Texas bashing

The BBQ Pit
21

Hey, I live here in one of the handful of pockets of (relative) sanity in this damn state. I’ve lived here most of my life and yeah, I’d say a lot of the bashing is deserved. People are bizarrely loyal to the state and it scares me. It’s a groupthink-thing. It’s kind of like how they do in Washington – you oppose anything the guvmint wants to do, you’re unpatriotic, a traitor, and a dirty Communist. Imagine having to deal with irrational American nationalism piled ON TOP of this crazy rabid state pride thing.

They make mention of Texas-this and Texas-that in, I swear, half the ads on local television and radio. They use it to sell stuff like car dealers strung up American flags on 9/11. Sometimes when I am bored, I will imagine the ads with states like Rhode Island or New Jersey instead of Texas. And then you realize how absolutely silly it sounds. I guess I’ve been conditioned for Texas to sound normal as an adjective.

At least Houston is more international, it’s not quite so bad here. I moved out of the suburbs and in towards the city and found it much more tolerable.

You want to know what’s screwed up? Look up the fiasco they had with the Houston Crime Lab… what… two years ago or so? There was a bunch of crooked stuff going on there, I don’t know too much about it because I don’t pay so much attention to local news, but I do know that a lot of criminals had to be retried and I 'm pretty sure that quite a few were found innocent. There may have even been a death row inmate or two that was found to actually be not guilty. It was a huge scandal while it was going down, and the district attourney was doing everything he could to try to obscure investigation and such.

I’m anti death penalty, but not because I don’t realize there are just some very dangerous people that will never be productive members of society, and they commit serial murders or rapes or what have you… yeah, they deserve to die. But I think executing one innocent person is one too many. It’s all well and good to say that’s the price society pays for justice, but you might change your tune one day if you find you’re the one wrongly convicted. I don’t think the state should have the right to execute its citizens at all.

22

Many of us aren’t so primitive, unsophisticated, and ignorant.

23

Probably not; I left Texas forever in 1963 and my memories and impressions of the hell-hole date from 1940 to 1963.

24

I’m sorry you have such a poor memory of Texas, because I’m sure you can fathom not all of us are people you wouldn’t want to associate with. Then again, I hear the same things from other people…like, I hear from New Yorkers how everyone thinks they’re all rude and obnoxious and stuff, and obviously they can’t all be like that. :slight_smile:

25

I still exchange email with some of the people I grew up with before leaving Texas. Maybe it is because I know them personally that I exclude them from my general condemnation. I am sure that if I still lived in Texas, I would have friends who would be more like me than not. But, when I lived there, it was almost as if an institutionalized aura of hate and prejudice covered the place. People like me and some of my friends were smothered by that aura and, you might imagine, came in for a lot of grief if we dared disagree. I remember Texas as a place where a person could receive a ninety-nine year prison sentence for possesion of less than a half-ounce of marijuana. And, the general public view would be that he got what was coming to him, the dirty, goddamned son-of-a-bitch. At the same time, one could park one’s car in front of any of a lot of establishments and have beer brought to you by “car-hops.” Sitting behind the wheel of your car, you were able to drink yourself into oblivion and drive away when you had had enough or had run out of money. That was considered okay, back in those days. I just have bad memories of the place and don’t intend to ever go back, even for a visit. I hope the place has changed, but I don’t have any interest in investigating the situation.

26

Here’s the facts in the Jesse Jacob’s case [taken from the Appellate Court opinion]:

Jacobs moved from Illinois to Texas in 1983 while on parole for the murder of a retarded man. A Texas parole officer supervised Jacobs from December 1983 through February 1986. Jacobs became romantically involved with a fourteen-year-old girl named Lisa Chisholm, who gave birth to his child.

Jacob’s sister (Hogan) also moved to Texas, and began having an affair with Michael Urdiales, whose wife was named Etta Urdailes. Eventually, Jacob’s was arrested for statutorily raping and impregnating his “girlfriend”, and was released after Hogan paid his bail. Shortly after his release, Etta Urdailes went missing, with the bedroom and bathroom in her apartment splattered with her blood.

Before the victim’s body was found, Jacobs: “1) abducted a woman in a grocery parking lot and attempted to use her ATM card to get money; (2) robbed three fast food restaurants at gunpoint; and (3) abducted a man outside a drugstore. After Jacobs robbed another fast food outlet in Oklahoma, he participated in a shootout with local police. His accomplice was wounded and captured, but he escaped.”

Eventually, Jacobs was arrested for another car theft. While in custody Jacobs gave a videotaped confession to murdering her. His only requests for giving the confession was that he be that the DA must seek the death penalty for him and that he get to see his girlfriend.

" Jacobs told the police that soon after his release from jail, he went to the victim’s apartment, struck her on the head, abducted her, and drove her to a clearing in the woods. She was still “dizzy” when they arrived in the woods. He took a sleeping bag from her car and put it on the ground for her to sit on, then grabbed her left hand and shot her in the left side of the head with a .38 caliber revolver.

Jacobs took the police to the victim’s gravesite, a small clearing in a wooded area in southern Montgomery County, and pointed out an area of the ground covered with pine needles and limbs. After excavating the area, the police found a blue sleeping bag containing the remains of the victim, whose body was in the same position as Jacobs had described: face down with her head pointed southeast. An autopsy showed that her death was caused by a gunshot wound to her left temple and that there was a tear in another part of her scalp."

His “girlfriend” visited Jacobs while he was being held in the county jail pending trial. During her first visit, Jacobs admitted that he killed the victim. Jacobs later wrote Chisholm a letter admitting that he killed the victim “for the love of a sister.”

He also escaped from prison while awaiting trial.

So, you have an already convicted murder who gives a videotaped confession, leads the police to the site of the grave, admits the murder to his girlfriend, and writes a letter admitting his guilty. And you want to pretend that he is innocent? This guy who is, in no particular order: a multiple murderer, a rapist, an escapist, a burglar, a kidnapper, and car thief?

Now, I do have a huge issue with the prosecutor later using his testimony to convict his sister of manslaughter. I think the evidence is clear that the prosecutor put on perjurious testimony when he called, and vouched for, Jacob’s. I think that is a grave injustice, and the prosecutor should be horribly ashamed of himself. That being said, I will also point out that, even if you accept the account eh gave, he was still eligible for the death penalty. So saying that he is somehow not guilty is incorrect also.

Amnesty International, when discussing the death penalty, rarely bother to get their facts correct. Remember, they also think Mumia is a hero. Don’t let them mislead you into believing that Jesse Jacobs is anything but a cold blooded murderer.

27

PLEASE show me where AI says/thinks/implies/infers that Mumia is a hero or stuff your hyperbole.
As for Jesse Jacobs. He did recant his testimony and accused his sister of the murder. (A fact glaringly omitted from your summation above). And on top of that:

28

At least you caught that it was hyperbole. It was actually Rage Against the Machine and an ABC special that called Mumia a hero. My apologies if my use of hyperbole was not obvious enough for you.

Holy Crap! He later said he didn’t do it? Oh, well, then that changes everything. The videotaped confession, the admission to his “girlfriend”, the letter. Whew, good thing he said he was innocent, otherwise I would’ve thought all the evidence proves well beyond a reasonable doubt, that he did it.

(just so you know, that part is a bit of hyperbole too).

If you wish to be factually correct, Jacobs did not recant his testimony. He recanted his confession, which was not given under oath. He testified on his own behalf at his own trial and the jury found it unpersuasive then. The fact he gave a videotaped confession, asked for the death penalty, at one point refused to pursue his appeals, confessed to his girlfriend, wrote a letter confessing to the crime, went on a crime spree after the murder, and knew intimate details of the murder seem to pretty clearly prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that he murdered Etta Urdailes. Add to that his prior conviction for murder, his rape, his escapes, and the rest of his criminal history, I have a hard time thinking that, if anybody deserves the death penalty, it would be him.

And, the 5th Circuit in Jacobs v. Scott, 31 F.3d 1319, rejected his contention that, if you believe his testimony, he was ineligible for the death penalty. They specifically referred to Enmund and ruled, because of the special verdicts, Jacobs’ case did not violate the holding in Enmund. I’ll probably rely on the 5th Circuit rather than an internet site.

29

Umm, you were the one using the hero tag to besmirch AI’s reputation. Fighting Ignorance indeed.

No, that was sarcasm not hyperbole.

(…and what I just wrote? That was being bitchy.)

Yes, but they found that on the grounds that “Irrespective of whether a case is capital or noncapital, we have reaffirmed that newly discovered evidence of innocence, “absent an independent constitutional violation occurring in the underlying state criminal proceeding,” is not a ground for habeas relief.” This is probably where we might split. Because I wholeheartedly disagree with those findings that without a constitutional violation that a person can’t file a habeas corpus relief to save their life. Justice is highly dubious if that applies.

30

Yes it does. I believe it is pointless for the the state to kill anyone.

31

Yes.

32

Just to clarify the above-

Yes, support for the death penalty show a lack of respect for innocent lives because there is no way to guarantee that the people who are executed will not be innocent. If you believing that killing even one innocent person is an acceptable risk, then you can’t say that you respect innocent life.

There is also the fact that killing the wrong person lets the real guilty person get away with it.

It’s more important to me to protect innocent life than for me to get my rocks off by killing someone who may or may not be guilty.

Oh, and one more thing, if they ARE horrible, guilty evil people, then why should they just be allowed to get a shot in the arm and go to sleep? What kind of punishment is that? Isn’t it better to let them rot in a cell for 60 years?

33

I’ll offer you my sincerest apologies for besmirching the name of Amnesty International. They are a great organization that does great work in the world.

'Tis true.

While that may be true, I think it was quite tame by Pit standards, and, if you were bitchy, it was humorously done and probably well deserved…

I couldn’t get your link to work. My reading of the case isthat the court denied Jacob’s petition of habeus because the evidence was not “newly discovered” nor that Jacobs could meet the, albeit high, threshold outlined in Herrera. Regardless of your feelings about Amnesty International or the recent limitations on the availability of habeus relief in the federal system, promoting Jesse Jacobs as an innocent man put unfairly to death is hogwash. You may feel he got the shaft legally, but I’ve seen absolutely nothing that would convince me he was not guilty of capital murder.

34

ah, Texas. Home to arrogance and ignorance in equal measure.
OK-I can see why people would get defensive about their state, but please–there are things wrong with Texas–starting with good ole boys and working our way up. It does have a great deal of natural beauty and some friendly people.

I do have to keep reminding myself that not all residents are narrow minded, insular people who think b/c they have an accent, and wear a cowboy hat and shitkickers that they are imbued with a greater amount of charm or common sense than those who don’t hail from their great state-- I like Molly Ivins, for one; my brother(Austin) for another.
Me, I don’t get the Texas pride and all things are bigger in Texas stuff–talk about marketing! Are all things smaller in RI, then? It is silly. It’s like they believe their own tourist brochures.

As a resident of IL, our late governor, George Ryan, put a moratorium on death penalties b/c strangely enough, we were putting innocent people to death–oops!

I am not pro-death penalty, for this very reason. I would rather 10 guilty folks go free, than 1 innocent one be put to death. The judicial process thru which the death penalty is enforced needs some major overhauling, IMO.

35

I didn’t know you lived in Houston. I’ve read your Crap I Drew On My Lunchbreak and gotten a good laugh out of it. You have a talent.

Not crooked, just incompetent. And a big tip of the incompetent hat to former mayor Lee “OuttaTown” Brown, on whose watch this giant zit burst and who did absolutely nothing to clean up the mess. At least our new mayor is trying to do something about it.

36

Ex Governor, now currently indicted, George Ryan put a moratorium on the death penalty to generate positive press and distract the media away from the investigations into his wrongdoing. While it is a fact that Illinois was putting innocent people on death row, they did not, under Ryan or any other governor in modern death penalty times, put an innocent person to death.

37

So far as we know.

38

How do you know?

39

In Texas’s defence many of these annoying Texas themed commericials are being made by national companies that are probably using advertising agencies outside the state. Who knows maybe Texans eat this shit up, but to me its they have always seemed like a lame attempt by people who have no idea what Texas is actually like to relate with us in order to sell crap. People wearing cowboy hats to sell me a car annoys the living fuck out of me. The only people who I ever see wearing cowboy hats are mexicans and out of state jackasses at the airport.

40

’luci told me.