State Of Texas Executes Innocent Man

The Central Scrutinizer said:
All available evidence points to him being innocent!
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Um, from the link you provided:

"Evidence at the trial of Reese, who acknowledged dealing crack cocaine for years, showed that his 18-year-old girlfriend walked out of the convenience store and drew the attention of several men.

Reese became angry, and the couple left, met up with three other people and got handguns and assault rifles. The girlfriend, Kareema Kimbrough, drove them back to the store, and the gunmen sprayed the scene with bullets.

Detectives found ammunition in Reese's car that matched bullets at the scene."
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Do you have another source with more evidence? (I can't really make a determination from this article alone, but at least some of the evidence points to him being guilty.)
 
TonyL said:
Um, from the link you provided:



Do you have another source with more evidence? (I can't really make a determination from this article alone, but at least some of the evidence points to him being guilty.)
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I am going to assume by the number of posts you have made up to this point on this forum (45), that you are unfamiliar with Central Scrutinizer's sense of humor/sarcasm. :D
 
I find it telling (and chilling) that the people who are most for the death penalty tend to be the same ones who are least interested in protecting the innocent.

I used to be in favor of the death penalty and protecting the innocent. Then I realized just how screwed up our injustice system is. I have no moral problems with the death penalty for the guilty but I understand that we do not adequately determine innocence. It is unthinkably unlikely that the US has not executed a few innocent people recently. I have no idea who they are but the odds are overwhelming in favor of it occurring.

The two biggest problems are:
1) Prosecutors buy evidence from convicted felons and established liars by cutting their jail terms. By some bizarre logic it is illegal to pay people money to testify but OK to buy them with freedom.
2) Prosecutor extort confession from people buy threatening exorbitant jail time for minor crimes if the suspect has the audacity to plead innocent. In my area, an man was arrested on crime that had a maximum of 1 year in jail. After pleading innocent, he was immediately charge with crimes with a penalty of 9 1/2 years. It is illegal to threaten to beat a confession out of someone but OK to threaten someone with excessive jail terms. (In the case I mentioned, the police never looked for evidence of innocence. Finally his lawyer found a convenience store surveillance video which conclusively proved no crime had been committed. He had been in jail for two months because he could not make bail. Typical.)

CBL
 
TonyL said:
Um, from the link you provided:



Do you have another source with more evidence? (I can't really make a determination from this article alone, but at least some of the evidence points to him being guilty.)
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Why do you ignore overwhelming evidence of his innocence?

"I do not know all of your names and I don't know how you feel about me," he said, addressing the victims' relatives. "And whether you believe it or not, I did not kill them."
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I believe him. He only shot them, it was the bullets that did the actual killing.
 
CBL4 said:
1) Prosecutors buy evidence from convicted felons and established liars by cutting their jail terms. By some bizarre logic it is illegal to pay people money to testify but OK to buy them with freedom.
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I agree it's a conflict of interest. But what's the alternative? Some guy who may know something is in jail for the rest of his life. "How about you testify against this guy?" "I'll talk if you let me out in 20 years, which is to say, 3 years since I've spent 17 in already."

"No, I'm sorry, we can't do that."

"Well, f-off and die, then."


No jailbird is gonna sing out of a sense of obligation to do their civic duty.
 
CBL4 said:
I find it telling (and chilling) that the people who are most for the death penalty tend to be the same ones who are least interested in protecting the innocent.
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I agree with you, but I would put it like this - I find it chilling that the people most for the death penalty tend to be least interested in executing the actually guilty.

I wonder if there has ever been a case where two people have been executed for the same crime - first, a falsely accused person later found to be innocent and then later, the person who actually commited the crime? I wonder would prosecutors prefer to let a guilty murderer walk than own up to having been responsible for the death of an innocent person.
 
So whats new? isn't the first won't be the last until the US abandons this revenge based jsutice system.
 
CBL4 said:
Prosecutors buy evidence from convicted felons and established liars by cutting their jail terms. By some bizarre logic it is illegal to pay people money to testify but OK to buy them with freedom.
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There are plenty of situations in which it's perfectly lawful to pay people money to testify. Expert defense witnesses receive big bucks, for example.

Your point about what we call "jailhouse snitches" and similar witnesses is well taken. Still, our judicial system obviously recognizes the potentially powerful incentive these people have to lie, and accordingly applies a number of special safeguards designed to protect the rights and interests of the accused where such testimony is being used.
 
billydkid said:
I agree with you, but I would put it like this - I find it chilling that the people most for the death penalty tend to be least interested in executing the actually guilty.
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This probably becomes more likely with the heinousness of the crime. I wonder how often jurors, or witnesses for that matter, conflate their feelings of outrage at the crime itself (such as a very brutal murder or child killing) with the likelihood that defendent may be guilty, one example being when Bruno Hauptmann was railroaded for death of the Lindbergh baby.
 
Dcdrac said:
So whats new? isn't the first won't be the last until the US abandons this revenge based jsutice system.
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I don't think it is necessarily 'revenge based' ,but more of a 'we don't know how to stop these people from doing it again-but they can't live here, and the only way to absolutely prevent further problem is to eliminate them' kind of thing.

And yes, we have the finest government and justice systems that money can buy.
 
Dcdrac said:
So whats new? isn't the first won't be the last until the US abandons this revenge based jsutice system.
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What is justice if not revenge? The only difference is the doer of it.

This is Thursday, and as such, I'm against the death penalty. In less than 2 hours, I'll be for it again.

Only on Sundays have I no opinion.

So...what day did they do the actual justice? If it was Saturday, Tuesday or Thursday, I think they should have reconsidered until either a Monday, Wednesday or Friday. Just my opinion.
 
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