footstepsfrom#27
09-13-2009, 01:10 AM
This is one of the most sickening and emotionally disturbing indictments of our criminal justice system I've ever read related to a single case. If you can read this without finding something inside you that gets angry, there is something seriously wrong with you.
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/09/07/090907fa_fact_grann?currentPage=all
This story is WAY to long to post in here, and unless you commit the time it takes to reading all of it, you won't begin to grasp it. Commenting on it without reading it is worthless, which is why I didn't post only part of it. Hopefully there are 3 or 4 people who take the time to read this. It's well worth the time.
At the end of the day, this guy was failed at every level, which is why his case is so representative of the system in general. His court appointed defense attorneys were useless...uncaring, unmotivated and incompetent. The prosecutors used medical mersenaries and and a barely lucid career criminal informant they cut a deal with in order to make their case. The arson investigators were morons. The people who witnessed the events changed their tune at the behest of cops bent on making a case. Worst of all, the courts failed entirely, especially the Texas Court of Crimal Appeals. Beyond that, the Board of Pardons and Parole and Texas Governor Rick Parry, even when face to face with incontravertible proof this man was innocent, failed to do so much as even look at the evidence and sent an innocent man to his death...a state sponsored murder is the only thing this can be called.
The one person who cared enough to listen and do something, went far beyond the call of duty. Without her efforts, this story would have never been known.
If something this wrong can happen, the only way I can reconcile it is to believe that somehow good will come from it in the end. Nothing else makes a lick of sense.
I favor the death penalty...but I favor it only when we can figure out how to make the system work properly. It doesn't work now. If you've been under the illusion it does, reading this will make you re-evaluate that idea.
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/09/07/090907fa_fact_grann?currentPage=all
This story is WAY to long to post in here, and unless you commit the time it takes to reading all of it, you won't begin to grasp it. Commenting on it without reading it is worthless, which is why I didn't post only part of it. Hopefully there are 3 or 4 people who take the time to read this. It's well worth the time.
At the end of the day, this guy was failed at every level, which is why his case is so representative of the system in general. His court appointed defense attorneys were useless...uncaring, unmotivated and incompetent. The prosecutors used medical mersenaries and and a barely lucid career criminal informant they cut a deal with in order to make their case. The arson investigators were morons. The people who witnessed the events changed their tune at the behest of cops bent on making a case. Worst of all, the courts failed entirely, especially the Texas Court of Crimal Appeals. Beyond that, the Board of Pardons and Parole and Texas Governor Rick Parry, even when face to face with incontravertible proof this man was innocent, failed to do so much as even look at the evidence and sent an innocent man to his death...a state sponsored murder is the only thing this can be called.
The one person who cared enough to listen and do something, went far beyond the call of duty. Without her efforts, this story would have never been known.
If something this wrong can happen, the only way I can reconcile it is to believe that somehow good will come from it in the end. Nothing else makes a lick of sense.
I favor the death penalty...but I favor it only when we can figure out how to make the system work properly. It doesn't work now. If you've been under the illusion it does, reading this will make you re-evaluate that idea.