Just When I Thought I Couldn't Possibly Feel More Contempt for Governor Rauner...

[Two_Many_Cats]

Illinois’ Asshole in Chief does this!!

GODDAMMIT!!! The ONE thing I could be proud of my state for doing in abolishing the death penalty, and this fucking jagoff makes noise about reversing it!

Let me remind this moron that death row once held ELEVEN people that were later totally exonerated of their capital crimes by DNA testing. ELEVEN! Not two, not four, DOUBLE DIGIT ELEVEN completely innocent human beings almost murdered by the state. Almost a dozen. A full goddamn jury.

Republicans…Proving evolution doesn’t always work.

:mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad:

[Anny_Middon]

IMO Rauner is trying to get the votes that went to Jeanne Ives (I think that’s the hate-filled witch’s name - I can’t be bothered to look it up).

Plus of course he’s trying to draw attention from his abysmal performance as Guv. The ads of his I’ve seen seem mostly to be <whine> <whine> “It’s all Mike Madigan’s fault.”

Regardless of how much of Illinois’ dysfunction can be laid at Madigan’s feet, he seems to totally avoid the question of why, not having been able to work with Madigan for 4 years, he’ll be somehow magically able to work with him now.

I was a bit disappointed that Pritzker won the Dem nom, but not only will I vote for him, I’ll volunteer for his campaign.

[Whack-a-Mole]

You don’t even need to be a bleeding heart liberal to hate this one.

Personally I have no problem seeing the likes of John Wayne Gacy get the electric chair.

Thing is having the death penalty does not deter crime and it can cost the state up to 10x as much to get a criminal into the chair as it does to incarcerate them for life.

Besides, death is too good for some of these creeps. Let 'em rot in a cell forever.

While those complex debates rage on, some like to point fingers at perhaps the most simple reason to support the death penalty: It’s cheaper to kill an inmate than to keep an inmate alive.

That may not, however, be true. "It’s 10 times more expensive to kill them than to keep them alive,"says Donald McCartin, known as The Hanging Judge of Orange County. McCartin knows a little bit about executions: he has sent nine men to death row.

<snip>

In California, incarceration costs for death penalty prisoners totaled more than $1 billion from 1978 to 2011 (total costs outside of incarceration were another $3 billion). By the numbers, the annual cost of the death penalty in the state of California is $137 million compared to the cost of lifetime incarceration of $11.5 million.

SOURCE: Considering The Death Penalty: Your Tax Dollars At Work

[bobot]

Yeah, Fuck Rauner. The moratorium was issued by a Republican, and regardless of his motivation, a moratorium it was. Fuck Rauner and any Illinois politician that supports this.

[Typo_Negative]

I guess it’s time once again to bring up the harrowing tale of Rolando Cruz. This was one of the cases that led to a moratorium on the death penalty in Illinois.

Rolando was tried, convicted and sentenced to death for the rape and murder of a child. Conviction thrown out, retried with the same result. Retried AGAIN, convicted again, overturned again.

The first trial contained this doozy:

Finally the print and boots were given to “shoe expert” Louise Robbins, who not only said Buckley’s boots matched the print, but that she could tell the height and race of the wearer.

Seven DuPage County law enforcement officials, three prosecutors and four deputies, were indicted by a grand jury in December 1996 on 47 charges of conspiracy to convict Cruz despite being aware of exculpatory evidence. The indictment rested on two main points, that two detectives had testified that Cruz had told them that he had had a “vision” of the murder that contained details known only to the killer, a lie that was never included in any police report which was “endorsed and perpetuated by the prosecutors” and that the prosecutors had concealed Brian Dugan’s confession while knowing that it had included accurate details indicating he had committed the crime

Two DuPage sheriff’s investigators quit their jobs in disgust over their belief that justice was being compromised. Witnesses testified they were intimidated by investigators. Defense attorneys accused prosecutors of concealing evidence. An assistant Illinois attorney general, appalled by the conduct of prosecutors and convinced of Cruz’s innocence, resigned rather than argue to uphold Cruz’s conviction and death sentence.

Three prosecutors and four deputies perjured themselves and suborned perjury and hid exculpatory evidence all while knowing that actual perpetrator was already in prison for another series of murders.

Knight, in the written response, characterized Cruz, Buckley and Hernandez as “a menace to the public.”

We are not ready the Death Penalty.

[Really_Not_All_That_Bright]

@Typo_Negative

I guess it’s time once again to bring up the harrowing tale of Rolando Cruz. This was one of the cases that led to a moratorium on the death penalty in Illinois.

I don’t know anything about the Cruz case other than what I just read in Wikipedia, but I can’t understand how Cruz’ attorney was not disbarred for doing a terrible job.

[Typo_Negative]

It’s not like he could afford F. Lee Bailey. Or even Beetle Bailey.

The bigger question is how come the prosecutors haven’t been disbarred.

[dalej42]

This why the Biss babies need to vote for Pritzker. Pritzker isn’t a god, and he isn’t as ‘progressive’ as the idealistic Biss supporters would like. However, taking a step on a road forward is far better than pouting in the corner while the state continues to regress under Rauner.

[Anny_Middon]

@dalej42

This why the Biss babies need to vote for Pritzker. Pritzker isn’t a god, and he isn’t as ‘progressive’ as the idealistic Biss supporters would like. However, taking a step on a road forward is far better than pouting in the corner while the state continues to regress under Rauner.

This.

I do not understand how the Bernie supporters either sat out the 2016 general election, or voted for a third party. When you don’t get who you want in the primary, vote to do the most good in the general.

I liked Biss fine, but I voted for Kennedy. As I said upstream, I intend to volunteer for the Pritzker campaign for the general election. Not the person I ideally wanted for Guv, but a long sight better than the Guv we’re stuck with at the moment.

[CaptMurdock]

@Really_Not_All_That_Bright

I don’t know anything about the Cruz case other than what I just read in Wikipedia, but I can’t understand how Cruz’ attorney was not disbarred for doing a terrible job.

It’s a little hard to successfully defend your client when the prosecutors and law-enforcement personnel collude and perjure in order to railroad your client! :smack:

[Chimera]

It’s the opposing, underlying philosophies at work.

Democrats tend to feel that they’d rather see guilty people go free than sentence one innocent man to prison or death.

Republicans and Authoritarians tend to feel that sentencing a few innocent people to prison or death is preferable to allowing one guilty man to go free.

[septimus]

Seven DuPage County law enforcement officials, three prosecutors and four deputies, were indicted by a grand jury in December 1996 on 47 charges of conspiracy to convict Cruz despite being aware of exculpatory evidence.

These people attempted to kill a man they should have known to be innocent. They should be charged with attempted murder.

@Typo_Negative

It’s not like he could afford F. Lee Bailey. Or even Beetle Bailey.

I recently mentioned a guy convicted of murder (in New York?) despite having a credible alibi witness. The alibi witness was never called: the public defender decided his meager investigation budget was inadequate for a drive to interview said witness.

[sarcasm] In a free market economy, job creators can afford better defense counsel, and therefore deserve better defense counsel, than freeloaders. If you don’t like it, go back to North Korea, you commie![/sarcasm]

[Jophiel]

@Chimera

Democrats tend to feel that they’d rather see guilty people go free than sentence one innocent man to prison or death.

Republicans and Authoritarians tend to feel that sentencing a few innocent people to prison or death is preferable to allowing one guilty man to go free.

Except being opposed to the death penalty isn’t about letting anyone “go free”. Well, aside from people later found to be innocent who we thankfully haven’t killed for great justice yet.

[Typo_Negative]

Not just Illinois:

Man free after 20 years in prison; lawyers say he’s innocent

A Louisiana judge has ordered the release of an inmate whose attorneys have accused prosecutors of withholding “staggering” evidence of the man’s innocence in a pizza deliveryman’s killing two decades ago.

Before the shooting, Williams was hospitalized for extreme lead poisoning, still sucked his thumb and frequently urinated on himself, according to his lawyers.

Here’s the kicker.

Prosecutors denied violating their duty to disclose evidence favorable to Williams. Dale Cox, Caddo Parish’s former acting district attorney, said in a 2015 court filing that Williams hasn’t proved the recorded witness statements contained “exculpatory” evidence or that withholding them deprived him of a fair trial.

How could the defense prove the statements contained exculpatory evidence if the defense didn’t have them???

“The State presented to the jury a confession that was wholly corroborated by eyewitness testimony,” he wrote.

The eyewitness was the guy was probably the shooter. Because:

Witnesses saw several older men steal money and pizza from Griffin and saw Williams running from the house alone with nothing in his hands after the shooting, according to his lawyers. One of the older men, Chris Moore, was the only witness who identified Williams as the shooter.

Fingerprints found on the murder weapon belonged to one of the other older men, and the victim’s blood was found on clothing worn by a third older man, according to Williams’ lawyers.

Here’s a gem from the prosecutor:

Cox, who once told a reporter he believes the state needs to “kill more people,” personally prosecuted one-third of the Louisiana cases that resulted in death sentences between 2010 and 2015, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

Movie idea based on real life: Tough-on-crime prosecutor goes balls-out to win death penalty cases where the evidence is shaky…because he is a serial killer and his weapon is the Gas Chamber.