Wrong man was executed in Texas, probe says
news.yahoo.com
news.yahoo.com
No shit, you say? Capital punishment is inane, unjust, and difficult to justify in a message board thread? Wow! Glad we sorted that out! Can we move on now?
If every legitimate social justice issue had a hearing on HN, the front page would be nothing but social justice issues.
Flagged.
Why would you sound so alarmist? You can do your stuff (flagging, upvoting, downvoting, expressing your opinion, discussing, pointing to rules and what not) without telling HNs what they should or should not do.
Please don't submit comments complaining that a submission is inappropriate for the site. If you think something is spam or offtopic, flag it by going to its page and clicking on the "flag" link. (Not all users will see this; there is a karma threshold.) If you flag something, please don't also comment that you did.
(Obviously, it's easy for me to spot people doing it because I do it to other people all the time too. But still.)
The previous best-documented instance was the Willingham execution in Texas. for me http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/09/07/090907fa_fact_....
YMMV.
But the guidelines say that anything gratifying one's intellectual curiosity is fair game. Isn't a quantum leap in the quality of documentation regarding the execution of an innocent person gratifying intellectually?
Note that not every article about death penalty gets posted here.
I also object to the idea that miscarriages of justice in death penalty cases are a "new phenomenon". This isn't a new phenomenon. It's just pithy, enough to capture the front page.
(1) "Appointed as his advocates were a general practice lawyer who never had handled a major felony case and a veteran who had a heavy case load." (2) "The presiding judge said that the Constitution guarantees a defendant a lawyer, but it does not guarantee that the lawyer must be awake." http://www.secondclassjustice.com/?p=196
I have bad news. This is a "typical" death row victim story. There have been several others like him.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cameron_Todd_Willingham
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405270230402380457556...
Over half the death penalty convictions in Illinois were found to be faulty.
http://deadlinethemovie.com/state/IL/index.php
There have been a total 18 innocent people exonerated on Death Row in Illinois. Illinois has executed a total of 12 people since 1976
Prosecutors have no incentive to convict the criminal. Any plausible convict will do.
DeLuna was sentenced to death and executed based only on eyewitness accounts despite a range of signs he was not a guilty man, said law professor James Liebman
Eyewitness accounts are proven to be wrong again and again. They should not be used to convict anyone. Much less to the death penalty. The brain has this amazing (if a little buggy) capacity of sometimes being completely wrong and at the same time being absolutely sure that it is right (like it happens, for instance, when you see an optical illusion).
I believe there was a time when they were useful (but even then, they were used to falsely accuse - sometimes intentionally, sometimes not). But now there's enough technology to make me think convictions should be made based only on material evidence. Eyewitness accounts should be used only to give context to the material evidence found. If there's not any, tough luck. I would have a very hard time reconciling if, for instance, being accused of rape/assault like it happened to this guy: http://articles.latimes.com/2011/jun/27/local/la-me-accused-...
I am looking for one particular kind of "signal" in that signal-to-noise ratio, and while this might be of interest to a population including hackers, a population of hackers would likely not identify this article as relevant, outrageous though the article may be.
I've noticed HN's articles growing steadily less and less interesting. Perhaps it's time to move again. Any suggestions? MeFi? Other sites? Does a new one need to be created?
Please don't submit comments complaining that a submission is inappropriate for the site. If you think something is spam or offtopic, flag it by going to its page and clicking on the "flag" link. (Not all users will see this; there is a karma threshold.) If you flag something, please don't also comment that you did.
The OP is below this threshold.
Or I can break that rule to voice displeasure and hope that someone shared that opinion enough to point me somewhere better, create somewhere better, or effect change.
> If your account is less than a year old, please don't submit comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. (It's a common semi-noob illusion.)
My account is over a year old (and I've lurked for longer). Therefore, I'm good!
But in all seriousness, while it probably is not turning into Reddit, I'm certainly planning to relegate HN, for the purposes of my news browsing / time management, to a category shared with other spammy news sites, for somewhat similar reasons.
The volume of stories submitted has grown dramatically, making it harder for the good content to get on the front page.
But this article definitely has no place on the front page. I flagged it, hopefully it will be gone soon.
And I'm also guilty of sometimes submitting un-techy (but vaguely related to computers) stories on HN - a practice I decided a few days ago is best to abandon.
And I up-voted this submission too. I'm sorry, I usually don't vote before reading the linked article. I thought it was about a case where they wanted to execute Mr. X, but accidentally executed his jail mate, Mr. Y.
I wonder how the article made it to the front page in the first place though. Must it not mean that HN's audience (according to the algorithm) finds the article (or at least the title) to be intriguing and interesting?
That said, feel free to make a new one that's pure technology. If the stream of articles there is interesting, I promise to sign up!
Also, if "general interest" stuff turns you off, why on earth would you go to Metafilter?
The administration of subreddits has problems, in which some mods (i.e. of SRS) got death threats. Subreddit splits are typically unsuccessful. Exposition and discovery of subreddits is hard. Insightful, rational, two-way discussions are now exceedingly rare, and offensive/tasteless comments are nothing unusual. Popular subreddits tend towards "pop" topics rather than depth.
I am subscribed to DepthHub and TrueReddit but still, neither fully scratch my itch. I think that drawing a firm, clear line and being dedicated to squelching those who step over it will help build and preserve a community. See SomethingAwful, where there's an incentive to stay on-topic and a penalty for being creepy or overly offensive (beyond being just provocative) outside of the forums in which that is allowed.
The move to get this on the ballot was led by a former warden of California's San Quentin prison, Jeanne Woodford:
“California is on the brink of replacing the death penalty with a sentence of life in prison with no chance of parole as the maximum punishment for murder,” Woodford said. “In November, voters will have the first opportunity ever to decide between the death penalty and a sentence of life in prison with absolutely no chance of parole. Back in 1978, we did not have an alternative sentence that would keep convicted killers behind bars forever. We certainly did not know that we would spend $4 billion on 13 executions. Our system is broken, expensive and it always will carry the grave risk of a mistake. SAFE California offers a solution with savings at a time when we’re laying off teachers and cutting vital services.”
I urge support of this measure:
The death penalty is a deep issue, and I posted this on HN because I'd like to hear what the thoughtful folks in this community have to say on the topic.
Also, since I see a lot of people misquoting the Hacker News submission guidelines here they are in full, emphasis mine.
"Hacker News Guidelines
What to Submit On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.
Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic."
That said, I don't believe this is Hacker News and I flagged it. It's going to devolve into politics in about 8 seconds and we try to avoid that.
The mistake isn't worth someone's life.
For example, right now, in one of India's jails lies a man named Ajmal Kasab. He is one of the terrorists involved in the 26/11 attack on Mumbai. He was caught on tape mercilessly killing people with his AK47.
If you do away with the death penalty entirely, how do you execute this fucker and others like him?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Mumbai_attacks
Edit: A lot of people asking similar questions. So I'll just answer them here.
Being identified by eye-witnesses and being caught on camera are not the same thing. People make mistakes while remembering. Cameras don't. Further, he was apprehended by the army/police in the middle of his killing spree. There is NO WAY it was someone else.
Handing him a life imprisonment just puts the system at risk. It will just lead to terrorists resorting to kidnap to release him as has been done in the past. A well known example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Airlines_Flight_814
Every person ever convicted is, in theory, because there was enough conclusive proof. Mistakes will always happen.
what
The criminal system isn't for punishment. It's for reform. It's not to 'get back' at people, it's to help integrate people back into society and act as a deterrent to stop crime in the first place. You're not trying to 'execute this fucker and others like him', you're trying to figure out what's wrong, how you can reform (if possible), and deter other crimes like it. If you're just executing it's a hell of a deterrence, but you're not reforming at all.
Remember the Oslo masscare? Read up on the perpetrator and his sentence. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anders_Behring_Breivik
There's a big difference between somebody who's medically declared insane and a member of a terrorist organisation who killed people as his masters wanted for the sole purpose of creating terror.
The death penalty is the ultimate irreversible penalty. Don't you think it's better to give people life in prison instead of death.
You should read up about the death penalty as a deterrent. Do you really think Ajmal expected to even get out of the mission alive? Do you think he didn't know about the death penalty if he managed to escape alive.
Its one thing to die a hero another to sit in a cell for forty years in your own filth.
You may argue that it is a false dichotomy, but I disagree, because the people who will kill to get their compadres released will adjust their tactics until they find the lever that works.
I agree that it would probably be fairly tough to institute in a democratic country. But I think it could be doable in a reasonably (but realistically!) rational country. The long-term effect should be a vast reduction in the quantity of kidnappings, since you render them ineffectual.
Such policies are already implemented sporadically. Look at various navies' responses to Somali pirates and their hostage-taking, or the way the US negotiates (or, rather, doesn't) with the occasional terrorist who kidnaps a US citizen and threatens to behead them.
To me, that's absurd on its face. Such persons are beyond reason. Don't forget, amongst this group are suicide bombers.
In the U.S. at least, its widely accepted that the death penalty is not a deterrent for murder, much less terrorism.[1]
[1]http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/files/DeterrenceStudy2009.pd...)
As for Ajmal, I wouldn't want him to be executed simply because that is probably what he expected.
IMHO, capital punishment should be so rare that it makes the news, and also sets a deterrent for future criminals wishing to do something similar.
> I firmly believe that some people have to pay the ultimate price for their deeds, but I insist that these people should have so much evidence pointing them to having done the act that there is no possible way that they could be innocent.
I would say that condition is 100% impossible to meet, and would present that as an argument against the death penalty.
> also sets a deterrent for future criminals wishing to do something similar.
This does not exist. At least, it has not been reliably shown that this exists. The intensity of the punishment for a crime has not been shown to correlate with the number of criminals committing the crime. There have been studies that show both results (that increasing punishment decreases future crime, and that it doesn't).
You cannot base real ideas on the assumption that the death penalty will deter potential future murders. There's no reason to believe that's the case.
I would say that condition is 100% impossible to meet, and would present that as an argument against the death penalty.
Exactly my point. So it'd be so rare that you'd never hear of it happening.
Regardless of people's moral/religious/practical stance on capital punishment, it is never a black and white issue. If anything, there exists only a grey area. I can always find someone who vehemently disagrees with capital punishment, but then makes exceptions to the rule in the most heinous of violations (killing of family, children, cultures).
My Google skillz are failing me but there is a famous quote from a judge ruling on obscenity laws. It went something like: "I know obscenity when I see it". For me, this is the same issue with capital punishment. The worst part is that you can't write laws based on that type of subjective judgement.
Without getting into the pro/con discussion, that doesn't sound right to me. I was under the impression that the vast majority of criminal cases were complete walk-overs: You have weapon, forensics, motive, opportunity, confession and what not all aligning perfectly.
By a stroke of tautology, we never hear about them because they are boring.
Or at the other end of the spectrum: Where is the wiggle-room for less than 100% certain guilt in the Anders Behring Breivik case in Norway?
What you're asking for is a two-tiered system of guilt. In one tier the convicts are Definitely Guilty, while in the other tier the convicts are Definitely Definitely Guilty.
I don't believe a system like that is stable. Every juror who convicted Carlos DeLuna (or Cameron Todd Willingham) did so with a very firm belief in their guilt.
I personally do not agree with the death penalty (and live in a country without it) not because mistakes happen because murder is wrong, whether it's state sponsored or not. The fact that mistakes do happen just makes it even more ludicrous to me that ANYONE supports the death penalty.
This is the entire reason people petition against the death penalty.
Neil D. Tyson
You can't have the death penalty in a broken system, it enables the same crimes it attempts to deter, and with death there's no recourse. 20 rights and 1 wrong is just unacceptable. In reality, the false positives are apparently much, much more despicable. Just do a search on final statements for "innocent" or "innocence."
If you're looking to save innocents from being killed by prison, death row is the wrong place to look. No matter how inadequate you feel the process is for death penalty cases, it's significantly worse for folks who get other sentences. Since prison kills people (and not just with "live without parole)....
No, they don't "get a [meaningful] chance to prove their innocence. They just die, killed by prison just as much as someone intentionally executed.
Wrongful conviction is bad in any case; the death penalty aspect is simply inflammatory. Executions are irreversible, but so is imprisonment. They might let you out if they discover you're innocent, but there's no way to refund you your lost time.
My problem is – our judicial system pretending these people can be reconditioned, like a refurbished electronic or something. Terri-Lynn McClintic was wicked well before the murder, even doing things like microwaving a small dog until it cried.
These people cannot be reconditioned. And when you take a look at the science, it comes down to bad wiring. So does killing them make sense knowing that they are mentally damaged and not simply moonlighting as maniacs?
With tongue in cheek, we need Minority Report-style decommissioning. Technology to the rescue.
Make sure when you read a press release like this, though, that if there isn't a press release saying the courts have convicted an innocent man, there isn't a press release at all. Which means Professor Liebman and his students have wasted their time. Which they don't want to do, so they are anything but disinterested investigators.
I mean, you're not going to see a headline that says "Murderer walks free in Texas, probe says." I mean, duh. That happens all the time, so who cares? There's certainly no market for an independent, open-source prosecution...
Doesn't this make the prosecutors in this case guilty of murder?