on edit: not just the post, but the articles, we must pretend that of course this would be a first time event that would otherwise sully the fine nature of the criminal justice system with accidentally murdering someone.
This is pretty clear to me. If you wanted to make it sound like you're claiming, you'd phrase it something like "Texas may well execute soon an innocent man, the first in US history, on the false premise of "shaken baby syndrome.""
As it is, the first sentence very specifically scopes down this case to "shaken baby syndrome."
The disproven ‘shaken baby syndrome’ may for the first time result in a man’s execution in Texas. His innocence …
The odd wording is specifically there to mislead someone.
It is clear that it is meant the shaken baby syndrome is what is the first here, but still it could be taken the other way, and it ends up downplaying how contemptible the State's actions are, even though the poster really wants to highlight that.
I guess I would prefer something like -
"Texas, continuing its tradition of executing innocent people, will for the first time use the dubious science of Shaken Baby Syndrome as its cause."
It's not just the post, everybody does it whenever they say "Texas might execute an innocent person" they ignore that Texas has executed people that were extremely likely to be innocent (so likely that it is reasonable just to describe them that way - in case anyone has problems with my phrasing here)
What is odd about the original wording? If anything, the one you present feels more formal/awkward compared to normal conversational English.
Personally I think it's absolutely ludicrous to believe that anyone would be trying to suggest that only now, in the year 2024, has a possibly-innocent person been executed in either Texas or the US. Like, you'd need crazy strong evidence to make that claim, while the post in question seems very specific to shaken baby syndrome.
It feels like an intentionally un-charitable, adversarial reading.
This may be a regional thing but the second just sounds better to me:
Texas may well execute soon an innocent man
Texas may soon execute an innocent man
> It feels like an intentionally un-charitable, adversarial reading.
Saying this might be the first isn’t strictly speaking wrong as far as I can tell. I don’t know of anyone proven to be innocent that’s been executed. Sure, it’s likely happened several times, but I can’t exactly put a firm number so it may well be zero.
> From what I understand, Texas executes possibly/probably/definitely innocent people with regularity.
The GP comment seems to imply that Texas is intentionally putting innocent people to death regularly. That had nothing to do with the governor or pardons.
https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/policy-issues/innocence/execute...
A lot of these possibly innocent should just be described as innocent, because the "possibly" adds insult to execution.
I agree the system is terrible, if even one innocent person can be found guilty and punished or even killed then the system is broken in my opinion. We can't fix that one-off though, and targeting one state's use of the death penalty is only going after a more obvious symptom while ignoring the root cause.
While I will always support seeing a person wrongfully convicted go free, I'd much prefer a fundamental revisit of our legal system so we don't have to catch mistakes like that after the fact.
I believe that this statement is making specific reference to this particular case. (I miss-read this next part, but will leave my mistake here with this comment. See below conversation. Sorry for the confusion) Earlier in the article it is made very clear that this has not been the only execution of an innocent person wrongly accused of shaken baby syndrome:
> According to the National Registry of Exonerations, there have been at least 32 exonerations of those wrongfully convicted under the shaken baby hypothesis.