Executed… and innocent?

Socrtease

Socrtease

Verified User
Gabriel Falcon
AC360° Writer

Before the lethal drugs poured into his vein, stopping his heart and ending his life, Cameron Todd Willingham gave a last statement from the Texas death chamber. This is what inmate # 999041 said:

“The only statement I want to make is that I am an innocent man - convicted of a crime I did not commit. I have been persecuted for 12 years for something I did not do. From God’s dust I came and to dust I will return - so the earth shall become my throne. I gotta go, road dog. I love you Gabby.”

Willingham was executed on February 17, 2004. More than four-years later, state investigators will decide if an innocent man was put to death. The Texas Forensic Science Commission has agreed to review the case because key evidence has been called into question.

Willingham was convicted of murdering his three young daughters. Prosecutors said he intentionally set fire to their home. A jury agreed.

Now, more than four years after the execution, the forensic testing that the prosecution used to argue it was arson has been called mistaken.

A panel commissioned by the Innocence Project determined that an incendiary agent was not used, concluding that in all likelihood the fire was accidental.

The state said justice was served. Now many wonder if that was just an injustice.

Now here is what I wonder, do any of you that support the death penalty care? If this proves to be true the state of Texas murdered a man. If you or I kill someone that we thought killed our child and we are wrong, we would be murderers.
 
Socrtease said:
Gabriel Falcon
AC360° Writer

Before the lethal drugs poured into his vein, stopping his heart and ending his life, Cameron Todd Willingham gave a last statement from the Texas death chamber. This is what inmate # 999041 said:

“The only statement I want to make is that I am an innocent man - convicted of a crime I did not commit. I have been persecuted for 12 years for something I did not do. From God’s dust I came and to dust I will return - so the earth shall become my throne. I gotta go, road dog. I love you Gabby.”

Willingham was executed on February 17, 2004. More than four-years later, state investigators will decide if an innocent man was put to death. The Texas Forensic Science Commission has agreed to review the case because key evidence has been called into question.

Willingham was convicted of murdering his three young daughters. Prosecutors said he intentionally set fire to their home. A jury agreed.

Now, more than four years after the execution, the forensic testing that the prosecution used to argue it was arson has been called mistaken.

A panel commissioned by the Innocence Project determined that an incendiary agent was not used, concluding that in all likelihood the fire was accidental.

The state said justice was served. Now many wonder if that was just an injustice.

Now here is what I wonder, do any of you that support the death penalty care? If this proves to be true the state of Texas murdered a man. If you or I kill someone that we thought killed our child and we are wrong, we would be murderers.
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Even if we were right we would be murderers.
 
Damocles said:
Even if we were right we would be murderers.
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Yes but perhaps justified. I have less problem with someone walking in on the person that killed or raped their loved one and killing them in a fit of righteous rage. But the state should not be involved in vengence. Free countries don't execute their citizens anymore. We are the exception.
 
I remember when Stories4U's wife was on here saying that it's never been PROVEN that we've executed an innocent man, ergo it's okay to have the death penalty because so far it's been full proof. She argued this for hours.
 
Socrtease said:
Sadly this may be the silver bullet that puts the death penalty to rest.
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Even more sad is that I don't believe this will do anything to stop the death penalty.

The evidence that we've murdered innocent people before has never made a dent in the drive to exact someone's, anyone's blood just because we can.
 
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Socrtease said:
Yes but perhaps justified. I have less problem with someone walking in on the person that killed or raped their loved one and killing them in a fit of righteous rage. But the state should not be involved in vengence. Free countries don't execute their citizens anymore. We are the exception.
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The death penalty is outlawed across Europe since the coming into legal force of the European Convention on Human Rights. The prohibition was extended a few years ago to even outlaw the use of the death penalty in times of war.

The European view is that the death penalty, like torture, brutalises those who carry it out and the wider society of which they are part. The death penalty elevates vengeance above the rule of law and inevitably involves the killing of people innocent of the crimes for which they are condemned.

Free countries do not indeed execute their citizens, but countries like Iran, China, Saudi Arabia and North Korea do.
 
ib1yysguy said:
I remember when Stories4U's wife was on here saying that it's never been PROVEN that we've executed an innocent man, ergo it's okay to have the death penalty because so far it's been full proof. She argued this for hours.
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The only reason it hasn't really be "proven" is because prosecutors and judges will rarely take the time to reinvestigate the cases of dead people. In Japan it was actually literally proven that they had executed an innocent man in the 80's, and public support dropped from 80% to 60% for a few years, but the public still came back to it. Even executing an innocent man doesn't stop the machine.
 
PES Activist said:
The death penalty is outlawed across Europe since the coming into legal force of the European Convention on Human Rights. The prohibition was extended a few years ago to even outlaw the use of the death penalty in times of war.

The European view is that the death penalty, like torture, brutalises those who carry it out and the wider society of which they are part. The death penalty elevates vengeance above the rule of law and inevitably involves the killing of people innocent of the crimes for which they are condemned.

Free countries do not indeed execute their citizens, but countries like Iran, China, Saudi Arabia and North Korea do.
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I can at least understand if a family member killed in a fit of rage.

But for a complete stranger to just sit there, in a completely rational state of mind, and calmly kill another human being.... that is not an emotion I'm comfortable with at all. That is definitely a part of us from the dark ages, and it needs to be suppressed in a modern, free society.
 
Damocles said:
Even if we were right we would be murderers.
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do you feel all our soldiers are murderers?

Don't be stupid. Murder is a legal definition that concerns itself with others unlawfully killing another. Murder is not the killing of someone else. That makes you a killer. Not a murderer.
 
Grind said:
do you feel all our soldiers are murderers?

Don't be stupid. Murder is a legal definition that concerns itself with others unlawfully killing another. Murder is not the killing of someone else. That makes you a killer. Not a murderer.
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That makes no sense.

I specifically was talking about his scenario where I would kill somebody who raped my daughter. Per the law I would then be a murderer.
 
Watermark said:
I can at least understand if a family member killed in a fit of rage.

But for a complete stranger to just sit there, in a completely rational state of mind, and calmly kill another human being.... that is not an emotion I'm comfortable with at all. That is definitely a part of us from the dark ages, and it needs to be suppressed in a modern, free society.
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I just watched a fascinating dramatisation of the career of the British executioner, Albert Pierrepoint, which chartered his brutalisation and turning away from his profession. The show was pretty tough to watch. It presented Pierrepoint as a humane man who was interested in minimising the physical suffering of those he was tasked to execute, including the role he played in executing the nazi's condemned at Nuremburg after the Second World War.

The programme ended with the comment that Pierrepoint had executed over 600 people between 1933 and 1955, yet that in 1974 he said that after his long career as an executioner he had become convinced that the death penalty has achieved "... nothing but revenge."
 
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