I can’t believe I actually have to ask this, but this morning on DC101 they were talking about the person executed last night. They were talking about how at one point he had a heart attack and they revived him. Someone called in and said they had to revive him because otherwise his name would be cleared of the charges. The logic being that he did not serve out his time in prison.
This pegged my BS meter so far I think I broke the glass, but a number of other people called in and said it was true.
So, my question is, is this really true? I for one can’t believe it but I have to ask. And two where the hell do people come up with this crap?
As best I know, it’s false. He had been sentenced. I think there have been cases where someone died between conviction and sentencing where they were (technically) cleared.
I’m sure there will be lawyers meandering into this thread eventually.
No expert in this shit, but I think the fact that he COULD have been cleared between the time of the heart attack and the execution is more like it. They usually appeal right up to the end, and he had an appeal pending. Plus, the sentence doesn’t include “letting” a guy die. They have to kill him themselves. Helluva country we live in, huh?
I don’t think so. Look at this document of death penalty statistics (PDF)
Check appendix table 2 on page 14, showing the final results of all sentences. There are seperate columns for executed/ other death/ conviction overturned. It would seem that an early death does NOT clear his name.
This may be about the severity of the heart attack. I had heard* someone postulate that if a person sentenced to be executed has a medical trauma which causes their heart to stop then they cannot be executed. Rationale being that if their heart stops then they are dead so how would you kill a person twice? Presumably this would have predated modern medical efficiency. I don’t think they would have their name cleared though.
This may just be so much BS though since i can’t recall where i heard about it and whether it was being discussed as a true fact or a ‘hey look what those crazy legal folks dreamed up’ type of conversation.
*Cite? Why it was the wee blue men from Venus of course.
That’s the point, I don’t think it would, but the reason they gave was because he wouldn’t have finished his sentence. It was just strange that more then one nut was calling in to say the same thing.
People are sometimes sentenced to hundreds of years in prison. They never finish their sentences. By the same logic as above, these people would also clear their names when they die. It doesn’t make any sense.
As Qadgop will confirm, a prisoner on death row will get the exact same medical care that any other patient will get. They don’t withhold medical care from prisoners on death row.
But that’s just because the doctors aren’t judge, jury, excututioner, governor, review board, or legislature. There’s always a chance the prisoner could be exonerated, pardoned, or granted clemency, right up to the minute the death sentence is carried out.
And the “if your heart stops you’re dead” argument is simply laughable. No doctor is going to declare you legally dead just because your heart stopped for a while, that’s ludicrous.
It is indeed laughable but if i (a non-US citizen) have heard of it then perhaps the people mentioned in the OP also have? That might explain where they got their ideas from.
Come on. The decision usually reads something like “You are sentenced to die by lethal injection”. Yeah, he may have been clinically dead, but was it a lethal injection? They aren’t repeating the sentence since a heart attack wasn’t what he was sentenced to.
could you perhaps just mosey down from that horse? it looks awfully high!
I did not say i believed this. Actually i said it was pretty ludicrous. But i have heard it as a possible explanation for why a person sentenced to die would be released. And i have also said that if i (non US citizen remember?) had heard it then perhaps the persons mentioned in the OP had heard the same story and that was why they had called the radio (i assume) station.
