Despite the title of this post, which is a quote from the Special Master’s findings of fact before the State Commission on Judicial Conduct, this report will surely be trumpeted by the pro-death penalty crowd as exonerating Judge Keller.
And why wouldn’t it be? It comes pretty close to giving her a clean bill of…
It’s been twenty years. Two years after the 1989 murder of a Georgia police officer, Troy Davis was convicted and sentenced to die for the crime. He has still, eighteen long years later, still not been executed.
Former federal prosecutor and noted softie Bob Barr writes an op-ed piece in the NYT:
There is no abuse of government power more egregious than executing an innocent man. But that is exactly what may happen if the United States Supreme Court fails to intervene on behalf of Troy Davis.
Mr. Davis is facing execution for the 1989 murder of an off-duty police officer in Savannah, Ga., even though seven of the nine witnesses have recanted their testimony against him. Many of these witnesses now say they were pressured into testifying falsely against him by police officers who were understandably eager to convict someone for killing a comrade. No court has ever heard the evidence of Mr. Davis’s innocence.
Lose a couple of elections and a senator and the even the muckety-mucks in a party will start publicly talking about change. Unfortunately, the Republicans are so married to some of their bad ideas that they are quite possible missing the boat. From SL&P:
[F]olks on the right often assert that the GOP…
40 years from now (my best guestimate) we might see this story, “Death penalty bill headed to full Senate,” but with the word Texas instead of Colorado and the byline Austin instead of Denver:
DENVER—The Colorado Senate is set to vote on a measure to end the death penalty as they rush to…
The subcommittee hearing on whether to send a bill of impeachment (if that’s what it’s called) to the House floor regarding (some of) CCA Judge Sharon Keller’s outrageous, improper and unethical actions is apparently starting up around 5 pm today.
I just called Mark Bennett, and he’s there, willing and able to help do whatever…
The Orlando Sentinel ran a story about Florida death row inmates dying before they could be executed. Apparently the grim reaper himself often appears in the fourteen year wait between sentencing and government sponsored execution. In the last ten years, it’s been a 50/50 proposition as to which comes first. From “Justice denied? On…
Last Fall the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals got some deservedly bad press for allowing the execution of a death row inmate to proceed because the appellate lawyers arrived at the courthouse door 20 minutes late.
Mind you, the defendant had not yet been killed – but his lawyers ran into some problems getting to…
I see that my buddy and noted Texas defense lawyer Mark Bennett is speaking at Center for American and International Law CLE called “The Mind and Criminal Defense”. It’s a one day course on Capital Mitigation and it sure looks interesting, but unfortunately it conflicts with my schedule.
Other defense lawyers – especially those…
A Harris County Lawyer continues her (his?) excellent series on the inner workings of the District Attorney’s Office in Houston with “The Capital Murder Decision” which takes us through the process used to determine whether or not to seek the death penalty:
Harris County has long been synonymous with being the "Death Penalty
…
Grits asks, “Would you confess to a crime you didn’t commit to save your life?” and notes that in Austin, Texas in 1988 Christopher Ochoa did exactly that – then plead to a life sentence and testified against his ‘friend’ Richard Danzinger, who also happened to be innocent. (Danzinger’s jury took 8 minutes to…