The defenders of the Death Penalty, just like the defenders of Big Tobacco 30 years ago, can take advantage of the general public’s lack of intuitive understanding of statistics to cloud the issue.
And here I’d been hoping #8 was a joke.
See:
While DNA evidence is, in the abstract, better than fingerprints and ballistics, there are so many ways it can be misused.
People hate to see someone get away with murder, and jumping to conclusions is all too human.
You’re missing the point. The point is that the degree to which the DP acts as a deterrent is lessened by moving the punishment so far away from the crime. It would have maximum deterrence effect (whatever maximum X is) but having it linked closer and closer to the crime.
How close to sentencing do you think the execution should be?
I read about this in a Ta-Nehisi Coates article once; very sad story. Simply an official lynching. Of a child no less. 
Cite that Willingham confessed to anyone? Oh wait, you won’t find any; all you’ll find are people who say that he confessed. You’ll find no actual confession.
Really than please produce reliable cites of him “confessing”.
How dare you question the reliability of jailhouse snitches.
Yeah, what’s next, impugning the reputations of Catholic priests?
Here’s a list of people executed in the U.S. since 1989 whose cases are weak:
Here’s a webpage with many links about why jailhouse snitches can’t be trusted:
http://www.law.northwestern.edu/legalclinic/wrongfulconvictions/issues/perjury/
Huh?
What, specifically, do you think an “actual confession” is?
So in other words, he actually confessed to people.
You’re actually defending this kangaroo execution. Here I always though hindsight was 20/20; Christ, 70 years of distance and some are still blind.
Yes, I’m defending the execution of an admitted triple murderer.
Apologies then.
For someone who seems to love law enforcement so much, you have little respect for due process and actual law.
Now you know the difference between loving law enforcement and loving law enforcers.
I am pretty thoroughly familiar with the Jim Crow abuses of the legal system (such as the large number of black men executed - executed - for “assault on a white woman,” which was a separate crime from rape and most sexual assault. There is absolutely no question that the whole era 1890-1940 or so is a stain on a stain on a mark of shame on US history and culture.
But I am mildly disturbed at the assumption, implicit and sometimes stated, that no person of color committed a capital crime in that era - that all such trials, convictions and executions were racist injustice. Even in the OP case, the only exonerating evidence is that the boy’s sister or family says they were with him all that day… and of course, no actually guilty person has ever had a family member perjure themselves in an attempt to protect them.
Vacating the conviction is probably the correct move. But saying the boy was innocent is pretty much baseless sentiment - we can never know the truth of that day. Maybe he *did *beat down two nasty little girls who called him names or threatened him.
The man was given a fair trial before a jury of his peers. He was found guilty and sentenced to death. He received all the appeals that he was entitled to, none of them resulted in a different verdict, and his sentence was carried out.
At what point was “due process and actual law” disregarded?
Well said. He seems to forget that law enforcers are made up of the same fallible human beings as any profession. If it’s reasonable to hold doctors, lawyers, mechanics etc to a professional standard and enforce consequences when there someone screws up or goes against policy, then why is unreasonable to hold LEO the same?