<<<the factremains, no innocent person was executed.>>>
This reply is one of your jokes, right? Because you couldn't have gotten that from this:
"Probably you just
didn't think of this, but there is a problem with
the concept of innocence being PROVEN after
the prisoner is dead. Can you guess what it is? It
is, of course, that once an individual has been
executed there is very little incentive to
continue investigating that crime! Certainly the
prosecutor is not going to seek evidence that he
or she put an innocent person to death. However,
we do have some information that you can draw
some mighty strong conclusions from.
There have been seventy six people who have
been released from prison, straight off death
row, in the last 15 years or so."
You do understand ,don't you, James, that it is rare that the system continues to investigate crimes for which the system has executed someone? That it is usually a matter of sheer luck if some journalism class or private citizens get interested in your case? That is not hard to understand! Can you see that it was only by sheer happenstance, good luck, that those particular 76 people were discovered, by private means, to be innocent before their deaths-- and still say, "The system worked, no innocent person was executed,"? Do you believe that a deity sent that good luck to all the innocents, allowing only the guilty to be overlooked, lost in the system, until their deaths made their cases of no more interest to anyone?
I'll quote a little from a report of a study conducted by Hugo Adam Bedau, Dept. of Philosophy, Tufts University, from '83 to '85, with Michael Radelet. Note the bold print.
"A recent study had produced evidence of 349 US cases in which innocent people were wrongly convicted of offences punishable by death..... [These case all could have gotten death; not all did, though. This was an academic study to see how the justice system works. Please realize that academic studies are the only ones that will be done after the cases have been closed by deaths.-- E] ... new evidence had come to light later which either established the prisoners' innocence or raised strong doubts about their guilt. In most cases this had led to acquittals, pardons, commutations of sentence or the dismissal of the charges, often years after the original conviction. Twenty-three prisoners, however were executed.
I'll repeat that: Twenty-three prisoners, however were executed.
Many other cases... were excluded from the... study...
In 32 cases it was found that no crime had been committed, sometimes because the purported murder victim was found alive. In some cases other people had confessed to the crime, alibi evidence was found to be valid, or witnesses had lied.
Cases cited in the study included that of John Ross (black), convicted of raping a white woman in Louisiana in 1975. He was 16 at the time and confessed after being beaten by the police. He was sentenced to death after a trial lasting less than a day..... [later a private group proved that his blood type didn't match that of the rapist.--E]"
That's enough typing. I could type all day. I can't believe your assertion is serious. Please tell me you were being satirical, in your way. |
