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Comment by kergonath | Hacker News Reader

> Furthermore it is highly suspect that he was caught selling the laptop stolen from her house and the story about how he came into it is implausible.

Things like “the State destroyed or corrupted the evidence that could conclusively prove his innocence and the available DNA and other forensic crime-scene evidence does not match him” should at the very least make everyone pause and reconsider the course of action. I am not familiar with the case so I don’t have an opinion on whether he is guilty or not, but this is not a way of running a justice system.

In any case, yes, the death penalty is a barbaric anachronism in a liberal society.

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I'm not entrenched in my position, but I would argue that there are cases where the death penalty makes sense. It seems more cruel to lock someone up for the rest of their life with no chance of parole AND denying them the ability to commit suicide. Maybe avoidance of cruelty isn't the point of getting rid of the death penalty, though.

I'm against the death penalty - I do believe there's times it makes sense, and I certainly believe there's crimes worthy of it. But I don't trust the state to make this determination with 100% accuracy - and anything less than 100% means we have to make the choice between not giving the death penalty to those who do deserve it, or executing those who don't deserve it.

It's not unusual to hear stories of people being found innocent after decades in prison - and every single time it hammers home to me that they could have been pardoning a grave.

If it were up to me it would be in the constitution that everyone has the right to euthanasia and suicide with no conditions. At first i thought it seems like a completely unrelated issue to the death penalty. After thinking about it more maybe you have a point. Society will likely never get over the taboo of enabling suicide so i suppose it can be seen as a lesser moral evil to kill someone rather than subject them to life imprisonment under suicide watch. Interesting moral questions

> It seems more cruel to lock someone up for the rest of their life with no chance of parole AND denying them the ability to commit suicide.

It does, but at least it is reversible. I think when the worst case (an innocent being killed) is so wrong, it makes sense to design the system to avoid it, even if this has side effects such as making it worse for the actual criminals.

I would support leaving the opportunity to commit suicide in good conditions rather than strangling themselves with their bedsheets, but doing that properly would be tricky.

> Maybe avoidance of cruelty isn't the point of getting rid of the death penalty, though.

That’s a tricky one. It is hard to want to avoid cruelty in the case of gruesome murders. Nobody wants to say that they want to make the life of jailed terrorists better.

But among the opponents to the death penalty, I don’t think that cruelty is the main point. By keeping them alive, we don’t lower ourselves to their level, we leave them an opportunity to become better, and we avoid the moral cost of killing innocents.

Besides, life in prison is as good or bad as we collectively want it to be. There is a spectrum between Swedish jails and a hole in a dungeon.

This was all considered by the state Supreme Court. Due process was invoked and after numerous reviews at every level no court found anything to retry or reverse the case.

My personal take - of course he was guilty as unrelated people recounted confessions he made to them that included details that were never made public. And the property findings.

Saying that I’m not sure killing people is the greatest thing.

> unrelated people recounted confessions he made to them that included details that were never made public

Do you have a source?

"The case against Mr. Williams turned on the testimony of two unreliable witnesses who were incentivized by promises of leniency in their own pending criminal cases and reward money. The investigation had gone cold until a jail inmate named Henry Cole, a man with a lengthy record, claimed that Mr. Williams confessed to him that he committed the murder while they were both locked up in jail. Cole directed police to Laura Asaro, a woman who had briefly dated Mr. Williams and had an extensive record of her own.

Both of these individuals were known fabricators; neither revealed any information that was not either included in media accounts about the case or already known to the police. "

Literally the Missouri Supreme Court decision and US Supreme Court decision that supports it.

I get your point and I am not arguing for his innocence, but both courts are highly suspect these days.

Everything is fallable, sure. But consider this: the guy had millions of dollars of pro bono legal machinery behind him and even still could not produce an argument or counter evidence to support his claim. Our system is amazingly transparent and corruption or outright denial of evidence would be clearly apparent. And it’s not there.

The system works almost always but does get it wrong sometimes. I doubt that this was that time. Justice was served.

> and corruption or outright denial of evidence would be clearly apparent

Not really - the legal discovery rules require full disclosure of all evidence, yet you regularly hear about how prosecutors don't disclose evidence. Sometimes the appeals process will grant a new trial, sometimes they overturn, but often the judges will just say "we're not going to bother worrying about the lack of a fair trial". It happens often enough that prosecutors are willing to take the gamble on it, otherwise it wouldn't continue to be a common news story.

In this case though the defense never even challenged the evidence or if it was sufficient. You “regularly” hear about it because it’s so rare that it’s news if it happens. It’s a very rare event.

Read the background here and tell me you really support this man who stabbed that woman - mother and wife - 43 times.

https://law.justia.com/cases/missouri/supreme-court/2003/sc-...

The same justices that put a pro-abortion amendment on the ballot.

> " [...] neither revealed any information that was not either included in media accounts about the case or already known to the police. "

My brain is short-circuiting over the two parts of this snippet from The Innocence Project. Presumably both are intended to suggest unreliable individuals and an unjust guilty verdict, but I find a mismatch between the two. It's one thing to suppose the individuals revealed some details that were featured in media accounts. But it's quite a different thing to suppose the individuals revealed some details that were known only to police. The former point is of no consequence, but the latter point, if true, supports the reliability of the individuals and the guilt of the accused.

Not that I support the death penalty anyway. But I'm leaning toward nemo44x's personal take mentioned above. And the snippet was presumably written to coax us that the man was innocent. Am I missing something? They seem like weasel words, as another poster put it. :(

Just read the background from the appeal case and urs clear as day he’s guilty. They challenged a bunch of technicalities with flimsy arguments. At no point did they challenge if the evidence was sufficient.

https://law.justia.com/cases/missouri/supreme-court/2003/sc-...

He stabbed that women 43 times. And yet these fools support this evil monster of a man.

This is a lawyer's evasive way of hiding that these individuals revealed info that was not known to the public but was confirmed to be accurate by the police

I love how they try and paint the witnesses as unreliable because they have "records" while defending the guy who had 15 violent felonies and already serving time for armed robbery as a victim of the system. While also ignoring the testimony of the person he fenced the victim's laptop to and the victim's belongings being found in the car he used to drive to burglary turned murder.

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