Kenneth McDuff, one of the worst serial killers in Texas history. McDuff’s release was massive, catastrophic screwup that led to a overhaul of the Texas parole system.
Texas Monthly story: Free to Kill
And the prosecution in that case did prove his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Hamlet pointed out that the BBC documentary may have shaded their recitation by not revealing the true strength of the prosecution’s case. His post outlined some of the actual evidence adduced at trial which was used to show the accused was guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.
In the US doing anything that can be labeled “soft on crime” does not create positive press. Ryan simply did the right thing - being a crook doesn’t mean that everything he did was corrupt.
Thanks for the link.
From the article:
“So why did a 1989 parole board—fully aware of McDuff’s criminal history and cognizant that the jury that found him guilty of murder also found that he was likely to kill again—decide to put him back among us? The quick answer is that by 1989 Kenneth McDuff was no longer a name or even a case history; he was just a number. Two years before, Bill Clements, the parole board, and the prison system had decided that to prevent Texas prisons from becoming overcrowded in violation of court-imposed ceilings, 750 inmates a week had to be paroled. That meant the fifteen members of the parole board (the number was elevated to eighteen in 1989) had to interview and study the files of at least 1,000 inmates every five working days. Old-timers like McDuff, convicts whose names came up year after year, weren’t even interviewed anymore but were lumped with similar inmates in special review groups. Their files—if board members bothered to study them at all—contained only the most basic and banal information, hardly anything to suggest the true nature of an inmate. By the time McDuff was paroled, eight of every ten parole applications were being approved, and the system was still falling behind. All the good risks for parole had been exhausted; the parole board was getting down to the bottom of the barrel. And then the bottom was lowered: Time was awarded so liberally that an inmate could get credit for serving one full year in just 22 days. In a prison system with a capacity of 60,000 inmates, more than 36,000 received paroles in 1989, the year Kenneth McDuff went free. The goal of the state became not to keep the streets safe but to keep the tap flowing and the federal courts at bay.”
So while this article makes no specific mention of mandatory minimums for non-violent offenders, the reason I likely recalled it as have done so was that this was, according to other local coverage at the time, one of the primary reasons behind the prison overcrowding situation and the axe the state was under re’ releasing prisoners.
And this is the woman I referred to (I feel it warrants an acknowledgment…scared the crap out of us and saddened us deeply at the time, the idea that this could happen a few blocks away from our home. Never SHOULD have 
from the same article)
“Four days after Christmas, he rode with McDuff to Austin to look for drugs. They cruised the university area and scouted the bars on Sixth Street; then they crossed Lamar and turned south on a side street to double back in the direction they had come. That’s when McDuff spotted Colleen Reed, washing her black Mazda in one of the bays at the car wash on Fifth. She was a random choice, just as Edna Sullivan had been in 1966. McDuff parked his Thunderbird in the adjacent bay and disappeared for a moment. When he returned, he had Colleen Reed by the throat, holding her up so that just her toes touched the cement floor. “Please, not me,” she cried. “Not me.” McDuff threw her in the back seat and put Worley back there to control her.
A few miles out of Austin, McDuff pulled over and changed places with Worley. While Worley drove along I-35, McDuff stripped Colleen Reed naked, stubbed out a cigarette between her legs, and began raping her. When Worley stopped again to change places, he noticed that her hands were tied behind her back. While McDuff drove, Worley took off his own clothes and forced her to perform oral sex. Then he raped her. North of Belton, McDuff turned off the interstate onto Texas Highway 317, close to the house where his parents lived. He stopped on a narrow dirt road and raped Colleen Reed again.
When she was able to stumble to her feet, the young woman put her head on Worley’s shoulder and said in a quivering voice, “Please don’t let him hurt me anymore.” McDuff grabbed her by the back of the neck, shoved her into the trunk of the Thunderbird, and slammed it shut. When McDuff dropped Worley off that night, Worley asked what he intended to do with the woman. “I’m gonna use her up,” McDuff grinned. That was one of McDuff’s pet phrases: It meant that he intended to kill her. Police believe that McDuff buried Colleen Reed in a field a few hundred yards from the frame house where J. A. and Addie McDuff live, but her body hasn’t been found.”
I do not think the government is grossly incompetent but I am Pro-DP. It might be sub-consciously a sick voyeurism that makes me wish to see those with no value for lives of their fellow human, let alone their fellow citizen, subjected to a taste of what they put others through but I chalk it up to something called justice.
Gandhi said: “Eye for an eye makes the whole world blind” but put him or any of us in a room with Charlie Manson and I’m sure any of us would change our tune.
Because all homicides are caused by psychological problems? You can’t be serious. Maybe some of the worst serial killers could provide an inkling of understanding but for the most part I think anything you would glean from them would probably be so specific to that person that it would only be worth an interesting note in the annals of history.
Noting that there are innocents executed, being a huge fan of the 5th Amendment and saddened by how little it is used, I’ve always guessed this does happen and my stance hasn’t changed. I’m against the DP being tossed around and imposed frequently but sometimes in the interest of justice, when a person is found to be undoubtedly and fully guilty of the most heinous crimes sometimes even the DP only provides a little justice but in these cases life without parole in my opinion tells the victim(s) and their family/families that they and their pain means nothing to state.
Tbh, the fact that those cases are the best you can do would move me towards supporting the death penalty rather than against it.
But teh crack smokers should still be put in for 10+ years, right? We still need to be tough on crime, and if a few mass-murderers get out cause we’re being tough on druggies, so be it!
I think that Americans love the death penalty because it makes us seem so bad ass: “we know X did it, we don’t need to hear the excuses, let’s fry him. You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs.”
Americans don’t really give a shit if their justice system is just, only that it vindicate the first words out of their mouths.
Not particularly. I’m pretty much anti-capital punishment, but not because innocent people may (almost certainly have been) executed. To me that’s like saying ‘innocent people may have been unjustly sentenced to prison terms…does this change your stance on whether or not anyone should be incarcerated?’. That way lies madness. Innocent people are killed every day by decisions made by government, after all. For instance, the fact that the speed limit is set to 65 instead of 55 means that some non-zero number of citizens will die who might not have died otherwise is pretty much a fact.
No, I’m against capital punishment because, to me, it’s not a cost effective (or any sort of effective) tool in preventing crime. The process is so long and drawn out in most cases, and costs so much, that it’s not worth it. And I’m unconvinced about the deterrent value in any case. Besides, I think that a worse punishment for criminals who would be executed is to have them lived caged like animals for the rest of their lives (it’s cheaper as well, in most cases). Also, if the person turns out to be innocent, it’s a lot easier to rectify the situation if the person in question is still alive, instead of pushing up daisies.
-XT
Note that DP advocates would say that people convicted but that conviction was later overturned, shows that the system works.
Not true. They could still escape, be accidentally released, kill a fellow inmate or a guard, or orchastrate a killing from prison.
I think there is a substantial difference. To me, whatever the punishment is, you hove to be accept it being meted out to innocent people. As has already been pointed out in this thread, you cannot un-kill someone. However, you can set an innocent person free.
Pro-death penalty, and the fact that innocent people have been executed points, to me, the need to tighten the guidelines. I could live with sending the more mundane murderers up for life while using the death penalty for the spectacular cases like, say, John Wayne Gacy and Charles Manson, the ones no one in their right mind could question their innocence in all seriousness.
You cannot “un-kill” the innocent victim of a repeat killer, either.
If you are limiting the death penalty to those cases then I have no problem (as long as the convict is mentally competent). Societal bloodlust is simply not enough of a reason to risk executing innocent people but if there isn’t a shadow of a doubt of the guilt then…
Yeah, if the guy is sitting in the electric chair admitting he committed the crime and would do it again, then yeah, go ahead.
But would you be willing to kill even one innocent man to put a hundred mad dogs to death (rather than keep them in prison for life)?
More or less. That is what CA does, only the worst of the worst of the worst. Texas, on the other hand…
The evidence presented at the trial of the ‘Birmingham Six’ proved their guilt beyond reasonable doubt.
To that I would respond that if the system actually worked, they wouldn’t have been convicted in the first place.
?
I’m afraid that I don’t understand what you are trying to say.
To determine whether or not a system works, you have to look at the system as a whole - not just a single part.
If an innocent person is convicted, and then their conviction is overturned , then the system as a whole has worked.