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Troy Davis execution: Georgia pardons board denies plea for clemency

As an aside, Rick Perry didn't sentence anyone to die. Actually, the only way to get the death penalty in Texas is if jurors assess it. That's different than every other state where it's the judge who does the sentencing.

Regarding eye witness testimony, think about this, if you're the victim of a crime and you're the only witness to it (because people typically don't commit crimes where there are lots of witnessess), do you believe the guy should not be prosecuted because nobody else was around to see it? Something to consider.

Rick Perry didn't sentence the man, but he signed the death warrant, and the investigation by the forensics board (before Perry shut it down) showed that Perry knowingly sent an innocent man to his death.
 
So be it. If I'm incompetent enough to not be able to prove my innocence, then I probably deserve exactly what I get.

That opinion is meaningless until you're actually standing in front of the firing squad and thinking about all the things you could have done with your life.
 
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We may be from the same bit of real estate (New England) but we are most definitely NOT from the same place philosophically. We have lost the idea of JUSTICE and PUNISHMENT in this land, and we're much worse off for it. I don't LIKE seeing innocent people executed, but it's a fact of life on occasion. Just the way the system works. You're going to get some wheat in with the chaff from time to time.

Dollars to donuts says that you would be singing a different tune if it was YOU who was convicted of a murder you didn't commit, and were about to die for it.
 
Rick Perry didn't sentence the man, but he signed the death warrant, and the investigation by the forensics board (before Perry shut it down) showed that Perry knowingly sent an innocent man to his death.

this should be a good campaign issue if he's the rep nominee.
 
I look at those guilty men on death row and even regular as subhuman scum,garbage or human cockroaches. So if anything the life of innocent people should be worth way more than that of scumbags in prison. So we should demand that if we are going to execute someone then we should make sure we take every possible route to make sure that person did what ever it is they did before we execute them so that one innocent person does not pay for the crimes of someone else. This is why I support an appeals system based on the degree of evidence.The stronger the evidence the less appeals you get and if they got you on video then they should be able to just take you out back after a guilty conviction and put a bullet in your head.

Agreed.

I'd even propose that for cases with lack of strong physical evidence, which obviously includes no physical evidence at all, the death penalty should not even be on the table.

I'm PRO death penalty, but I'm a firm believer that there should be an excruciatingly minimal amount of maybes, ifs, or perhapses when sending someone to their death. END OF STORY. Death penalty should be reserved men like Jared Loughner.


I am in favor of sending 100 Innocent men to their deaths in order to ensure that every guilty one ends up there. It isn't my PREFERENCE for how it should work, but in order to ensure that the guilty end up getting their just rewards, that's the way it has to work.

This is Neanderthal reasoning at its finest. How about next time a deranged individual shoots up a grade school we just board up all of the exits and set the whole place on fire, leaving the killer to die alongside all the innocent still trapped inside?
 
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BTW, there is going to be a rally and march in Austin, Texas, on Oct 11, 2011:

Dear Rick Perry: We have not forgotten what you did. Before his execution, Todd Willingham said, “Please don’t ever stop fighting to vindicate me.” On October 22, 2011 we will remind the nation about Rick Perry’s role in the execution of Todd Willingham and his Richard Nixon-like interference in the investigation of the Willingham case by the Texas Forensic Science Commission at the 12th Annual March to Abolish the Death Penalty at the Texas Capitol in Austin. We invite everyone to attend the march and rally.

In Texas, what Perry did is never going to go away, and I hope it is the same in Georgia with what they are about to do.

Read more about the murder that Perry committed here.
 
If there was no physical evidence ( which the chances of that happening would be close to nil) I would rather err on the side of caution and do life in prison without the possibility of parole.

One innocent life being snubbed by the state is one too many.
How about innocent lives snubbed out by a released convict? There really is no such thing as "life without parole" because, while a judge/jury can impose it, a parole board can always change it.
 
If you are going to execute a man wouldn't you want solid physical evidence that man did what it is he was convicted of?

Absolutely JamesRage, but I'm not prepared to say that an eye witness account is never solid enough evidence.
 
How about innocent lives snubbed out by a released convict? There really is no such thing as "life without parole" because, while a judge/jury can impose it, a parole board can always change it.

Between executing an innocent man and releasing a guilty one, I believe the execution of the innocent man is the greater of the two evils.
 
Of course he should. But it's highly unlikely that 50 eyewitnesses to a mass murder have any reason to lie. In the Troy Davis case, that doesn't seem to fit the circumstances of what happened.

We're lucky that in the last couple of decades DNA and forensics have made huge strides. Not to mention that it's more than likely you'll be on camera. It is "mainstream knowledge" now that eyewitness testimony is rarely credible. Usually people trained in law-enforcement and security are better at it than the rest of us. We just don't pay attention and when we're forced too (as in a robbery or rape), terror usually skews what we remember. Just my opinion.

So I return to my original question. If you, as the victim, are the sole witness to a mugging (say), the guy is caught and you ID him. Should the police just inform you they're releasing the guy and not bringing charges because the only evidence it's him is your ID?
 
I am in favor of sending 100 Innocent men to their deaths in order to ensure that every guilty one ends up there. It isn't my PREFERENCE for how it should work, but in order to ensure that the guilty end up getting their just rewards, that's the way it has to work.

As a man who is for the death penalty because there are some humans that are unfortunatelty not worth the risk of salvaging....but to make a statement like this is incredibly inhumane and just stupid
 
So I return to my original question. If you, as the victim, are the sole witness to a mugging (say), the guy is caught and you ID him. Should the police just inform you they're releasing the guy and not bringing charges because the only evidence it's him is your ID?

In many cases if your property isn't on the person and there is no physical evidence they won't arrest someone anyway. Not sure where your even trying to go with this?

As for your question about the convict, it is a greater crime to have the state execute an innocent man than to release a guilty one.
 
I am disappointed in my state today :(
 
I am in favor of sending 100 Innocent men to their deaths in order to ensure that every guilty one ends up there. It isn't my PREFERENCE for how it should work, but in order to ensure that the guilty end up getting their just rewards, that's the way it has to work.

I wonder if you'll feel this way if you are one of the innocent people being sent to death "in order to ensure that every guilty one ends up there."
 
So I return to my original question. If you, as the victim, are the sole witness to a mugging (say), the guy is caught and you ID him. Should the police just inform you they're releasing the guy and not bringing charges because the only evidence it's him is your ID?

Oh they'll bring charges on him with just my ID, but in reality the charges wouldn't stand up in front of jury. Actually, it would never make it in front of a jury, charges would be dropped for lack of evidence (by the prosecutor) after trying to make a deal. And unless you had a really nervous mugger, he would refuse a deal because he'd know that they had nothing but an eyewitness. And, as much as it would gall me, they'd be correct to do so. With no evidence whatsoever (I believe that's what you're saying), the cost of trying to win a conviction is really just not worth it.
 
I am for the death penalty but I do not think you should get such a punishment based only on eye witness testimony.

It's a fine line. There's no doubt that eye-witness testimony is notoriously unreliable. But. This boils down to police misconduct, if we can believe the now-recanting eyewitnesses. Why aren't all police interrogations taped and made available to the defense? Especially in a death penalty case. And what of a "court system" that hears the recantations, one after the other, and still refuses to grant a stay or clemency? What can we say about them? Our courts are completely autonomous; they answer to no one. And just as coppers have a blue line, the court system has its 'silence is golden' rule. The last defense against injustice is the appeals process....then clemency. Clemency failed.

Why doesn't it make more sense to err on the side of caution?? Poor guy.
 
I wonder if you'll feel this way if you are one of the innocent people being sent to death "in order to ensure that every guilty one ends up there."

I feel the exact opposite, I would rather let every heinous criminal avoid the gallows to save the one innocent person. The death penalty is just not worth it IMO.
 
My feeling is that for the death penalty to be on the table the burden of proof should 'beyond any doubt' instead of 'beyond a reasonable doubt' This would mean hard physical evidence the person actually did it, multiple eye witnesses seeing the person doing it, surveillance footage of the person doing it, etc. would be required for the death penalty to be on the table. I would also favor a federal law that says anyone sentenced to 'life without parole' cannot be paroled.
 
As a man who is for the death penalty because there are some humans that are unfortunatelty not worth the risk of salvaging....but to make a statement like this is incredibly inhumane and just stupid

Then just add it to the list of the "incredibly inhumane and stupid" things I believe.


I wonder if you'll feel this way if you are one of the innocent people being sent to death "in order to ensure that every guilty one ends up there."

If I'm ever in a situation where it COULD happen to me, then I probably deserve to have it happen.
 
Rick Perry didn't sentence the man, but he signed the death warrant, and the investigation by the forensics board (before Perry shut it down) showed that Perry knowingly sent an innocent man to his death.

I believe he has to sign the death warrant in every capital case. I believe that what Rick Perry has decided is that, if the jury assesses the death penalty, he's going to honor that. Keep in mind, every single death case is automatically appealed. If someone is eventually executed, that means, not only has a jury given the sentence, the highest court in Texas has reviewed it and upheld the conviction and sentence as well.
 
This happens much less often than most people like to suggest. Additionally, I rarely see truly innocent people executed. They may not be guilty of what they were charged with, but they're rarely salt-of-the-earth, Mother Theressa types either.

Tigger, I partially agree with you. The chances of having the wrong guy on death row are very slim nowadays. On the other hand, I don't agree it's ok to execute somebody just because they're probably guilty of something else. I support the death penalty, but only if it's correctly applied to the person who actually committed the crime.
 
It's a fine line. There's no doubt that eye-witness testimony is notoriously unreliable. But. This boils down to police misconduct, if we can believe the now-recanting eyewitnesses. Why aren't all police interrogations taped and made available to the defense? Especially in a death penalty case. And what of a "court system" that hears the recantations, one after the other, and still refuses to grant a stay or clemency? What can we say about them? Our courts are completely autonomous; they answer to no one. And just as coppers have a blue line, the court system has its 'silence is golden' rule. The last defense against injustice is the appeals process....then clemency. Clemency failed.

Why doesn't it make more sense to err on the side of caution?? Poor guy.

I think that case happened twenty years ago.If they did have video it would have been black and white and very grainy, I do not think would have done any good. I remember those security camera videos from convenient stores and banks they used to show on tv. They would show what looks like a unrecognizable figure and say if you can ID this suspect please call the police and I would be like who in the hell can ID that, that looks looks like one of those bigfoot videos they should show on one of those tv shows. However today good security video technology is cheap and good and you can clearly make out what someone looks like. I agree it should be required by law that the police video record all interviews/questionings and interrogations. This is so that it can be used as evidence and for the defense to see if there was any evidence the witnesses sounded like they were being coerced or led or to see if police lied to get statements.
 
Leaving aside some of the over the top rhetoric, I have some real problems with this whole story. Either we have to assume that a group of people is perfectly willing to ignore evidence and condemn a man to death, which I find unlikely, or we have to assume that the evidence we hear is not correct, which seems unlikely, or we can assume that there is more evidence that most of us are unfamiliar with, which seems more likely. I think this rush to judgement on the part of people posting here is kinda sad, though I can understand where it is coming from. Everything I have heard(and not mentioned in the thread is one of the 2 witnesses who has not recanted is a possible suspect in the murder, and that one of the jurors commented that if he knew the ballistic results he would have voted not guilty) suggests that there is strong reason to question his conviction, and yet those 5 people on the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles where not swayed, which means either they are bad people, or painfully dumb, or there is something else going on we do not know about.
 
How about innocent lives snubbed out by a released convict? There really is no such thing as "life without parole" because, while a judge/jury can impose it, a parole board can always change it.

You know, doing the right thing is rarely easy. There are costs and risks with doing the right thing. I would rather be on the side of right, than on the side of safe. Me personally, I am willing to accept a slightly elevated risk to not execute innocent people and to live in a country where you are innocent until proven guilty.
 
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