Ahead of inmate’s execution, Florida Catholic bishops seek clemency

[Hastrman]

But we in fact do let them loose and they in fact do kill again at a rate of 40-60 people a year.

Don’t confuse them with statistics, man.

No we haven’t. No one knows with any surety that we’ve executed even one innocent person and even those groups raising this issue have fewer than a dozen candidates that could be considered reasonable possibilities for improper execution since 1976 when the Supreme Court again permitted capital punishment. Worst possible case, we wrongfully executed one person every three years, during which time about 150 innocents were killed by repeat killers. There is no question that people are safer when killers are executed the first time they kill.

But…but…the other criminals will commit more crimes to keep the average up! They get quotas!



I, for one, say anyone who ever cites the Innocence Project is automatically disqualified from discussing the issue. Don’t trust anybody who puts the result in the working title of the experiment.

 

[louis91766]

This is not correct either as the statements from the Florida bishops are not authoritative; they are not even in all cases correct. They are the poorly conceived opinions of those particular bishops.

So are you saying that Catholic bishops don’t know what they are talking about and that they are guilty of heresy?

 

[Orleans_Attny]

“I find that nothing focuses a man’s mind like the knowledge he will be hanged on the morrow.”—Samuel Jonson

No there isn’t a way to do it. We’ve tried it, and our crime rates skyrocketed. Then we brought the death penalty back. Guess what, they went down.

Europe doesn’t count, there are always less fights in rest-homes than in places where people under 50 exist in large numbers. Japan doesn’t count either (aside from the fact they have the death penalty), not only are they even more geriatric than Europe, their prisons are hellholes and their organized crime puts a high priority on protecting respectable people (they began as vigilante groups, plus it’s easier to do business).

That “rather a thousand guilty go free” garbage sounds noble, but in practice, it means thousands upon thousands more victims. We are not immortal or omnipotent, therefore we have to accept that we’re not omniscient, either, and do the best we can.

I shouldn’t be getting this aggravated this early.

You can’t time crime rates to the death penalty because they’re entirely unrelated. Most crimes . . . almost all . . . do not warrant the death penalty under any circumstances. It’s like saying, “We got rid of the death penalty and shoplifting skyrocketed!”

Europe doesn’t count?

Japan doesn’t count (Hellholes?)

Because, um, lots of old people???

What about Australia?

Or Canada?

The Vatican?

The chance of killing innocents doesn’t matter?

Do the many individual U.S. states that don’t have the death penalty also NOT count?

We’d rather be in the company of countries like: Iran, North Korea, China, Afghanistan, India?

And what do we do with those pesky statistics that continually show, year after year, that the death penalty is not a deterrent to murder rates?

We should at least be intellectually honest and call the death penalty what it is: Vengeance. It’s all about taking our pound of flesh and feeling good about dispatching “evil.” But trying to justify it as a necessary for the protection of society is an argument that doesn’t come close to holding up.

Pax,
OA

PS: Interesting World Statistics:

* 42 (22%) maintain the death penalty in both law and practice.
* 95 (49%) have abolished it.
* 8 (4%) retain it for crimes committed in exceptional circumstances (such as in time of war).
* 49 (25%) permit its use for ordinary crimes, but have not used it for at least 10 years and are believed to have a policy or established practice of not carrying out executions, or it is under a moratorium.

 

[louis91766]

And what do we do with those pesky statistics that continually show, year after year, that the death penalty is not a deterrent to murder rates?

That is something I don’t understand because once a murderer is executed he will not be able to kill again, so you have deterred another killing.

 

[Orleans_Attny]

I, for one, say anyone who ever cites the Innocence Project is automatically disqualified from discussing the issue. Don’t trust anybody who puts the result in the working title of the experiment.

If it were an experiment I’d agree with you. But I suppose that turn of phrase was too cute not to use?

Heaven forbid we give props to people who have saved a number of INNOCENT lives.

Pax,
OA

 

[Orleans_Attny]

That is something I don’t understand because once a murderer is executed he will not be able to kill again, so you have deterred another killing.

I’m not sure if you’re being serious. But, just because one has killed doesn’t mean they will kill again - even if they had the opportunity. You seem to assume that. Deterrence comes in two varieties: Specific and General.

General Deterrence: People will engage in criminal and deviant activities if they do not fear apprehension and punishment. Norms, laws, and enforcement are to be designed and implemented to produce and maintain the image that “negative” and disruptive behaviors will receive attention and punishment. Although specific individuals become the object of enforcement activities, general deterrence theory focuses on reducing the probability of deviance in the general population. Examples of control activities reflecting the concerns of this concept include: Drunk-driving crackdowns, special gang-related crime task forces and police units, publication and highly visible notices of laws and policies (Notice: Shoplifters will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law), and the death penalty.

Specific Deterrence: General deterrence strategies focus on future behaviors, preventing individuals from engaging in crime or deviant by impacting their rational decision making process. Specific deterrence focuses on punishing known deviants in order to prevent them from ever again violating the specific norms they have broken. The concern here is that motives and rationales that lie behind the original behavior can, perhaps, never be delineated, but through the rational use of punishment as a negative sanction, problematic behavior can be extinguished. Examples: shock sentencing, corporal punishment, mandatory arrests for certain behaviors (domestic violence), etc.

Pax,
OA

 

[Ender]

So are you saying that Catholic bishops don’t know what they are talking about…

I think I was pretty clear about my position back in post #11: the positions the bishops took are just unsupportable. It was also clear that I was speaking of the specific bishops who signed the letter in Florida. Nor does distorting my comments constitute a rebuttal.

… and that they are guilty of heresy?

No, they’re just mistaken … as I pointed out.

Ender

 

[Orleans_Attny]

No one knows with any surety that we’ve executed even one innocent person … Ender

Are you joking? We know this at a level of doubt that far, far exceeds the beyond a reasonable doubt standard that it would take to put someone on death row.

There are all sorts of draconian things we could do that would result in a general increase in public safety - net sum safety has never been the standard.

Do you really believe that every single person convicted of homicide should be put to death? That seems to be the logical position from which you’re operating.

Pax,
OA

 

[Ender]

Are you joking? We know this at a level of doubt that far, far exceeds the beyond a reasonable doubt standard that it would take to put someone on death row.

Then you should be able to name them. Can you?

There are all sorts of draconian things we could do that would result in a general increase in public safety - net sum safety has never been the standard.

What does 2267 give as the sole basis for using capital punishment? That it is appropriate to use if it is necessary to protect the public. That’s it. I didn’t invent that standard; I’m merely explaining what it is.

Do you really believe that every single person convicted of homicide should be put to death? That seems to be the logical position from which you’re operating.

No. Nor is there anything logical in coming to that conclusion.

Let me be clear, however, about what I do believe. The Church’s position on the use of capital punishment is based primarily on two passages in scripture: Gen 9:5-6 and Rom 13:1-4. The first explains why capital punishment is necessary and the second explains why the State has been given authorization to use it. I accept that there may be valid exceptions for when the death penalty should not be used, but I also believe that it should be the rule rather than the exception. More to the point: I’m quite sure this is how the Church understood the issue until 1995.

Ender

 

[louis91766]

I think I was pretty clear about my position back in post #11: the positions the bishops took are just unsupportable. It was also clear that I was speaking of the specific bishops who signed the letter in Florida. Nor does distorting my comments constitute a rebuttal.

No, they’re just mistaken … as I pointed out.

Ender

They are teaching that capital punishment is wrong and immoral. It’s clear and simple.

 

[Orleans_Attny]

Start at the Salem Witch Trials, or with Sacco and Vanzetti?

It’s time to be honest: No reasonable person can possibly contend that we’ve never killed an innocent via death penalty. That argument is absurd beyond belief - regardless whether one is in favor of the death penalty or not. It’s bar better to admit with integrity that the killing of an occasional innocent is an acceptable price to pay for whatever benefit one believes the death penalty confers on society.

1. Claude Jones: Claude Jones was executed in 2000 for the murder of liquor store owner Allen Hilzendager, in San Jacinto County in 1989. On Nov. 14, 1989, Jones and another man were seen pulling into a liquor store in Point Blank, Texas. One stayed in the car while the other went inside and shot the owner. Witnesses who were standing across the road couldn’t see the killer, but Jones and two other men, Kerry Dixon and Timothy Jordan, were all linked to the murder. Although Jones said he never entered the store, Dixon and Jordan testified that Jones was in fact the shooter and they were both spared the death penalty. The deciding factor and only admissible evidence in Jones’ conviction came down to a strand of hair that was found at the scene of the crime. A forensic expert testified that the hair appeared to have come from Jones, and he was sentenced to death. Forensic technology was underdeveloped during the 1990 trial and it wasn’t able to match Jones’ DNA with the hair sample. Therefore, before his 2000 execution, Jones’ attorneys filed petitions for a stay of execution with a district court and the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals and requested that the hair be submitted for DNA testing that was now possible, but all courts and former Texas Governor George W. Bush denied Jones and he was executed. In an attempt to prove that Texas executed an innocent man, the Innocence Project and the Texas Observer filed a lawsuit in 2007 to obtain the strand of hair and submitted it for DNA testing, which was determined to be the hair of the victim.
2. Jesse Tafero: Jesse Tafero was executed by electric chair in 1990 for murdering two Florida police officers, Phillip Black and Donald Irwin. The murders occurred on Feb. 20, 1976, when Black and Irwin approached a parked car at a rest stop and found Tafero, his partner Sonia “Sunny” Jacobs, her two children and Walter Rhodes asleep inside. They were ordered to get out of the car when the officers saw a gun lying on the floor inside the car and, according to Rhodes, Tafero proceeded to shoot both officers and took off in their police car. They disposed of the police car and stole a man’s car, but were arrested after being caught in a roadblock. The gun was found in Tafero’s waistband, although it was legally registered to Jacobs. Tafero had been convicted of robbery and had served seven years of a 25-year sentence before being convicted for murder. Tafero and Jacobs claimed that Rhodes was the lone shooter, but Rhodes testified against them in exchange for a lighter sentence. Rhodes later admitted that he was responsible for the killings, but Tafero was still sentenced to death.
3. Cameron Todd Willingham: Cameron Todd Willingham was executed in 2004 for murdering his three young daughters by intentionally setting fire to the family home in Corsicana, Texas. The arson-murder case fueled much controversy about Willingham’s guilt, which was determined by the case’s primary evidence – the arson investigators’ findings. They determined that the fire was deliberately set with the help of a liquid accelerant due to specific burn patterns, laboratory tests and points of origin. Willingham maintained his innocence and appealed his conviction for years, but was executed at the Texas State Penitentiary in Huntsville on Feb. 16, 2004. In 2009, the Texas Forensic Science Commission panel reevaluated the case and determined that state and local arson investigators used “flawed science” when they labeled the fire as arson. Although advances in fire science and arson investigations have improved since 1991, the year of the fire, experts now believe the Corsicana Fire Department was negligent in their findings. The science commission is still investigating the arson ruling, and if the judge clears Willingham,** it would be the first time an official has formally declared a wrongful execution in Texas.**
4. Larry Griffin: Larry Griffin was executed in 1995 for a drive-by shooting that killed 19-year-old drug dealer Quintin Moss in St. Louis. Griffin immediately became a suspect because his older brother Dennis Griffin, another well-known drug dealer, was murdered just six months earlier. Moss was believed to have killed Dennis Griffin. Although there were a number of possible suspects in the murder of Moss, a witness account by a white man named Robert Fitzgerald, who claimed to have seen the shooting, knew the license plate number of the vehicle and could identify the gunman was all it took to have Griffin arrested. Fitzgerald was a convicted felon who had a long history of run-ins with the law, which raised concerns about the legitimacy of his story. During the 1993 hearing, Fitzgerald admitted to being unsure if Griffin was the man in the car after all. There were two key witnesses who wavered and a third person whose testimony could have helped Griffin, but was never contacted by either the defense or prosecution. Griffin continued to proclaim his innocence until his execution. The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund investigated the case after Griffin’s execution and wanted to uncover more witness accounts that could support their claim that Missouri executed an innocent man.

 

[Orleans_Attny]

1. Ruben Cantu: Ruben Cantu was executed in 1993 for the murder-robbery of a San Antonio man at the age of 17. Cantu had no previous convictions, but was p(name removed by moderator)ointed as a violent murderer who shot one victim nine times, as well as shot the only eyewitness nine times with a rifle, but he lived to testify. Juan Moreno offered his testimony to police and identified Cantu as the shooter, but later recanted, admitting that he said Cantu out of influence and fear of authorities. Although the case had a compelling witness testimony, there was no physical evidence that linked Cantu to the crime. In addition, his co-defendant David Garza, who allegedly committed the murder-robbery with Cantu, remained silent and signed a sworn affidavit allowing his accomplice to be falsely accused. Cantu maintained his innocence until his execution and claimed that he had been framed in this capital murder case.
2. David Spence: David Spence was executed in 1997 for murdering three teenagers in 1982 in Waco. Spence was convicted of raping, torturing and murdering two 17-year-old girls and murdering an 18-year-old boy. As the original allegations go, Spence was hired by convenience store owner Muneer Deeb to kill one girl and he ended up killing these three teens by mistake. Deeb was charged and sentenced to death, but later received a re-trial and was acquitted. Authoritative sources even had serious doubt about Spence’s guilt. Although there was no clear physical evidence to link Spence to the crime, The prosecution built its case against Spence around bite marks that a state expert said matched Spence’s teeth and jailhouse snitches. Two of the six jailhouse witnesses who testified at trial later recanted, saying they were given cigarettes, television and alcohol privileges, and conjugal visits for their testimonies. Spence’s post-conviction lawyers had a blind panel study in which five experts said the bite marks could not be matched to Spence’s. Even the original homicide investigator on the case said he had serious doubts about Spence’s guilt and a former Waco police detective involved in the case said he did not think Spence committed the crime. David Spence was executed by lethal injection on April 14, 1997.
3. Carlos De Luna: Carlos De Luna was executed in 1989 for the 1983 stabbing of Wanda Lopez, a Texas convenience store clerk. There were two eyewitnesses who played a key role in the conviction of De Luna. Before the murder-robbery, George Aguirre was filling up at the gas station where the crime occurred, when he saw a man standing outside the store slide a knife with the blade exposed into his pocket and enter. The man asked Aguirre for a ride to a nightclub, but he refused and went inside the store to warn Lopez about the suspicious man. Aguirre left and Lopez called the police to describe the man. As she was on the phone with a dispatcher, the man came back into the store and robbed her. The second witness, Kevan Baker, pulled into the station and heard bangs on the station’s window and saw a man struggling with a woman. As Baker approached the gas station, the murderer threatened him and took off. When police searched the area, they found De Luna not far from the station. He was shirtless and shoeless in a puddle of water and screamed, “Don’t shoot! You got me!” Both Aguirre and Baker confirmed De Luna was the man at the station. Little to no physical evidence was collected at the crime scene, including blood samples and fingerprints that could have helped De Luna. De Luna maintained his innocence and repeated that Carlos Hernandez was the actual killer. Despite Hernandez’s trouble with the law and repeated confessions to the murder, De Luna was executed.

 

[Orleans_Attny]

1. Joseph O’Dell: Joseph O’Dell was executed in 1997 for raping and murdering Helen Schartner. O’Dell was convicted on the basis of blood evidence and a jailhouse snitch. O’Dell represented himself and continued to proclaim his innocence in various unsuccessful appeals to the Virginia Supreme Court, Federal District Court and the Supreme Court. O’Dell requested that the state submit other pieces of evidence for DNA testing, but he was refused. Despite much effort and several appeals, the 4th Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals upheld his conviction and reinstated his death sentence. After his execution, Lori Urs, an anti-death penalty advocate and former wife to O’Dell, sought to further investigate the case and exonerate O’Dell based on mistaken blood matches, court opinions and refusal of DNA testing. However, the last of the DNA evidence from O’Dell’s case was burned in March 2000 and the appeals were laid to rest.
2. Leo Jones: Leo Jones was executed in 1998 for murdering a police officer in Florida. Although Jones confessed 12 hours after the murder, he said that he was forced to say he did it during hours of intimidating police interrogation, where they threatened his life and made him play Russian roulette. One witness believed that the police department was out to get Jones because he had assaulted an officer once. The same two arresting officers were released from the department shortly after for using violence in other cases. Despite repeated appeals, other potential suspects and witness testimonies in support of Jones’ exoneration, the sentencing stood as is. Jones was also denied another method of execution and was killed by the electric chair.
3. Timothy Evans: Timothy Evans was sentenced to death by hanging for the murder of his daughter in 1949 at their home in Notting Hill, London. Evans maintained his innocence and repeatedly accused his neighbor, John Christie, of murdering his wife and daughter. The police investigation and physical evidence used to convict Evans was weak. After Evans’ trial and execution, Christie was found to be a serial killer who was responsible for murdering several women at his residence. There were massive campaigns to overturn Evans’ conviction and an official inquiry was conducted 16 years later. It was confirmed that Evans’ daughter had been killed by Christie, and Evans was granted a posthumous pardon. This case of injustice had a strong influence in the UK’s decision to abolish capital punishment.
4. William Marion. William Marion met Jack Cameron at a boarding house in Kansas in 1872, and the two quickly became firm friends, travelling and working together across the mid-west. During their travels they journeyed to Beatrice, Nebraska, to visit Marion’s in-laws – Marion returned alone a few days later wearing Cameron’s clothes and riding Cameron’s horses, before vanishing. A week later the body of a man was discovered with three bullet wounds to the head. Marion immediately became the prime suspect in the murder and after a ten-year manhunt was eventually apprehended in Kansas, convicted and hanged. Four years later alleged ‘victim’, Cameron, miraculously re-appeared looking for his friend and explaining he had ditched his clothes and horses with Marion and escaped to Mexico to avoid a shotgun marriage. 100 years after his execution Marion’s grandson, Elbert Marion, successfully petitioned the governor of Nebraska to pardon William Marion – making Marion one of several ‘murderers’ whose ‘victims’ have survived them.

 

[Orleans_Attny]

1. Charles Hudspeth. In 1886, George Watkins and his wife, Rebecca, moved from Kansas to Marion County, Arkansas, where Rebecca subsequently became romantically involved with a local man, Charles Hudspeth. Nearly a year later, George Watkins disappeared and Hudspeth was arrested and charged with his murder. Based on Rebecca’s testimony that Hudspeth had murdered Watkins in order to clear the way for them to be married, he was convicted and sentenced to death by Arkansas’ Supreme Court, and was hanged at Harrison, Arkansas, on December 30, 1892. Yet in another case of a ‘victim’ mysteriously reappearing after their ‘murder’, Watkins’s lawyer found him alive and well a year later, living in Kansas – a clear case of wrongful execution the US government has failed to address.

And those are but only a few cases. Let’s not forget to acknowledge the 130+ people convicted and sentenced to death who were later release due to miscarriage of justice and/or proven innocence. So, at least there are some lucky ones.

A little intellectual rigor goes a long way when one is talking about sanctioning the killing of a person in custody . . . in the best interest of society.

God help us,
OA

 

[louis91766]

Start at the Salem Witch Trials, or with Sacco and Vanzetti?

It’s time to be honest: No reasonable person can possibly contend that we’ve never killed an innocent via death penalty. That argument is absurd beyond belief - regardless whether one is in favor of the death penalty or not. It’s bar better to admit with integrity that the killing of an occasional innocent is an acceptable price to pay for whatever benefit one believes the death penalty confers on society.

1. Claude Jones: Claude Jones was executed in 2000 for the murder of liquor store owner Allen Hilzendager, in San Jacinto County in 1989. On Nov. 14, 1989, Jones and another man were seen pulling into a liquor store in Point Blank, Texas. One stayed in the car while the other went inside and shot the owner. Witnesses who were standing across the road couldn’t see the killer, but Jones and two other men, Kerry Dixon and Timothy Jordan, were all linked to the murder. Although Jones said he never entered the store, Dixon and Jordan testified that Jones was in fact the shooter and they were both spared the death penalty. The deciding factor and only admissible evidence in Jones’ conviction came down to a strand of hair that was found at the scene of the crime. A forensic expert testified that the hair appeared to have come from Jones, and he was sentenced to death. Forensic technology was underdeveloped during the 1990 trial and it wasn’t able to match Jones’ DNA with the hair sample. Therefore, before his 2000 execution, Jones’ attorneys filed petitions for a stay of execution with a district court and the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals and requested that the hair be submitted for DNA testing that was now possible, but all courts and former Texas Governor George W. Bush denied Jones and he was executed. In an attempt to prove that Texas executed an innocent man, the Innocence Project and the Texas Observer filed a lawsuit in 2007 to obtain the strand of hair and submitted it for DNA testing, which was determined to be the hair of the victim.
2. Jesse Tafero: Jesse Tafero was executed by electric chair in 1990 for murdering two Florida police officers, Phillip Black and Donald Irwin. The murders occurred on Feb. 20, 1976, when Black and Irwin approached a parked car at a rest stop and found Tafero, his partner Sonia “Sunny” Jacobs, her two children and Walter Rhodes asleep inside. They were ordered to get out of the car when the officers saw a gun lying on the floor inside the car and, according to Rhodes, Tafero proceeded to shoot both officers and took off in their police car. They disposed of the police car and stole a man’s car, but were arrested after being caught in a roadblock. The gun was found in Tafero’s waistband, although it was legally registered to Jacobs. Tafero had been convicted of robbery and had served seven years of a 25-year sentence before being convicted for murder. Tafero and Jacobs claimed that Rhodes was the lone shooter, but Rhodes testified against them in exchange for a lighter sentence. Rhodes later admitted that he was responsible for the killings, but Tafero was still sentenced to death.
3. Cameron Todd Willingham: Cameron Todd Willingham was executed in 2004 for murdering his three young daughters by intentionally setting fire to the family home in Corsicana, Texas. The arson-murder case fueled much controversy about Willingham’s guilt, which was determined by the case’s primary evidence – the arson investigators’ findings. They determined that the fire was deliberately set with the help of a liquid accelerant due to specific burn patterns, laboratory tests and points of origin. Willingham maintained his innocence and appealed his conviction for years, but was executed at the Texas State Penitentiary in Huntsville on Feb. 16, 2004. In 2009, the Texas Forensic Science Commission panel reevaluated the case and determined that state and local arson investigators used “flawed science” when they labeled the fire as arson. Although advances in fire science and arson investigations have improved since 1991, the year of the fire, experts now believe the Corsicana Fire Department was negligent in their findings. The science commission is still investigating the arson ruling, and if the judge clears Willingham,** it would be the first time an official has formally declared a wrongful execution in Texas.**
4. Larry Griffin: Larry Griffin was executed in 1995 for a drive-by shooting that killed 19-year-old drug dealer Quintin Moss in St. Louis. Griffin immediately became a suspect because his older brother Dennis Griffin, another well-known drug dealer, was murdered just six months earlier. Moss was believed to have killed Dennis Griffin. Although there were a number of possible suspects in the murder of Moss, a witness account by a white man named Robert Fitzgerald, who claimed to have seen the shooting, knew the license plate number of the vehicle and could identify the gunman was all it took to have Griffin arrested. Fitzgerald was a convicted felon who had a long history of run-ins with the law, which raised concerns about the legitimacy of his story. During the 1993 hearing, Fitzgerald admitted to being unsure if Griffin was the man in the car after all. There were two key witnesses who wavered and a third person whose testimony could have helped Griffin, but was never contacted by either the defense or prosecution. Griffin continued to proclaim his innocence until his execution. The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund investigated the case after Griffin’s execution and wanted to uncover more witness accounts that could support their claim that Missouri executed an innocent man.

St Joan of Arc?

 

[louis91766]

No, they’re just mistaken … as I pointed out.

Ender

“The Roman Church has never erred, nor will it err to all eternity. No one may be considered a Catholic Christian who does not agree with the Catholic Church.”-- From the Dictatus of Pope Gregory VII (1073-1085)

 

[Ender]

“The Roman Church has never erred, nor will it err to all eternity. No one may be considered a Catholic Christian who does not agree with the Catholic Church.”-- From the Dictatus of Pope Gregory VII (1073-1085)

I didn’t say the Church erred. I said some of the comments of a particular set of bishops in a particular document were in error. I’m sure you can understand that distinction.

Ender

 

[Ender]

They are teaching that capital punishment is wrong and immoral. It’s clear and simple.

That may be what you think they’re teaching but in fact the Church does not now and has never before held either position. That is a misunderstanding of Church history on the subject. The position below is what the Church taught unchanged for nearly 2000 years.

“The traditional teaching of the church has acknowledged as well-founded the right and duty of legitimate public authority to punish malefactors by means of penalties commensurate with the gravity of the crime not excluding, in cases of extreme gravity, the death penalty.”

There is nothing there that would support the bishops teaching that capital punishment is wrong or immoral. Actually, however, that wasn’t the point they were making and it wasn’t what they were teaching.

Ender

 

[louis91766]

There is nothing there that would support the bishops teaching that capital punishment is wrong or immoral. Actually, however, that wasn’t the point they were making and it wasn’t what they were teaching.

Ender

I said some of the comments of a particular set of bishops in a particular document were in error.

What was it that they were saying that was in error?

 

[Ender]

Start at the Salem Witch Trials, or with Sacco and Vanzetti?

Start with those cases since 1976 when the Supreme Court allowed capital punishment to be reintroduced since that’s what I referred to in my other post.

It’s time to be honest: No reasonable person can possibly contend that we’ve never killed an innocent via death penalty.

True. Nor did I contend that. What I said was we don’t know with surety that we have in fact done so.

Claude Jones, 2000, Texas
Jesse Tafero, 1990, Florida
Cameron Todd Willingham, 2004, Texas
Larry Griffin, 1995, Missouri
Ruben Cantu, 1993, Texas
David Spence, 1997, Texas
Carlos de Luna, 1989, Texas
Joseph O’Dell, 1997, Virginia
Leo Jones, 1998, Florida
Timothy Evans, 1949, London (Really? You put someone from England on this list?)
William Marion, 1872, Kansas
Charles Hudspeth, 1886, Arkansas

I never said there weren’t cases to be made that we had executed an innocent person (Since 1976. In the US); what I said was that proof was lacking and even some of your own descriptions recognize that. Here, however, is what you said about Willingham

The science commission is still investigating the arson ruling, and if the judge clears Willingham,* it would be the first time an official has formally declared a wrongful execution in Texas.***

If the judge clears Willingham then my claim would no longer be correct, but until and unless it does then what you have are strong suspicions and not, as I said, surety. I even conceded that in the worst possible case there could have been a dozen innocents executed (specifically to account for the reasonable cases I knew existed) and the ratio still comes up to 150:1 of innocents killed by recidivist killers versus innocents wrongfully executed.

I don’t normally get pulled into discussions like this as they have nothing to do with what the Church teaches but it is useful occasionally to address some of the more extreme assertions that show up.

Ender