Mumia Abu-Jamal killed Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner. Leonard Peltier murdered FBI agents Jack Coler and Ronald Williams. Liberals enthusiastically supported both of them. Now, the latest liberal cause célèbre is Troy Davis, who shot police officer Mark MacPhail to death in a crowded Burger King parking lot.
We have a justice system that is already ridiculously slanted against the death penalty. It usually takes decades of appeals and retrials to put anyone to death, no matter how ironclad the evidence is against him. Despite farfetched claims that large numbers of innocent men have been put to death, there's actually no solid evidence that an innocent man has been executed in this country in the last fifty years. Of course, that doesn't stop people from making unproven claims to the contrary and backing it up with deliberately deceptive evidence. The only thing that proves is that if there's a market for anything, somebody will step up to provide it. Liberals don't like the death penalty; so they are desperate to find proof that innocent men have been executed and there are people who are willing to make money providing that evidence, no matter how far they have to stretch to deliver it.
In truth, even if an innocent man were executed, it wouldn't change anything. We already have a system that's slanted in favor of the defendants in criminal trials and heavily against the death penalty. In fact, if anything, our justice system probably leans too far in favor of the criminal and too heavily against getting justice for the victims. See Casey Anthony and OJ Simpson for evidence of that. Since that's the case, the only way to make sure an innocent man is NEVER unjustly jailed would be to refuse to put anyone in prison. If you recognize that we do need to punish criminals for their crimes, that the system is already weighted in favor of the criminal, and that it's impossible to never make a mistake, then you have to accept the idea that despite our best efforts, mistakes are going to happen.
Of course, despite the incredibly slanted accounts you may have read, Troy Davis is not one of these mistakes. More than a dozen courts looked at the trial and came to that conclusion -- and no wonder. Davis shot a cop to death in public. There were 34 witnesses at the trial. Some of them were strangers. Some of them were friends of Davis. To this day, there are several people, some strangers and some former friends, who said they saw Davis shoot Officer Mark MacPhail and haven't recanted. How many eyewitnesses to a murder should you need to convict someone?
The reality is that Troy Davis was executed because Troy Davis was guilty as sin.
Yet, we hear people moaning about poor, poor Troy Davis. How about poor, poor Officer Mark MacPhail? How about his family? Don't shed any tears for Troy Davis. He doesn't deserve it. The people who deserve sympathy today are the family members of Mark MacPhail who were cruelly forced to wait so long to get justice.
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I don't know if Davis was guilty or not. But let me point out that even former FBI Director William Sessions urged restraint. And I will also mention I worked in law enforcement and private security, though decades ago.
I personally feel he should have been re-tried.
2. Is there anyone out there who has not heard of a case in which overworked and/or lazy cops (yes, a few of them are) glom on a convenient suspect, find a convenient witness a couple of cells over who is ready to say anything for a break, misplace some evidence favorable to a defendant, and go full speed for a conviction? When it's a cop-killing, the pressure is on for quick arrest and trial, and for conviction ("If he's been charged, he must be guilty.")
3. Once a jury convicts someone, it is almost impossible to get an appellate court to overturn the conviction on the basis of determination of facts.
4. Eyewitness misidentification is the ... greatest cause of wrongful convictions nationwide, playing a role in more than 75% of convictions overturned through DNA testing. (http://www.innocenceproject.org/understand/Eyewitness-Misidentification.php)
5. Yes, I feel profound sympathy for Officer MacPhail's family, especially for his parents. It is an unnatural tragedy for parents to have to bury their child. If it were my child, my main thought would be to punish the one who actually did the killing. If significant people feel there is still a question of guilt, it would not matter to me how quickly the wrong man was executed.
The reality is that Troy Davis was executed because Troy Davis was guilty as sin.
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That is pretty powerful information = TRUE FACTS.
Good deal HuffPo!
Maybe there weren't enough cop killers for the progressives to lionize, so they wanted to create some more.
Personally, I am spending less time at HP, precisely because of this lack of oversight. Publishing any piece of biased vitriol can never be confused with presenting a balanced point of view. Editors really do provide a valuable service; it should come as no surprise that they actually expect some form of compensation in return.
When we finished conducting witness interviews then got together to compare notes, the lead detective was practically tearing his hair out in frustration. NO two descriptions of the suspect matched, and some differed greatly -- one person ID'ed the killer as a Black female about 5'4"; another claimed it was a white male over 6' tall. And the rest were all over the map. Even the sequence of events varied considerably -- and all the witnesses were, at most, about 40-50 feet with a full, unobstructed view of the scene.
I believe those witnesses meant well; the victim was well-known and greatly liked by other residents. But eyewitness testimony was of ZERO use in the case. (The crime lab managed to get a fingerprint off a shell casing, which led to the needed break in the case.)
Too many such cases.
All comments about Troy Davis being an innocent man - being executed - is politically driven.
The utter lack of empathy and a total disregard for the facts is a hallmark of that mentality, and unless one of " them ' are charged falsely they lust for death and ignore all the facts. Also, this society tends to place cops in a kind of exalted status that demands a conviction and execution no matter what, a truly sick view. Cops murder far more people, many unarmed and innocent, every year than criminals do police, a fact that they want ignored totally. Even when a cop brazenly murders, rapes or molests he is FAR more likely to get a susspended or reduced sentence...IF they are charged at all.
If you are going to kill people in prison you have to insure guilt..100%..no if's and's or but's..and our system is unable to do that in most cases. Life without parole is enough for any crime, lest we become what we kill. Shame on this mindset that applauds a broken process, it is awful.
She killed her own partner - and killed everyone in the business - so there would be no witnesses. She perpetrated the crime - with a man she had previously arrested for murder.
The fact that this female police officer was the only person - who manged to live through the bloodbath - made everything quite suspicious.
During the preparation for her trial, it was discovered that her father was buried underneath her house - that she claimed had abandoned the family - and just up and left.
She was to get the death penalty - for killing the Vietnamese family - to rob their business.
After she was convicted - and sentenced, liberals claimed she was insane at the time of the crime - had become a model prisoner - and got her death penalty overturned = life in prison w/o parole.
It is disgusting that the taxpayers have to support this animal for the rest of her life.
but Casey Anthony was deemed indigent - and her high-powered attorney received close to $1 MILLION from the taxpayers to defend that baby killer.
That is another racket in the legal industry - Public Defenders - eating up taxpayer money. It should be matching funds - state puts up some - vs matching private donations.
First, it doesn't "usually" take any retrials to put a person to death. It's rare for even a single retrial to occur in a death penalty case (for non-lawyers, a retrial is when an appeals court finds an error in the trial, grants the defendant a new trial, and he is retried for the same crime in a trial court). I would estimate that retrials occur in fewer than 10% of capital cases, and are certainly nowhere near "usual."
Second, while it's true that several appeals occur in capital cases, that's irrelevant with respect to innocence issues because appellate courts rarely re-examine the facts of a case. Jury determinations of guilt are considered sacrosanct by appeals courts. Contrary to popular misconception, an appeal is not a new trial. The appeals court only looks at LEGAL errors (e.g. improper hearsay testimony). If the appeals court is presented with a case where the evidence was extremely weak but with no clear legal errors, and a jury chose to convict in spite of the flimsy evidence, the court will uphold the conviction, even if the appeals judges all believe the defendant is innocent.