

Did Texas execute an innocent man? - justinchen
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/09/07/090907fa_fact_grann

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rms
Yes, they did. It is time for a national death penalty moratorium. This is not
the first time.

This is a more straightforward read:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cameron_Willingham>

~~~
amichail
How is this any worse than the collateral damage of war?

~~~
slyn
The death penalty is far to permanent of a punishment to be wielded by
organizations with such high false positive rates. We wouldn't put up with it
with an anti-virus program or a SMART-esque hardware monitoring program, why
do we put up with it when the price is not a few easily replicated digital
files or some computer hardware, but rather an innocent persons _life_.

Capital punishment in it's current form is not a deterrence to crime, it
doesn't fix the problems caused by the crimes it is punishing for (it doesn't
bring back the murdered, etc), it's more expensive for the state (and
therefore taxpayers) than life without parole, and innocents have died at the
hands of overzealous police, judges, politicians, and public opinion. So the
question then becomes, why do it?

~~~
sant0sk1
> it's more expensive for the state (and therefore taxpayers) than life
> without parole

Do you have a source to back that up?

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btilly
5 seconds with Google would have given you
<http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/costs-death-penalty> which links to multiple
sources that have looked into the issue and found that the additional cost of
prosecuting the death penalty is significantly more than life without parole.
The amount of difference varies with jurisdiction and the methodology of the
study, but the differences support the claim.

~~~
sant0sk1
Fair enough. I was on my iPhone and about to go to bed. It was an interesting
claim and I wanted to know if it was founded or not.

------
Eliezer
"I used to support the death penalty until I realized the government can't
even run the Post Office." - my father, Moshe Yudkowsky

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steiger
That's the most outrageous, devilish thing that can and eventually had
happened or will happen with death penalty. Someday, we will know we killed an
innocent man, and in that day we will ALL be murderers. We all being
murderers, we should all be sentenced to death (the Death Penalty Paradox).

~~~
alextp
Technically we would all be accomplices to murder (after all it is quite hard
to find a not-Orient-Express scenario in which more than a couple of people
kill another one), which does not usually get the death penalty, so paradox is
avoided. I do agree with you, though :-)

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covercash
All of the people that contributed to his execution with their b.s. science
and swayed testimony need to be severely punished IMO. Maybe a prison sentence
will deter these "experts" from claiming their findings are 100% correct
without some sort of scientific proof.

This reminds me of a similar story I read recently about bite mark experts
being used in murder investigations... just like these arson experts, they had
no scientific proof of anything they concluded. People were still convicted of
rape and murder based on their "expert" testimony.

~~~
thaumaturgy
I thought the quote near the beginning of the article about how the death
penalty proves the sanctity of life gave a pretty good solution to the
"problem" of the death penalty:

Anyone who, either knowingly or negligently, contributes to the execution of
any person later found innocent, is guilty of murder punishable by death.

Now, who wants to be the first to help put someone on death row?

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jhancock
Just based on the title, I'd have to say "more probable than any other state".
I should probably have flagged this article, but 'eh.

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adrianwaj
"Me and Stacy’s been together for four years, but off and on we get into a
fight and split up for a while and I think those babies is what brought us so
close together . . . neither one of us . . . could live without them kids."

Did Stacy have jealous boyfriend or secret admirer? She did work at a bar.
Murdering Stacy's partner Willingham and their kids could bring them a step
closer. Maybe someone was targeting Stacy. Who knows?

The system went for the dad because he was an easy target, and so the system
could then move on.

