LIFE

WITHOUT Parole Is bad enough don't you think? Congrats to Connecticut for being the latest state to abolish the death penalty. Should be done federally everywhere. Bad-A murderers in Texas should have the same Right to Life as Bad-A murderers in Connecticut and the same Right to Life as Fetusus don't you think (note to Texas Pro Lifers) http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/12/connecticut-death-penalty-repeal_n_1419597.html?ref=politics


  As an attorney who has done research on Habeus cases I know it is very difficult to exhonorate someone- even when they may be innocent- The system makes it difficult because we don't like overturning juries. But juries can get it very wrong and do. Judges can tilt the system and do. And the laws regarding double jeopardy and laws regarding what type of evidence is or is not allowed as new evidence makes it difficult if not impossible to exhonerate someone wrongfully convicted.

   On the odd chance there is even one person who is wrongfully convicted we shouldn't get to kill anyone off--but the odds are better or worse than that. Since DNA started to be tested on people who had DNA to test around 300 people who were scheduled to be killed by the state were let go because they were wrongfully convicted.  There are many many capital cases where there is no DNA to test. For each of the roughly 300 wrongful convictions that have since been overturned the jury found that beyond any reasonable doubt the person did it. They were wrong- they missed the reasonable doubt or they were not collectively reasonable. Juries in this country can be Not Collectively Reasonable. Often. That is why we really need to eliminate a death penalty.

Juries cannot always put the pieces together properly. They cannot always grasp nuance or suggestion. They are not always smarter than a fifth grader. They get it wrong- often.

  People have vendettas against people. I recently read a case where a child who was manipulated by one parent in a divorce setting to falsely claim that the father raped them did many years on a false rape charge until the child recanted later. There are motivations for falsely impuning criminality to someone.
The system is not always right. Habeus petitions are rarely granted cert. by the Supreme Court.

   It thus really should be a Federal initiative - a Federal law that a Democratic President should want to take seriously. We need to abolish the death penalty for good in this country. France did it decades ago. Most civilized western countries don't have a death penalty. Texas doesn't look that civilized.

  It is just flatly CRUEL AND UNUSUAL to kill anyone off. If the 8th Amendment does not mean that, it does not mean anything. There is no greater torture than death.