on edit: not just the post, but the articles, we must pretend that of course this would be a first time event that would otherwise sully the fine nature of the criminal justice system with accidentally murdering someone.
This is pretty clear to me. If you wanted to make it sound like you're claiming, you'd phrase it something like "Texas may well execute soon an innocent man, the first in US history, on the false premise of "shaken baby syndrome.""
As it is, the first sentence very specifically scopes down this case to "shaken baby syndrome."
The disproven ‘shaken baby syndrome’ may for the first time result in a man’s execution in Texas. His innocence …
The odd wording is specifically there to mislead someone.
It is clear that it is meant the shaken baby syndrome is what is the first here, but still it could be taken the other way, and it ends up downplaying how contemptible the State's actions are, even though the poster really wants to highlight that.
I guess I would prefer something like -
"Texas, continuing its tradition of executing innocent people, will for the first time use the dubious science of Shaken Baby Syndrome as its cause."
It's not just the post, everybody does it whenever they say "Texas might execute an innocent person" they ignore that Texas has executed people that were extremely likely to be innocent (so likely that it is reasonable just to describe them that way - in case anyone has problems with my phrasing here)
What is odd about the original wording? If anything, the one you present feels more formal/awkward compared to normal conversational English.
Personally I think it's absolutely ludicrous to believe that anyone would be trying to suggest that only now, in the year 2024, has a possibly-innocent person been executed in either Texas or the US. Like, you'd need crazy strong evidence to make that claim, while the post in question seems very specific to shaken baby syndrome.
It feels like an intentionally un-charitable, adversarial reading.
This may be a regional thing but the second just sounds better to me:
Texas may well execute soon an innocent man
Texas may soon execute an innocent man
> It feels like an intentionally un-charitable, adversarial reading.
Saying this might be the first isn’t strictly speaking wrong as far as I can tell. I don’t know of anyone proven to be innocent that’s been executed. Sure, it’s likely happened several times, but I can’t exactly put a firm number so it may well be zero.
(Unless you accept the self-reinforcing circular definitions of crime and state authority based on neighbors individually not having power over you but collectively having authority, and that somehow you consent to this by being born and not running away to another patch of dirt also under a similar tyranny of a different cloth.)
Criminality isn't absolute, it requires the context of what those in charge decided shouldn't be done.
Innocent under whose eyes ? one man’s revolutionary is another man’s terrorist. what morality and code stands the test of time ?
actions which was legal and moral say 200 years ago would be illegal and amoral now , who is to say how 200 years in future would see our framework for ethics from now ?
Taking any sentient life is a crime against nature and humanity.
Societies supporting death penalty are not civilized for the same reasons any cannibals are not.
Killing is killing, what difference does it make if you were hungry or felt scared or vengeance or merely sadistic to justify it .
The methods to establish innocence or exonerate[1] in legal systems objectively are extremely difficult or impossible. People will never be able to agree on who is innocent, no matter how obvious it looks to you or me.
DNA evidences have exonerated many in the recent years, many of the executed were mentally ill, a lot of the evidence is circumstantial and based on unreliable testimony which all too frequently is racially colored, there is no certainty they did the act they are accused of, let alone deserve to die for it.
The only meaningful consensus that can actually make a difference is that death penalty should be abolished.
It is barbaric and morally abhorrent,it is also not ineffective as a punishment, is not deterrent, and also extremely expensive.
---
[1] Pardons is not one of them, pardons require admission of guilt
[2] Innocent Americans that is, we are quite fine with "collateral damage" of women and children without any due process in drone strikes or now in Gaza.
We still have different state governments in the US and different country governments around the globe. Are you more confident in those because its larger groups of people deciding, and enforcing, what is right and wrong?
1)Eliminate individuals targeting other individuals at a personal level on a routine basis.
2) An officially worded notice, as opposed to some thug threatening at you.
3) Some written text that has has a resembles of order call the 'law'. To give an analogy consider why religions texts appeal to people. People have a lot of reverence for the written word including areas where IMO it should not be relevant: example marriage.
To highlight my point, if a thug were to go around extorting people for money verbally on a periodic bases which are _less_ that the taxes currently paid and provided _more_ services than the government then the targeted individual of the extortion would more resentful than he/she would have been of the government.
Respect for institutions is really a sticking point for me though. For one thing, they need to earn and deserve our respect. For another, if respect for institution is the goal then those institutions shouldn't need the power to impose their will upon us.
I don't need someone to that I have respect for to force my hand, and if someone does force my hand I likely won't respect them.
I believe that this statement is making specific reference to this particular case. (I miss-read this next part, but will leave my mistake here with this comment. See below conversation. Sorry for the confusion) Earlier in the article it is made very clear that this has not been the only execution of an innocent person wrongly accused of shaken baby syndrome:
> According to the National Registry of Exonerations, there have been at least 32 exonerations of those wrongfully convicted under the shaken baby hypothesis.
So with everything going for him he was still found guilty, so now someone can undo all of that just because they feel like it?. This spits in the face of the entire state and its judicial system.
It sounds more like an anarchist argument than an anti-Texas argument.
> From what I understand, Texas executes possibly/probably/definitely innocent people with regularity.
The GP comment seems to imply that Texas is intentionally putting innocent people to death regularly. That had nothing to do with the governor or pardons.
If you don’t understand the relationship between my example and your topic, not certain what else to say.
I think that logic is sufficiently sound, provided we know we are not being precise. I don't know enough about the case to say whether it actually applies here.
Pardons aren't always condoning a person for the crime they were convicted of. The legal system is fallible and writing clear laws to handle ant scenario that comes up is impossible. A pardon can be used to free an individual who seems to have been wrongfully convicted but without sufficient proof or process for an appeal. It can also be used to free individuals who have been rehabilitated, or who the executive believes has learned from their crime and is ready to return to public life.
I have no idea if Abbott was motivates by anything like that or if it was more akin to jury nullification, but I wouldn't assume that a pardon can only mean that the elected official is condoning the crime itself.
https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/policy-issues/innocence/execute...
A lot of these possibly innocent should just be described as innocent, because the "possibly" adds insult to execution.
I agree the system is terrible, if even one innocent person can be found guilty and punished or even killed then the system is broken in my opinion. We can't fix that one-off though, and targeting one state's use of the death penalty is only going after a more obvious symptom while ignoring the root cause.
While I will always support seeing a person wrongfully convicted go free, I'd much prefer a fundamental revisit of our legal system so we don't have to catch mistakes like that after the fact.
And by the way, for people who think I'm being hyperbolic about the racist stances of said murderer, here's a link to an article which repeats some of his social media posts:
https://www.texastribune.org/2023/04/14/daniel-perry-racist-...
They can start shooting at each other.
Completely legally because they are both standing their ground?
Texas is wild west. Of course they would probably dig that characterization and think nothing is wrong with this situation.
Not EXACTLY how it played out.
He was upset the crowd was blocking an intersection. So he ran a red light, driving into the crowd, and then shot a guy who yelled at him for it because the yelling guy was carrying a gun.
So one can't exercise their first and second amendment rights simultaneously in free Texas? Or is that reserved for the good ol' boys?
As always, there's a couple key words left out strategically
> The Constitution, Scalia wrote, does not prevent the government from executing a person who new evidence indicates might be “actually innocent” — that is, someone with the potential to legally demonstrate they did not commit the crime for which they were convicted.
And have locked in on this:
> In Shinn v. Ramirez, the court voted 6 to 3 to overrule two lower courts and disregard the innocence claims of Barry Lee Jones, a prisoner on Arizona’s death row. Importantly, the majority did not rule that it found Jones’s innocence claims unpersuasive. Instead, it ruled that the federal courts are barred from even considering them. Thomas wrote the opinion.
> A proper remedy for claim of actual innocence based on new evidence, which is discovered too late to file a new trial motion, would be not federal habeas relief, but rather to file for executive clemency with the state.
https://www.pullanyoung.com/blog/dont-panic-over-shinn-v-ram...
> Shinn does not affect “new factual predicate” claims. If a witness changes their story 5 years after trial, you can still validly raise that claim both as a subsequent state writ and as a 2254 federal petition. Same goes for new scientific evidence, Brady violations, etc. None of those things can be characterized as the defendant's fault for not raising them earlier.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/01/arizona-d...
> federal courts should show enormous deference to the states, even when federal judges believe a state court is wrong.
These decisions seems more about federalism? I mean, if you want to blame someone, blame the involved state for not considering the exculpatory evidence. For example Barry Lee Jones is out now - but it is because of an Arizona judge, not a federal one.
Of course Ianal, but come on. States rights is really just wrangling about accounting and tons of grandstanding between opposing sides of our two party system.
I do. But I also wonder about the role of the "highest court in the land", when other courts, state or federal, "decline" to hear appeals with factual evidence of innocence.
I don't think "Too bad, that's the law, just lobby to have it changed" is an acceptable response to someone facing capital punishment.
If the Supreme Court routinely interferes in matters purely inside of a US state where it has no jurisdiction because no national-level question exists, it could well provoke a constitutional crisis.
I think it's reasonable to argue that "due process of law" should not, broadly speaking, involve executing people who are known to be innocent.
They are in part about federalism and in part about the absence of a right to have a verdict reviewed if it was arrived at properly, irrespective of new evidence discovered later.
Were such a right to exist under the Constitutiom, federalism would no longer require the federal courts to stay out of state cases involving such claims, since there would br a justiciable question of federal law.
Also in subject of death row, recently watched rather good movie based on true events: Trial by Fire. Interesting how that case was based on pseudo-science and even thought the governor knew he still let Cameron to be executed.
The executive system can grant clemency, etc.
that includes everyone convicted of a crime, all of the time.
unless you think due process requires endless appeals, you probably agree with Scalia
Shinn v. Ramirez overturns Martinez v. Ryan, use the state court instead. where in the constitution does it say there is federal jurisdiction for that kind of claim?
As a citizen, I firmly believe that a legal system that would condemn a man who is likely innocent to die is not "due process of law" in any meaningful sense. Even if you're correct and the precedent is that this is how it is, well then, too bad for the precedent.
No one cares, because they die in the prison infirmary, but they're just as dead and they were killed because of their conviction, just like they were executed. (No, I'm not talking about folks on death row, although innocents on death row also die in the infirmary.)
Not only do we kill more innocents that way in absolute numbers, it's also greater in percentage numbers. (Death penalty cases get lots of review. We can argue about whether it's enough, but it's far more review than life without parole, not to mention lesser sentences which end up being life.)
To the actual point - I do think there's a difference between inmates dying in prison for other reasons (and we should reduce those) vs. sentencing someone to execution for a crime they didn't commit.
My point is that there's more "bang for the buck" wrt saving innocents from being dying due to wrongful "not death penalty" convictions, even if you discount "dying in the infirmary" quite a bit relative to "dying in the chair."
I'm not saying that you shouldn't care about the death penalty.
My comment is addressed to people who care about dying due to wrongful conviction.
If the system doesn’t care when an innocent is actually sentenced to death and executed, why would it care if they die at all?
I don’t think there is any predictable “bang for the buck”.
If anything, more “bang” is achieved by shaming the system towards better justice wherever it will be most publicly noticed.
Creating a halo for more change.
The case’s dramatic factors are why people put up their own resources into fighting it, and why we are hearing about it. And why the challenge has any chance.
Another tragic, irreversible mistake. The man has already been on death row for two decades. Imagine spending 20 years in a cell waiting to be executed because people believe you murdered your own child. Nothing will undo the kind of damage that does to a person, nor will anything make up for the years lost.
I'd struggle to come up with something more cruel. Honestly I'd consider it merciful to kill someone immediately rather than putting them through decades of psychological torture. At least that would only be barbaric.
This article was written by the police officer who helped send Robert Roberson to the death row in 2003. He changed his mind since then.
John Grisham has also written about this case. [2]
Please spread the word. As the retired police officer wrote:
> It would be a terrible legacy for all of us to be associated with executing an innocent man based on a rush to judgment and bad science. We must prevent Texas from making a tragic, irreversible mistake.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37650402
[2] https://www.wsj.com/articles/texas-may-execute-a-man-based-o...
[3] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/sep/24/texas-death-ro...
[4] https://eu.statesman.com/story/opinion/columns/guest/2024/05...