Know anyone on Texas Death Row?

[propellerhead]

Big database.

The offenses are pretty scary. I'm glad these people are locked up.

 

[ndee]

Originally posted by: propellerhead
Big database.

The offenses are pretty scary. I'm glad these people are locked up.

And how many of them are not guilty? How many of them are black?

 

[pyonir]

what do you mean? no one in prison is guilty.

 

[propellerhead]

They even have a "Bill Gates" on there.

 

[minendo]

Originally posted by: pyonir
what do you mean? no one in prison is guilty.

Except Red. He is the only guilty one in Shawshank.

 

[pyonir]

Here are your stats for how many are black and how many white.

Stats

 

[bmacd]

nope. dunno anybody.

-=bmacd=-

 

[Don Vito Corleone]

And how many of them are not guilty? How many of them are black?

No way of knowing whether any of them are not guilty; we will never know. In all likelihood they are virtually all guilty of some serious crime or crimes, and nearly all guilty as charged (though this does not excuse the occasional execution of an innocent person, which surely happens from time to time).

An informal glance appears to reflect that fewer than half are black. I'm sure the number of black men on death row, and in prison generally, is markedly higher than their proportion in society at large, but that fact taken in isolation does not provide much information (one might interpret it as meaning that blacks are relatively more likely to commit crimes, or simply that they get treated more harshly by the justice system due to economic factors and/or racism).

Here is a fairly comprehensive thumbnail view of death penalty statistics maintained by the Department of Justice.

 

[Lucky]

No way of knowing whether any of them are not guilty; we will never know. In all likelihood they are virtually all guilty of some serious crime or crimes, and nearly all guilty as charged (though this does not excuse the occasional execution of an innocent person, which surely happens from time to time).



When the numbers out of illinois revealed that an equal number of men on death row were released as were executed, I dont buy the line that we can be sure they were nearly all guilty. Nothing (that I have seen) indicates to me that Illinois is simply an anomoly, so I will continue to advocate a moratorium on the death penalty except in cases where there is no reasonable doubt.

 

[Mill]

When is there a case that everyone is positive on? I mean c'mon. Even if they confess to the crime and convince people they did it, they can change their mind later and get a retrial. They can so the confession was forced or whatever. I think the death row is working fine like it is right now. It is rare that an innocent person is put to death. I want a few examples of an innocent person being put to death. They are few and far between.

Personally I don't care much for the death penalty. I used to hate it but I have gotten to the point that I see why we need it. True it doesn't deter the most hardcore people, but the ones it does deter are the ones I am thankful for.

 

[Don Vito Corleone]

When the numbers out of illinois revealed that an equal number of men on death row were released as were executed, I dont buy the line that we can be sure they were nearly all guilty. Nothing (that I have seen) indicates to me that Illinois is simply an anomoly, so I will continue to advocate a moratorium on the death penalty except in cases where there is no reasonable doubt.

In a sense I agree, and I have made the same argument for some time. That said, Illinois's situation was a bit unusual in that it appeared that some prosecutors had committed wholesale fraud on the court through deliberate prosecutorial misconduct. In my opinion nobody but God can ever know whether a person is guilty (or where, in your words, there is no reasonable doubt), and I have no earthly idea how common this kind of prosecutorial misconduct is, but I have a lot of faith in our justice system, imperfect though it may be. I feel that criminal justice, like any human enterprise, is imperfect, so it makes sense to reserve the death penalty for a particular category of cases (that is, very serious offenses with very strong evidence). As a prosecutor, I do what I can to make the system better, and to make it one that people can trust.

 

[Don Vito Corleone]

I want a few examples of an innocent person being put to death. They are few and far between.

Unfortunately they are very tough to document - it is always tough to prove a negative, and once a person is executed, there is no longer a party at interest to appeal to the court. As such, there can never be a judicial determination that a person, already executed, was not guilty. Personally I would like to see DNA used to re-open those death-row cases in which it might be exculpatory; a large number of people have already been freed from death row because DNA proved them not guilty.

 

[Lucky]

Originally posted by: Don_Vito

When the numbers out of illinois revealed that an equal number of men on death row were released as were executed, I dont buy the line that we can be sure they were nearly all guilty. Nothing (that I have seen) indicates to me that Illinois is simply an anomoly, so I will continue to advocate a moratorium on the death penalty except in cases where there is no reasonable doubt.

In a sense I agree, and I have made the same argument for some time. That said, Illinois's situation was a bit unusual in that it appeared that some prosecutors had committed wholesale fraud on the court through deliberate prosecutorial misconduct. In my opinion nobody but God can ever know whether a person is guilty (or where, in your words, there is no reasonable doubt), and I have no earthly idea how common this kind of prosecutorial misconduct is, but I have a lot of faith in our justice system, imperfect though it may be. I feel that criminal justice, like any human enterprise, is imperfect, so it makes sense to reserve the death penalty for a particular category of cases (that is, very serious offenses with very strong evidence). As a prosecutor, I do what I can to make the system better, and to make it one that people can trust.

Thank you for the information, I wasnt aware of any unique qualifiers to Illinois's record.

 

[rbhawcroft]

didnt princeton do a study of 950 plus offenders executed in the 90's in the midwest a year or two ago and found sth like 60%+ either had an ineffective or incompetent defence representation or had otherwise unfair/ predjudiced/ compromised trials? ALso of the public procecutors or whatever you have in the us who get assigned for those who cant afford private defence there is a huge variations procecution rates eventhough the cases are assigned randomly.

 

[Mill]

I agree Don_Vito. I don't care how much it costs we should start using DNA a lot more. Also it is possible use DNA for those already on Death Row. If they are innocent then they certainly shouldn't be there.

I also didn't know that about Illinois. I thought it was just a luck of the draw type situation.

 

[tcsenter]

An informal glance appears to reflect that fewer than half are black. I'm sure the number of black men on death row, and in prison generally, is markedly higher than their proportion in society at large, but that fact taken in isolation does not provide much information

Exactly, it has been proven OVER and OVER again that the number of blacks on death row are comparable to whites in terms of the proportion of serious violent crimes that are committed by each race. It is undeniable that blacks commit a highly disproportionate share of violent crimes in the United States based on their population.

 

[Nocturnal]

It's kind of scary to think that innocent people are being put to death. What if you were picked up on the street while deposting your work check for a rape or a hate crime and put to death for no reason? Scary huh?

 

[Pliablemoose]

It's actually pretty rare that someone sentenced to death is innocent, usually a jury is pretty careful about convicting, and most of them are guilty of enough without the homicide conviction to warrant the death sentence.

Course, since we all carry guns in Texas, we try to not let the bad a$$es make it to the judicial system, we kill them first...

 

[rbhawcroft]

i had a look no,

wow, those are some 'scary ass motherfuckers' if they didnt do that they probably didsth else as bad.

A shocking number of policemen were the victims in the ones i looked at, you dont get that in the uk, apart from northern ireland in the past. Not many of the personal crimes mention dna evidence that is always in use in britain.

 

[Don Vito Corleone]

Originally posted by: Nocturnal
It's kind of scary to think that innocent people are being put to death. What if you were picked up on the street while deposting your work check for a rape or a hate crime and put to death for no reason? Scary huh?

It is scary, and it's important to remember that it can happen. That said, I think VERY few people on death row are "innocent," per se. I believe statistics would show that for the most part when a not-guilty person is charged with murder, that person has a long criminal history, usually including violent offenses. This is ordinarily how they end up becoming suspects in the first place. Obviously this does not make it OK to give anyone the death penalty if they are not guilty of the charged offense - that is wrong and to be avoided at all costs - but I would bet my eyeteeth that at least 95% of the people on death row are very bad folks and pose a continuing danger to society.

 

[Don Vito Corleone]

Not many of the personal crimes mention dna evidence that is always in use in britain.

Not every murder case lends itself to DNA testing. Unless the assailant leaves tissue, blood, semen, saliva, etc. at the scene, or acquires the victim's bodily fluids or residue on his person or in his home or vehicle, DNA evidence is generally unhelpful. The rate of crimes in which guns are used is almost certainly higher in the U.S. than in the U.K. (which has much stricter gun laws), and shootings often do not provide any useful DNA evidence.

 

[propellerhead]

Hit Return to Death Row Page at the top of the page.

The Last Meal Requests are pretty interesting too.

 

[tcsenter]

When the numbers out of illinois revealed that an equal number of men on death row were released as were executed, I dont buy the line that we can be sure they were nearly all guilty. Nothing (that I have seen) indicates to me that Illinois is simply an anomoly, so I will continue to advocate a moratorium on the death penalty except in cases where there is no reasonable doubt.

The funny thing is, 'no reasonable doubt' is SUPPOSED to be the burden met in order to convict ANY person of ANY criminal act. I've studied numerous cases, and it is downright SCARY how little concrete evidence, or circumstantial evidence for that matter, a person can be tried, convicted, and sentenced to DEATH for in this country.

Look at the number of men being exonerated of their rape convictions after rotting away in some prison for a decade or longer, almost every week there is a new case. Many of these men were convicted PURELY on "he said/she said" evidence, with NO corraborating physical evidence whatsoever that a forcible rape occurred.

There is NO WAY anyone can credibly argue that when the jury's basis of deliberation comes down to deciding whom is more believable based solely on their perceptions of believability, this precludes the possibility of innocence by a reasonable doubt. It's 50-50, either he is telling the truth, or he isn't. I would NEVER send someone to prison based on those odds.

We've come to a point where there is an urgency to prevent the guilty from going free, even if it means we will error on the side of more wrongful convictions. I've heard people say that it is unacceptable for one guilty man to go free, but its 'just the way the ball bounces' when an innocent person is wrongly convicted. Our justice system was framed to be deliberately biased in favor of preventing a wrongful conviction: "that ten guilty men should go free before one innocent man is wrongly convicted." We've come close to turning that bias on its head, not only are we letting many guilty persons go free, we're convicting the innocent in disturbing numbers.

I don't know what the solution is, but I know that prosecutors being politicians is part of the problem.

 

[Lucky]

I don't know what the solution is, but I know that prosecutors being politicians is part of the problem

There's much more in your post to address than simply this line, but I will agree with this specifically. I was *just* thinking that after seeing the Law and Order marathon yesterday.

 

[rbhawcroft]

you dont get criminals like this in britain much, most random murders are fights got out of hand. Most of those lot just went and shot people who werent offering resistance. One guy even lured three police officers with a spurious 911 call, and he was only 17, its an adult crime so he should be treated like an adult.:disgust: