A year ago, (midnight 12/13 March 02 to be exact) Tracey Housel was executed in an American prison. He was mentally retarded and suffered from undiagnosed hypoglycemia when he attacked and killed a woman. Housel had joint US/UK citizenship. He spent 16 years on death row. But representations at the highest level from EU and UK were of no avail.
Today you're doing it again. John (Jackie) Elliott was born in Suffolk England. He has been 16 years on death row in Texas. The local MP in the constituency where he was born (John Gummer, a Conservative and former govt. cabinet minister) is convinced that he is innocent, that he should never have been charged, and that vital DNA tests which could prove his innocence are being withheld from the defence. The British foreign secretary has asked for the sentence to be commuted or at least deferred until Elliot has an opportunity to demonstrate his innocence. No doubt Tony Blair has mentioned it to George Bush. Are you going to listen? Elliot is scheduled for execution at 11 pm gmt tonight.
Now you want our troops to fight in Iraq. But Iraq does not threaten Britain. The only justification for Britain's involvement is that it is a common fight against tyranny in defence of decency. If that is so, then I expect the Governor of Texas or the US Supreme Court, to act with decency and humanity and halt what would otherwise be the murder of an innocent man and a British citizen.
from
http://www.jackelliott.org/index.html :-
"Without relief from the United States Supreme Court, clemency alone stands between Jackie and the death chamber. The clemency process in Texas is notoriously unforgiving. Despite persuasive grounds for mercy in scores of cases, the Texas Board of Pardon and Paroles allows executions to proceed without any sort of meaningful clemency review."
Do something decent today. Please petition your Representative or Senator and help save the life of an innocent man.
Where did that Ricin, found in Britain, come from?
They only found trace amounts, beneath the flat was a pharmacy. Castor oil was dispensed there for many years. Its not impossible the whole thing was an excercise in black propaganda. Why do you ask?
Steve
Thanks for this thread!
I wanted to start a similar on early morning. I didn't do so, since I could find nothing about this in any national (US) or Texas newspaper to link to.
Perhaps, my most positive thought, it was just due to a different law system: here in Germany (Roman law), any case is opened again, if there is just a chance that DNA might give other results. And jdges here are more silent about their cases, especially don't tell the press what they think about it.
However, since the UK has a very similar law system ...
Here is a site that is fairly comprehensive in its exploration of the imequities of the death penalty.
http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/dpic.r01.html
and here is an excerpt having to do with the death penalty being used on those with mental retardation:
Mental Retardation and the Death Penalty
Persons with mental retardation fall into the bottom two to three percent of the U.S. population in intellectual functioning. They are unlikely to achieve a mental age greater than 12 years old. [33] Persons with mental retardation who have committed a crime have a diminished capacity to understand right from wrong and the legal consequences of their actions. And even those who are completely innocent are more prone to confess to what they have not done in order to please their interrogators. Mental retardation also interferes with the defendant's ability to assist his or her attorney in preparing a defense. On the witness stand or even sitting in the courtroom, the defendant may appear to lack the emotions of remorse or empathy which a jury weighs in considering a death sentence. [34]
Twenty-seven defendants with mental retardation have been executed in the U.S. since 1976, [35] representing about 8 percent of all executions. Although most of the 38 states with the death penalty allow the execution of those with mental retardation, there has been some legislative movement towards stopping such executions. When the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of applying the death penalty to those with mental retardation in 1989, it noted that only one state forbade this practice. [36] Today, 11 states and the federal death penalty statute exclude those with mental retardation. Justice William Brennan, in dissenting from the Supreme Court's decision in this regard, wrote that "the execution of mentally retarded individuals is 'nothing more than the purposeless and needless imposition of pain and suffering,' and is unconstitutional under the Eighth Amendment." [37]
BTW, a man named Robert Perske has been an untiring advocate for people with mental retardation who are facing the death penalty. He is one of my heroes.
Conservative MP John Gummer:
"No rational individual can be happy to see a person killed where so many questions remain unanswered."
I suppose it was naive to think the United States Supreme Court might concern itself with such trivial issues as justice.
Is life sacred past the third trimester? Is Texas the nuttiest place on earth? I am abroil with questions.
No I would think the Taliban regime were worse. But Texas must come a close second. And of course they have a lot in common, oil for example.
death penalty
Don't mess with Texas! They're messed up enough as it is.
Yeah Tantor is here!
Too bad we can't miss blatham for a while.
Anyone that thinks that George Ryan does anything for anybody other than George Ryan hasn't been paying attention.
I live in Illinois, I have.
The number of people killed by drivers who obtained their licenses illegally in Illinois while Ryan was Secretary of State is confirmed to be no less than 12, and probably dozens more.
He campaigned as an advocate and strong supporter of the death penalty, and was elected as a result of that platform.
When the license for bribe scandal hit, he went looking for a cause to attach himself to (trade with CUBA forgodsake was gonna be it for a while) and he found commuting the death sentences of death row inmates his silver bullet, "keep me out of jail free" card.
He is as dispicable and loathsome of a character as 99% of the individuals whose sentences he commuted.
Anybody here for rule of law anymore?
Judging from the responses, I guess not.
dadeo, check out page 2 and 3 of this discussion, as we (patiodog and myself especially) go into the suspect motives of Ryan.
Exactly sozo, doing the wrong thing for the wrong reasons...
Now, how did that phrase about "two wrongs" go?
Oh yeah....
that's it.
I think it's the right thing for inscrutable reasons, done by a flawed man.
You're really willing to go ahead and kill some innocent guys 'cause someone you don't like commuted their sentence?
Two of Tantor's posts deserve repeating:
This is the first:
Quote:The reason criminal law was originally created was to dispense justice. Instead of families taking personal revenge for wrongs committed against their loved ones, the government agreed to take their revenge for them so that overreaction did not spiral into vendettas that spanned generations. In the first code of justice in ancient Mesopotamia, Hammurabi developed his code of punishments for various offenses as a sort of quality control for punishment, so that the state would take revenge for you in a predictable and reliable manner.
Governor Ryan abandons this basic tenet of the law and takes instead the position that the government cares nothing for the families of those whose loved ones were savaged by these psychopaths.
And to answer your question, sozo, no I am not.
I am also not willing to throw out the rule of law.
Here is the other Tantor
Quote:I have yet to hear an authentic story of an innocent man being legally executed in America. Please provide that story that you allude to.
I have heard plenty of false assertions of innocence of murderers based on nonsense. I suspect that you will provide one of these at best.
Everybody "knows" that death row is full of people who didn't do it.
Crooked cops, lazy lawyers, and jaded judges are problems that need to be addressed to be sure, and no conviction that occurred due to any and all of the above should not be revisited.
But isn't that what the appellate process is all about?
The Governor of Illinois is to be congratulated.
Dadeo -
We've a tradition of rule of law (for most of us, anyway) in this country. We also have a tradition of revisiting and revising the institutions of government when we feel that they may be flawed. I still can't accept the "We've got a process and we're sticking to it; if there's a chance that it's flawed, well, too bad: it's our system."
And I'm not just speaking from what I see on the Daily Show here. My parents are both attorneys. My mother worked for both the District Attorney's office and as a public defender in Oakland, CA for a few years. There are family friends in various legal professions -- prosecutors, defenders, litigators, lawyers -- and I know that some very suspect personalities can have a profound effect on a trial, just as they do in the political arena. (Esp. as many courtrooms are political arenas.)
I admit that I am philosophically opposed to the death penalty. I think it puts the government in the business of doing, in cold blood, that which is reputedly being punished. But you aren't going to see me arguing against the death penalty per se here; hell, I won't even go after Texas. (At the same time, on a raw emotional level, there are certain individuals, like any of the three serial killers picked up in Washington in the past year or two or the pig farmer/killers in British Columbia, that it wouldn't bother me to see in the chair, the chamber, or at the end of a rope.) What disturbed me in Illinois was that I was seeing exoneration not through the appellate process but because of evidence uncovered by college students as part of a project. As long as there is any level of doubt about the soundness of a process that results in so final an action as an execution, for which there is not now and never will be any redress, the process needs to be examined and that final step not carried out.
And as for the claim that there has yet to be a documented wrongful education, there are two possible explanations: 1) there has never been one or 2) nobody's been looking very hard. Some states where the death penalty is in vogue don't even seem to be too concerned about serious review and release of all evidence of cases where the convicted is still alive, let alone cases where an execution has been carried out. Private advocacy groups have their hands full looking at the former, as well, and don't tend to look at the latter.
And, finally, last point -- reiterating my feeling on political motives: who gives a rat's behind? Many politicians on each side of the aisle are the worst kind of deeitful, self-interested swine. That's how many of them get to where they are. But (or, perhaps, therefore) we need to examine their ideas and actions on their own merit. To dismiss them because of their source is an ad hominem attack, and has little to speak for it outside of the good feeling you get out of once again being able to denounce some vile turd whom you loathe.
Anyway, that's how I feel about it. Cheers.
ryan
Patiodog, you've said it all.
pdog wrote:
Quote:"We've got a process and we're sticking to it; if there's a chance that it's flawed, well, too bad: it's our system."
Who the heck is saying that!?
The complete and utter disregard, bordering on contempt, for the plight of the victims and the families of those impacted by the crimes perpetrated by these lower life forms shocks the conscious.
Hey, if it is the will of the people to eliminate the death penalty, so be it.
But I will never understand the thought process that goes into letting murderers, rapists and pedophiles live out their natural lives.
I am not as inclined as the rest of you to throw the baby out with the bath water, but, when put in those terms, I certainly understand the propensity of those who are.
steve in London: Is your praise for Ryan from your opposition to the death penalty, or the fact that because of him, thousands of people are driving on the wrong side of the road over here?
