The American Bar Association’s (ABA) Texas Capital
Punishment Assessment Team recently reviewed the Texas death penalty system to
find what surprises no one — it’s an expensive program that is run poorly and makes mistakes.
The analysis, led by legal experts and former elected officials across the
ideological spectrum, found that Texas relies on outdated, unscientific, and
unreliable methods to prove guilt. Many changes were suggested to attempt to
prevent wrongful convictions and provide fair due process.
This same Texas system of capital punishment that
Governor Perry and some of his predecessors are so proud of has led to
disastrous consequences. It is responsible for at least 12 men being wrongfully
convicted and then released from death row and perhaps others were even wrongfully executed.
Carlos DeLuna was executed using no forensic evidence, sloppy crime scene
investigation, and essentially one eyewitness account who later said he was 50
percent sure DeLuna was the
perpetrator. Claude Jones was put to death in 2000 based, in part,
on the analysis of a hair found at the crime scene. This hair analysis has
since been shown not to be scientific, and recently, DNA evidence revealed that
it was not Jones’s hair after all.....ToRead More....
My Take - I have always believed the death penalty does deter crime...if used without huge delays, and I still do. However, I also believe these people can't be trusted with this power, and the Nifong case convinced me. Normal citizens work under the assumption that it's the rare prosecutor who would violate his integrity just to win a case. I no longer believe that. I now think it's more typical than rare. I outline my views on this in my article, ACLU, Miranda, and the Boston Bomber, which you may wish to peruse.
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