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Post by CCADP on May 27, 2005 10:36:50 GMT -5
This is the new Lonnie Pursley thread. I have invited Tina Church; Lonnie's investigator to post some factual info regarding what sent Lonnie to death row; some of the issues in the case that she worked on; why the apeals failed; and how another life was lost to Texecution.
If ANYONE ELSE has any case related or legal related information or comments please feel free to add them to this thread. ) THIS IS NOT A PLACE TO DEBATE ANYTHING else relating to Lonnie Pursley ie his personal emotional life. (there has been far too much discussion of that kind here by the principals involved AS WELL as by people who never knew any of them. All those posts have been deleted.
CCADP and ALL members of our message board extend our regrets to the family of Robert Earl Cook; the victim in the case that sent Lonnie to death row; and to ALL those who knew and loved Lonnie Pursley.
Lonnie Pursley - Executed May 03/2005 - Texas; and remembered with love.
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Post by CCADP on May 27, 2005 11:13:57 GMT -5
Here's a news article from the day afte the execution :
The real problem with Texas' death penalty
The real problem with Texas' death penalty By Russell Cobb Article Tools:Email This ArticlePrint This Article Page 1 of 1
Last night at 6:23 p.m., Lonnie Wayne Pursley became the 342nd person put to death in Texas since 1982.
Pursley never attracted much media attention because his guilt was never seriously in doubt. No one, even Pursley, denied the state's account of his crime.
According to the official record, Pursley, a lifelong drug abuser, was picked up as a hitchhiker on the side of a highway near Livingston in 1997 by Robert Earl Cook, who Pursley robbed and beat to death. Less than two weeks after murdering Cook, Pursley turned himself in and confessed to his crime.
In killing Pursley, the State of Texas did not murder an innocent man. Furthermore, Pursley was not particularly interested in appealing to the media to demonstrate his repentance for his crime. Unlike Karla Faye Tucker, the reborn Christian who appeared on CNN's Larry King Live Show begging then-Gov. George W. Bush for her life, Pursley led a quiet and uneventful stint on death row.
Why, then, should anyone care about Lonnie Wayne Pursley?
Because Pursley, believe it or not, got struck by lightning.
Let me explain.
Most of the passion generated over the death-penalty debate has to do with the question of innocence. No one, not even the most reactionary right-wing nut, wants to see an innocent person put to death by the state. When the former Republican governor of Illinois, George Ryan, commuted his state's 170 death row inmates to life in prison in 2000, he wasn't acting as a newly converted bleeding heart liberal. Evidence strongly suggested numerous inmates might be innocent. Rather than taking a chance on executing an innocent man, Ryan decided to upend the system.
Even George W. Bush, who as governor presided over 152 executions (more than any governor in recent U.S. history), claimed that he personally reviewed each case before an inmate was put to death. Bush said Texas' legal process for the death penalty was a "fail-safe" method of "due process." The idea that the system would never allow for the execution of an innocent man allowed Bush to avoid the moral question of the death penalty altogether.
Understandably, anti-death penalty advocates devote most of their time and resources into disproving Bush's claim that no innocents have been, or will be, killed under the current system.
They focus their efforts on exonerating people like Gary Graham, an African-American executed in 2000 for killing a man outside a Safeway in 1981. The case against Graham rested almost exclusively on testimony from one witness in a parked car 40 feet away.
Rather than devoting all their time and resources into helping people like Tucker and Graham, however, anti-death penalty activists should remember why the Supreme Court originally ruled the practice unconstitutional in 1972 in Furman v. Georgia: Its application is arbitrary and therefore constitutes "cruel and unusual punishment"- a practice banned under the Eighth Amendment.
Receiving a sentence of death in America, Justice Potter Stewart said, is like being "struck by lightning"; for indigent defendants, a death sentence has very little to do with the severity of the crime and a lot to do with the luck of the draw of court-appointed lawyers and judges.
Recent research suggests that, despite the many attempts to "fix" the death penalty, its application is doomed to arbitrariness. David Dow, a University of Houston law professor and director of the Texas Innocence Project, points out in a new book that the death penalty - contrary to conventional wisdom - is not just given to the "worst of the worst."
People who think death row is reserved for the Timothy McVeighs and Hannibal Lecters of the world are sorely mistaken, Dow claims. In fact, death-row inmates normally only have three things in common with one another: bad lawyers, impatient judges and poverty.
While most inmates on death row are guilty of their crimes, they only receive the death penalty because their lawyers and judges have failed to do their jobs. Sometimes, lawyers like Joe Cannon even sleep through capital cases.
Until the death penalty is abolished altogether, lightning will continue to strike people like Lonnie Wayne Pursley. - the Daily Texan
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Mo-DAWG
Settlin' In
Yes... this is the real Mo-DAWG ..
Posts: 47
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Post by Mo-DAWG on May 27, 2005 11:34:02 GMT -5
heaven help that this is not gonna start the next catastrophe...ya know how some people are... Mo-DAWG
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Post by Lili on May 27, 2005 11:39:15 GMT -5
I’ve thought that Lonnie claimed he is innocent..maybe I’ve mixed up…
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Post by Lili on May 27, 2005 11:47:01 GMT -5
I can’t get his last pictures out of my mind. He looked so happy and relaxed..Such a brave man to endure so much so to help his loved ones go through horror of his death..Ave Lonnie!
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Post by CCADP on May 27, 2005 11:50:51 GMT -5
He doesn't say on his page that he's innocent... no where on Lonnie's CCADP page at www.ccadp.org/lonniewaynepursley.htm does he say that he is innocent. What he says is : " FABRICATED this case against me. The record will show that most of the witnesses' testimonty against me was perjured. It will also show that most of the evidence used against me was fabricated, botched, tainted, and yes, even planted ! Evidence! There was also evidence which was overlooked that may have exonerated me from the crime. " This topic was discussed on the Anti death penalty activist list ABOLISH (we don't run that its been around years before we were in this issue) someone on that board who pretends to be against the DP posted something along the lines of stuff like that being an embarrasment to abolitionists. This attorney said : " It is not uncommon for even the most guilty person to believe that they were "guilty but framed". Put another way, they are guilty but believe they didn't receive a fair trial. No where in Lonnie's statement quoted above does he claim he is innocent. Rather, he is expressing frustration in not receiving what he perceived to be a fair trial and resulting death sentence. As far as facts go, he may be right. His was a marginal dp case. In comparative moral culpability, a lot more malignant people end up not getting death. His crime, as deplorable & despicable as it was, was not that of a Dahmer or Manson. He undoubtedly knew his was a marginal dp case, felt he received less fairness in the proceedings than he was due, and was unhappy about it. His writings are not that of someone screaming innocence, but regret over being unluckiness to being dealt a losing hand from he death prosecution deck." ********was what I said elsewhere.... I've heard more details since from Tina - Lonnie was invovled and did beat the man up but was not the killer. I don't know the exacts - but Tina (investigator in the case) will be posting some info addressing all this.
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Post by tinachurch on May 27, 2005 12:12:09 GMT -5
When I agreed to take a look a Lonnie's case, like so many others he had been fast tracked through the system with legal questions that had not been addressed. I will remind all of you that on June 1, 2000 then Govenor Bush said "every person on my watch has had a fair trial and a full review".
Well, folks that did not happen. Lonnie's trial attorneys missed a great opportunity to attack the actual innocence claim at that time, but dropped the ball. Mitigation was a non issue.
What was found at the end was this: The Medical Examinier that testified during Lonnie's trial was found to have been fired from the Harris Co. M.E.'s office for "sloppy work", and this is what is called a Brady claim as this was withheld from the defense at the time of the trial. As we all know the M.E.'s information regarding any autopsy attacks the crucial points of a case--the victim. There was a problem with the time of death that did not match with what the M.E. was saying.
Needless to say, the lack of investigation duriing the most critical times prevented this issue that could have proved Lonnie's innocence was procedurally barred.
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Post by truth1 on May 31, 2005 10:13:08 GMT -5
Here's a news article from the day afte the execution : The real problem with Texas' death penalty The real problem with Texas' death penalty By Russell Cobb Article Tools:Email This ArticlePrint This Article Page 1 of 1 When the former Republican governor of Illinois, George Ryan, commuted his state's 170 death row inmates to life in prison in 2000, he wasn't acting as a newly converted bleeding heart liberal. - the Daily Texan Nope. He was acting as a lame duck.
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Post by mikebook on May 31, 2005 10:15:33 GMT -5
And he did it to deflect attention from some misdeeds in office...
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