value, deterrence, is obliterated by all the other factors, I’m with the Roman church’s position that we should do away it as unnecessary.
Are governors on the hook not to fire the commissioners who were about to investigate the case?
Texas is infamous for court-appointed ‘defenders’ being agents of the judges, who like the ones who keep the court on schedule.