|
Post by happyhaddock on Sept 2, 2007 12:37:03 GMT -5
I can't help but wonder if Perry's predecessor made a nasty phone call to him after the sentence was commuted... If you understand Bush's psychology, no. He wouldn't care.
|
|
|
Post by happyhaddock on Aug 9, 2006 23:48:04 GMT -5
Sorry, I have no idea why that just happened. Do you agree with the verdict, Charlie? I logged onto the fratpack website you mentioned in the debate section!! But you are not the DJ with a talk show? Your name is just Charlie Tuna, right? Don't worry, I'm not gonna look you up or anything. You cant find out much with just a persons first and last name, unless you know the state they live in, and you don't have to tell me that. It's just nice to know your name is Charlie. No, my name isn't really Charlie. I'm just going with the 'fish motif'. Yes, that was finally the right verdict. There are saner people than her living over steam grates and talking to invisible aliens.
|
|
|
Post by happyhaddock on Aug 3, 2006 15:26:19 GMT -5
Yes, I heard that after her 4th or 5th child she was put in a mental hospital because she was trying to commit suicide. It's one thing to be suicidal, but to want to kill your own children or any child is unthinkable. I cant even imagine how anyone could have the frame of mind to do that. There was a guy in Eastern Europe who cut off his own penis to win a bet (Jay Leno). Apparently he was a heavy gambler (I couldn't help wondering if it was a double or nothing bet). And he wasn't insane (I assume). My only question - if Andrea isn't crazy, who is? Every time they dope her up to the point where she becomes sane she remembers what she did and goes crazy again.
|
|
|
Post by happyhaddock on Jun 5, 2006 22:22:54 GMT -5
www.aetv.com/listings/episode_details.do?episodeid=168041American Justice: 212 - Playing With Fire Kenny Richey is scheduled to die for setting a fire designed to kill his ex-girlfriend that wound up killing a 2-year-old child. But with no witnesses and the little existing physical evidence tainted by investigators, Richey's was not an open-and-shut arson case. Seventeen years later, Scottish-born Richey, represented by an ineffective public defender at trial, continues to proclaim his innocence from a death-row cell in Ohio. But his execution may be only months away and time is running out.
|
|
|
Post by happyhaddock on Apr 9, 2008 9:17:33 GMT -5
SPEAKOUT: Debunking the top 10 myths of jury trialsBy Richard J. Crawford Saturday, April 5, 2008The public holds many misconceptions regarding the criminal justice system. Here are the top 10 myths of jury trials: 1. Your only chance as a defendant is to have lots of money. This is largely false, primarily because as many as 80 percent of those charged with a crime are rigorously defended by public defenders or court-appointed attorneys. Believe it or not, if you have just enough money to hire your own trial lawyer, you might end up with a less effective defense lawyer than if you had very little money and were lucky enough to live in Colorado and receive representation from a career and free public defender. 2. Innocence will protect you in a criminal trial. Regrettably, this is usually not the case. Specifically, for anyone who faces a jury, there is roughly an 85 percent chance that the trial will end up with a conviction. Tim Masters just might have something to say on this subject. Studies indicate that from 7 percent to 10 percent of those in prison today are actually innocent persons who got caught in this process. 3. Lawyers prefer jurors with little formal education. The answer here is that it depends. There are instances like the recent Nacchio case when the issues are sufficiently complicated that both sides prefer very bright jurors. And, yes, there are other instances when the defendant is a barroom fighter of sorts and the defense would prefer to have jurors just like him who can identify with him. 4. Defendants should always take the stand in their own defense. While all defendants have the absolute right to testify on their own behalf, frequently they do not exercise that right. And there is no doubt but that jurors often reason: "If he didn't do it, why doesn't he take the stand and say so?" On the other hand, there is a long list of very good reasons why a particular defendant should say nothing during his or her trial. For example, an innocent defendant may have once been convicted of a felony and the jury would learn that prejudicial fact only if that defendant decided to testify. 5. Juries sometimes find defendants innocent. No, this cannot happen anywhere in these United States. "Guilty" or "not guilty" are the only two options open to an American jury. Sometimes juries believe that a defendant committed the act as charged, but that it was not proved beyond a reasonable doubt by the state, so they vote "not guilty" as a way of saying, "not proved." Sometimes juries think a defendant did not commit any crime and they vote "not guilty," meaning "innocent." 6. Defense lawyers who defend those they know to be guilty are unethical. No, a person charged with a crime is never guilty unless and until a jury has said so and a judge has affirmed same. Our Constitution guarantees everyone the right to a vigorous defense or testing of the evidence and it would actually be illegal and unethical if a defendant were denied this right. 7. A trial is about discovering the truth. No, the truth may be that a good young man broke the law when he went for the first time with a group who committed a robbery. But justice might say he should get another chance. The truth may be that a wife killed her violent husband, but justice might say she should not give up her freedom for that act. Trials are always about justice and the truth may be a part of getting there, but justice is the goal. 8. Jurors deliberate in the classic sense until they reach their final verdict. The requirement for a unanimous verdict means that jurors usually only deliberate during the first stages of their time together. Ninety percent of the time, the majority overcomes the minority in order to get that unanimous verdict. Make no mistake about it, eight or nine jurors can and do exert enormous pressure on three or four holdouts to get a verdict that will wrap it up and get everyone home. 9. Evidence drives the outcome of jury verdicts. Actually, when the evidence on either side of a case is overwhelming, a verdict can be pretty predictable. The reality is, however, that deals are almost always struck when one side or the other has a huge evidence advantage. Thus, since a majority of trials could go either way, the final verdict is often determined by nonevidentiary factors. Two such factors include the quality of the lawyers and the pro-conviction predisposition of most jurors. 10. When a jury votes guilty, that is final. No verdict is ever final until the judge says so. In fact, although it is rare, the trial judge can set aside a guilty verdict with the tap of his or her gavel. Of course, any guilty verdict can also be appealed to a higher court. Richard J. Crawford, Ph.D., is a founder and past national president of the American Society of Trial Consultants and has served as a trial consultant in more than 400 trials. He is a resident of Denver.
|
|
|
Post by happyhaddock on Apr 6, 2008 13:34:23 GMT -5
Consensus on Counting the Innocent: We Can’tBy ADAM LIPTAK Published: March 25, 2008 A couple of years ago, Justice Antonin Scalia, concurring in a Supreme Court death penalty decision, took stock of the American criminal justice system and pronounced himself satisfied. The rate at which innocent people are convicted of felonies is, he said, less than three-hundredths of 1 percent — .027 percent, to be exact. That rate, he said, is acceptable. “One cannot have a system of criminal punishment without accepting the possibility that someone will be punished mistakenly,” he wrote. “That is a truism, not a revelation.” But there is reason to question Justice Scalia’s math. He had, citing the methodology of an Oregon prosecutor, divided an estimate of the number of exonerated prisoners, almost all of them in murder and rape cases, by the total of all felony convictions. “By this logic,” Samuel R. Gross, a law professor at the University of Michigan, wrote in a response to be published in this year’s Annual Review of Law and Social Science, “we could estimate the proportion of baseball players who’ve used steroids by dividing the number of major league players who’ve been caught by the total of all baseball players at all levels: major league, minor league, semipro, college and Little League — and maybe throwing in football and basketball players as well.” Joshua Marquis, the Oregon prosecutor cited by Justice Scalia, granted the logic of Professor Gross’s critique but not his conclusion. “He correctly points out,” Mr. Marquis, the district attorney in Clatsop County, Ore., said of Professor Gross, “that rape and murders are only a small percentage of all crimes, but then has absolutely no real data to suggest there are epidemic false convictions in, say, burglary cases.” What the debate demonstrates is that we know almost nothing about the number of innocent people in prison. That is because any effort to estimate it involves extrapolation from just two numbers, neither one satisfactory. There have been 214 exonerations based on DNA evidence, almost all of them in rape cases, according to the Innocence Project at the Cardozo School of Law. But there is no obvious control group to measure these exonerations against. Virginia, though, has discovered thousands of closed rape files from 1973 through 1988, many with untested biological evidence. DNA testing of a preliminary sample of 31 of them yielded two wrongful convictions. Those numbers are too small to be reliable, of course, but they would suggest a false conviction rate of 6 percent. Even that rate may be low, said Shawn Armbrust, the executive director of the Mid-Atlantic Innocence Project. Ms. Armbrust said investigators in Virginia were able to get results in only 22 of the 31 tests, suggesting a false conviction rate of 9 percent. The other important number comes from death row. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, 127 death row inmates have been exonerated. Here we do have a control group. There have been more than 7,000 death sentences since the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976. But exoneration in the capital context is a funny concept. It suggests complete vindication, but its real meaning is generally narrower. DNA evidence in a rape case can provide something like categorical proof of innocence. Death row exonerations, on the other hand, can be based on all sorts of things, like, say, prosecutorial misconduct. In other words, it is possible to wrongfully convict a guilty defendant. Mr. Marquis, the Oregon prosecutor cited by Justice Scalia, says the number of authentic death row exonerations is more like 30. Many people exonerated in the legal sense, he said, in fact committed the crime but could not be proved guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Professor Gross thinks the number of guilty people released from death row is very small. Professor Gross concluded that the false conviction rate for death row inmates has ranged from 2.3 percent to 5 percent. Were even the lower end of that range applied to people who received prison sentences of a year or more in the last three decades, he wrote, it would suggest that about 185,000 innocent people have served hard time. But extrapolating from capital crimes to felonies generally is problematic whatever the number of exonerations. On the one hand, there is some reason to think that homicide cases yield what Justice David H. Souter, dissenting in that same death penalty decision two years ago, called “an unusually high incidence of false conviction, probably owing to the combined difficulty of investigating without help from the victim, intense pressure to get convictions in homicide cases and the corresponding incentive for the guilty to frame the innocent.” On the other, as Justice Scalia responded, capital cases “are given especially close scrutiny at every level.” We are left with an uneasy agreement between Professor Gross and Mr. Marquis on at least one point. “Once we move beyond murder and rape cases,” Professor Gross wrote, “we know very little about any aspect of false conviction.” But a few general lessons can be drawn nonetheless. Black men are more likely to be falsely convicted of rape than are white men, particularly if the victim is white. Juveniles are more likely to confess falsely to murder. Exonerated defendants are less likely to have serious criminal records. People who maintain their innocence are more likely to be innocent. The longer it takes to solve a crime, the more likely the defendant is not guilty. Justice Scalia, for his part, focused on what he saw as good news. “Reversal of an erroneous conviction,” he wrote, “demonstrates not the failure of the system but its success.” Online: Documents and an archive of Adam Liptak’s articles: www.nytimes.com/adamliptak
|
|
|
Post by happyhaddock on Apr 1, 2008 21:09:08 GMT -5
ACLU BlogMonday, March 31, 2008Death, Taxes...and Dry Cleaning?Heads up, Californians. Your state's death row is a money pit, and the government is throwing tons of taxpayer cash into it despite a wealth of evidence that it is a bad investment. On Friday, the ACLU of Northern California released two reports on the state's capital punishment system. The Hidden Death Tax reveals for the first time the exorbitant cost of death penalty trials. In its analysis, the report tallies up a total post-conviction prosecution and law enforcement bill of $117 million to California taxpayers every year. And it's no wonder the price is so steep, when you consider all of the hours prosecutors work on these cases. In the death penalty trial of Scott Peterson, for example, prosecution staff spent more than 20,000 hours on the case. In the death penalty trial of Rex Allen Krebs, prosecution staff spent more than 8,700 hours on the case. In the non-death penalty trial, prosecution staff logged only 1,600 hours. The report also finds that executing all of the people currently on death row, or waiting for them to die there of other causes,will cost Californians an estimated $4 billion more than if they had been sentenced to life in prison. In fact, merely housing prisoners on death row costs the state $90,000 more per year, per inmate, than housing them with the general prison population. The Hidden Death Tax also reveals some startling figures that you wouldn't expect to find on an expense sheet for prosecuting a death penalty case. But there it is, on Page 26 of the report, a dry-cleaning bill of $937.45, and a $387 worth of oil changes, car washes and smog checks. The second report, Death by Geography, looks at county-by-county disparities in death sentencing. For instance, the report finds that a resident of Alameda county is eight times more likely to be sentenced to death than a resident of nearby Santa Clara. And counties that sentence people to death do not experience lower homicide rates or higher rates of solving homicides. What pursuing a death sentence does do is waste money that could be used for important programs that are proven to effect positive changes in crime and violence, like hiring more teachers for the public schools or more CHP officers to stop drunk drivers. California’s death penalty is arbitrary, ineffective and a waste of critical resources. What's that other familiar saying? Three strikes and you're out?
|
|
|
Post by happyhaddock on Feb 27, 2008 13:02:36 GMT -5
Eddie Lee Howard: Mississippi's Next Exoneration?Radley Balko - February 17, 2008, 6:21pmNow that Kennedy Brewer and Levon Brooks have been freed, the Innocence Project is calling for a criminal investigation into Dr. Michael West. Peter Neufeld is asking that every case in which West has ever testified be reviewed. The linked article notes that there are 20 or more Mississippians in prison right now due at least in part to West's testimony. West still stands by his testimony. He's now saying that even if Brooks and Brewer did not commit the two murders a third man has since confessed to committing, his testimony wasn't incorrect: Brewer and Brooks still bit those little girls. To believe West, you'd have to believe that in two cases that occurred at about the same time, two men living just miles apart coincidentally each repeatedly bit a little girl in their care just hours before a third man unknown to either of them abducted, raped, and killed said little girls. Alternately, you could believe that Dr. West is a quack who makes sh*t up. I know which theory my money's on. The next case involving the unholy triumvirate of West, Hayne, and District Attorney Forrest Allgood that may embarrass Mississippi is that of Eddie Lee Howard, currently on death row in Parchman for the gruesome murder of an elderly woman. The assailant stabbed the woman to death, then set her house on fire and left her to burn. Dr. Hayne testified at trial that the woman was also raped, though no semen or second-party blood or pubic hair showed up in the rape kit. Hayne did not find any bite marks. The victim was buried. In a now-familiar pattern, Hayne then brought his buddy Dr. West onto the case. Three days later, the police detained Howard without a warrant, then immediately took him to Dr. West's dental practice, where West took an impression of Howard's teeth. Police then exhumed the victim, at which point West once again claimed to find bite marks no one else could see. He then noted there were similarities between Mr. Howard's dental impression and the bite marks he said he'd found on the burned body. There was no biological evidence linking Howard to the crime scene. The sole evidence against him was West's testimony and the testimony of a police investigator who says Howard basically confessed to him, though the investigator never asked Howard to sign a statement of confession, nor is there any recording of it. Eddie Lee Howard clearly has some psychological problems. The Mississippi Supreme Court granted him a new trial in 1997 after finding the trial court improperly allowed Howard, who is mentally ill, to represent himself in his own murder trial. Howard was convicted in the second trial, too. In 2006, the Mississippi State Supreme Court upheld the second conviction, and explicitly refused to throw out Dr. West's testimony. This was well after West's credibility had been thoroughly dismantled in the national media, after DNA proved he'd been wrong in the Kennedy Brewer case, and after he'd been thrown out of several professional organizations. Bizarrely, the court determined that it was Howard's fault his attorney didn't call an expert witness to rebut West's testimony but that, at the same time, the fact that his attorney didn't didn't amount to ineffective assistance of counsel. After acknowledging that Howard's new lawyers filed piles and piles of affidavits from experts explaining that Dr. West is basically a quack, the court awkwardly came to this conclusion: Just because Dr. West has been wrong a lot, does not mean, without something more, that he was wrong here.
If Howard is cleared, it will be the fourth (that I know of) murder exoneration involving District Attorney Forrest Allgood. Three of those people were sentenced to death. It will be the third (that I know of) involving Dr. Hayne and Dr. West. I'm investigating several others. The Innocence Project chapters in Mississippi and New York are, too.
|
|
|
Post by happyhaddock on Jan 13, 2008 20:17:48 GMT -5
.... Who are the sick ones? The ones who kill or the onces who protect them? The sickest of all are those who scream their rage and their desire for bloody revenge - as long as it is imposed by others. "No man is an island, entire of itself...any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee."
|
|
|
Post by happyhaddock on Jan 1, 2008 2:06:10 GMT -5
Always knew my hime state of MA had good common sense Or sad experience:- From the excellent CLEWS The Historic True Crime BlogWomen and the Death Penalty in Massachusetts, An Historical Review: Or Why Lizzie Borden Wasn’t Hanged, Nor Anyone Else There of LateAt the time Lizzie Borden faced the death penalty for the murder of her folks in August, 1892—for hanging was the mandatory penalty for murder in Massachusetts--the conviction of a woman for murder was an idea so thoroughly foreign to Massachusetts jurisprudence that it is hard to find a prior example. To determine whether that state’s government executed any women since the debacle of the witchcraft trials exactly 200 years before Lizzie’s trial, one has to consult history books so old that the edges of the pages dissolve under the fingertips into a velvety dust. As of 1893, the year of Miss Borden’s trial, Massachusetts had hanged only two women in the past 114 years. (Actually, they might have hanged Rachel Wall there in 1789, as some accounts give the location of Wall’s execution as Massachusetts, but she was a murderous pirate, a category of its own.) In both of these old cases, things went quite badly. The first botched execution was in 1778 when Bathsheba Spooner, the daughter of a prominent but unpopular judge, was put to death for murder. Bathsheba and her lover desired the death of her repulsive husband. Two British soldiers happened by with such services to offer. Unluckily for Bathsheba, the Brits later bragged about their exploits. The trial lasted one day. Given her unfortunate name, Biblical parallels were easily drawn, and they set a quick date on which she’d be publicly hanged in Worcester for her part in the affair. Bathsheba Spooner pleaded her belly. There was considerable debate about, and examination of, same. On one hand, her pregnancy, if true, explained her sudden need to kill old Joshua Spooner. On the other, the physical signs were apparently lacking. They decided she was lying. Bathseba immediately filed a petition to reverse the decision, stating that "I am absolutely certain of being in a pregnant state.... What I bear, and clearly perceive to be animated, is innocent of the faults of her who bears it, and has, I beg leave to say, a right to the existence which God hath begun to give it." Her plea was denied, and they hanged Bathsheba with her co-conspirators. Only then did they learn the devastating news that Bathsheba was, in fact, five months pregnant when the murderess and the innocent son she carried were executed. The authorities had violated one of the most ancient maxims of English and Roman law: quot praegnantis mulieris damnatae paena differatur, quoad pariat; or, if a capitally condemned woman is barely with child, she shall be executed, but if she is quick with child, execution shall be staid until she is delivered. More than four decades passed before the state again decided to hang a woman--with even more disastrous results, as difficult as that is to imagine. In 1831, Mary Johnson, a 22-year-old servant girl, was convicted of slitting the throats of her elderly master and mistress while they lay in bed. As they hanged her--yes, dear readers, this is the account: as she was being dropped, the actual murderer confessed to killing the old couple. So convincing was he that Mary was cut down. They set about reviving her, perhaps mindful of the tradition that says anyone who survives a hanging must be pardoned, guilty or not, but to the lasting horror of all, she was irretrievably dead. Thus the Commonwealth had a shameful record of executing the innocent. Massachusetts’ long struggle with the death penalty had left a strong taint on capital punishment, which became not a deterrent to murder, but a deterrent to convicting a woman of murder, as some nineteenth-century acquittals showed. So the officials overseeing justice in the Borden matter faced devilish questions. Did such deplorable precedents give women license to kill? Could the state ignore its past and convict the guilty? Well, you know the answers.
|
|
|
Post by happyhaddock on Dec 1, 2007 20:04:43 GMT -5
In Day's words, Canada will refrain from opposing executions of Canadian citizens only in "democratic countries that support the rule of law." One could argue that the USA is neither of those.
|
|
|
Post by happyhaddock on Jan 27, 2008 14:24:08 GMT -5
I still think Scott Peterson did it...but then again it is just a feeling. However, I also feel they rushed the case and they could have done more then what they did to get a conviction. It's cases such as Scott Peterson's that I will not try unless there is at least workable piece of evidence that can convict them...like what you had mentioned. Although it would be nice to find the person who murdererd a loved one, many cases are still open looking for the person, still in the process of investigation or have gone cold. However my point is people think that everything is like CSI..and how they always get the bad guy. My opinion is that Scott could actually be guilty...but how they tried him etc. puts doubt in peoples mind. I think like the OJ Simpson case, Scott Peterson Case and even with Karla Homolka they screwed up. They shouldn't have rushed it, they should have not done a stupid trail..getting OJ to try on a leather glove that was sitting in blood..hello everyone except for the prosecuters knew that the glove would shrink...like seriously...stupid. No, he could not have done it. Just the fact that the prosecution could not come up with a plausible theory of how he could have done should have been enough to find him not guilty. The total lack of evidence of guilt, and the mountain of evidence of innocence were also enough. Sadly he didn't get a jury of unbiased citizens, he got a self appointed lynch mob who never considered the possibility of his innocence for a moment. Shame on all involved. See another9912.googlepages.com/theoddsand another9912.googlepages.com/theassumptionsfor more.
|
|
|
Post by happyhaddock on Jan 25, 2008 23:06:30 GMT -5
Well I don't know why they would do that but when i become a prosecuter i'm going to do it by the book. That means present a case. I wouldn't try someone if all the evidence was circumstancial and that there isn't anything to prove that he or she did it. BTW it isn't only the prosecuter...its the corners, the police and so on. And the judges. However there is nothing wrong with circumstantial evidence. Circumstantial evidence is GREAT evidence. Direct (i.e. eye witness) evidence is often very unreliable. In the Scott Peterson case, for example, what almost all failed to appreciate is that there was NO circumstantial evidence against Peterson, all of it was in his favor. If they had found her body in his locked warehouse, or a big bloodstain in the house, the truck or the boat he'd be toast. What they found was NO evidence against him. The fact that they took 5 months to prosecute a one week case shows that the prosecution knew that too, and were trying to cover up for it. The jury remarked on how boring it was to listen to endless trivia that added nothing to the case. This gave the illusion of evidence where there was none. In the end, all they had to judge him on was that he lied to Frey for whatever reason. What he never did do was confess to her OR say he loved her. She was merely slander - she proved nothing about murder. That is not circumstantial evidence of anything, except, perhaps, poor taste.
|
|
|
Post by happyhaddock on Jan 25, 2008 18:09:25 GMT -5
... It is not the job of the prosecuter to win the case fyi. ... You are laboring under a misapprehension. Far too many prosecutors believe their job is just that - to win at any cost and to hell with the law and their ethics. They suborn perjury, bribe witnesses, hide evidence and try by any means to defeat the defense. They take an oath not to do that - and then do exactly that, knowing they will face no penalty if they are found out.
|
|
|
Post by happyhaddock on Jan 25, 2008 6:22:12 GMT -5
No one should be given less justice...because that is not fair. However if a family wants to address the killer in court then they should be allowed too. People grieve differently and for some its having an impact statement. That is not the purpose of a criminal prosecution. It is typical of the desire to get what you want and to hell with justice.
|
|