Nice story about Justin Blackmon

[darkswordsman17]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=SU-1HnnG9c4

 

[rasczak]

That's pretty cool.

 

[SP33Demon]

This came out on ESPN about midseason. He's a decent guy.

 

[highland145]

:thumbsup:

 

[blackdogdeek]

if this is the story about his friendship with the little girl (can't view youtube from work) then i have to say i was especially moved by the report when it originally aired on espn. i have a lot of respect for blackmon and when i got to work the next day i googled the story because i had forgotten his name.

:thumbsup:

 

[Perknose]

Lol, OP. Saw your title and misread it as Justice Blackmon, and mistakenly thought you'd misspelled the last name of former Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun, who served 24 years on the court after being appointed in 1970 by Richard Nixon.

He was a good guy and a real man of conscience, famous for treating his law clerks really, really well and for his unassuming personal humility. He drove a VW bug and would identify himself to other patrons in fast food restaurants by saying he was, "Harry. I work for the government."

Of course, he died in 1999, so more fail for me in this thread!

But what he's particularly famous for is his 1994 dissent in a Texas death penalty case, Callins v. Collins. His path to this view was not an easy one, and was a long time coming, but when that time came, he stood up and eloquently stood by his principles:

[SIZE=+1]"Bruce Edwin Callins will be executed [tomorrow] by the state of Texas. Intravenous tubes attached to his arms will carry the instrument of death, a toxic fluid designed specifically for the purpose of killing human beings. The witnesses...will behold Callins...strapped to a gurney, seconds away from extinction. Within days, or perhaps hours, the memory of Callins will begin to fade. The wheels of justice will churn again, and somewhere, another jury or another judge will have the...task of determining whether some human being is to live or die.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=+1] We hope...that the defendant whose life is at risk will be represented by...someone who is inspired by the awareness that a less-than-vigorous defense...could have fatal consequences for the defendant. We hope that the attorney will investigate all aspects of the case, follow all evidentiary and procedural rules, and appear before a judge...committed to the protection of defendants' rights...[/SIZE]

[SIZE=+1] But even if we can feel confident that these actors will fulfill their roles...our collective conscience will remain uneasy. Twenty years have passed since this court declared that the death penalty must be imposed fairly and with reasonable consistency or not at all, and despite the effort of the states and courts to devise legal formulas and procedural rules to meet this...challenge, the death penalty remains fraught with arbitrariness, discrimination...and mistake...[/SIZE]

[SIZE=+1] From this day forward, I no longer shall tinker with the machinery of death. For more than 20 years I have endeavored...to develop...rules that would lend more than the mere appearance of fairness to the death penalty endeavor...Rather than continue to coddle the court's delusion that the desired level of fairness has been achieved...I feel...obligated simply to concede that the death penalty experiment has failed. It is virtually self-evident to me now that no combination of procedural rules or substantive regulations ever can save the death penalty from its inherent constitutional deficiencies... Perhaps one day this court will develop procedural rules or verbal formulas that actually will provide consistency, fairness and reliability in a capital-sentencing scheme. I am not optimistic that such a day will come. I am more optimistic, though, that this court eventually will conclude that the effort to eliminate arbitrariness while preserving fairness 'in the infliction of [death] is so plainly doomed to failure that it and the death penalty must be abandoned altogether.' (Godfrey v. Georgia, 1980) I may not live to see that day, but I have faith that eventually it will arrive. The path the court has chosen lessen us all."[/SIZE]

Hey, I'm not looking to start a P&N-style argument about the death penalty here is the sacred precincts of OT!

I'm just grateful for the mistake that allowed me to remember a person I consider to have been a great American. :thumbsup:

 

[darkswordsman17]

if this is the story about his friendship with the little girl (can't view youtube from work) then i have to say i was especially moved by the report when it originally aired on espn. i have a lot of respect for blackmon and when i got to work the next day i googled the story because i had forgotten his name.

:thumbsup:

It is.

Here's another one about Ricky Stanzi (and a few other Iowa players from a couple of years back).

http://www.kcrg.com/news/local/80184382.html