executing a father on a mistake and condoms from the pope...

cameron todd willingham was killed by the state of texas in 2004. texas killed willingham because it said he deliberately set a fire that gutted his home and took the lives of his three small children. willingham always proclaimed his innocence, stating he awoke to find the house full of smoke, and was unable to save the children before escaping himself...even as he was strapped down for the state-sanctioned murder, he declared he was an innocent man convicted of a crime he did not commit. now, thanks to a story run a few years ago by the chicago tribune and the innocence project, we may learn those were not just empty words...

recently we have learned all too often (all too often being once, given the extreme consequences of a blunder when it comes to capital punishment) that some of those on death row could not have committed the crimes they await the ultimate punishment for...but we are yet to hear anyone come forward and declare, we executed someone on a mistake...oops. now it seems that the prosecutions "experts" in the willingham case, the ones that testified that the evidence showed a fire that could not have been a mistake, but burned in such a way that it must have been deliberately set, got their expertise from the equivalent of old wives' tales in the arson industry. science has shown they were wrong, that the very evidence they said pointed to deliberate arson, actually occurs when water is sprayed onto a fire...oops.

so now in texas we have a man that the state poisoned, based on evidence that we know to be a lie. a man that went to his death after being told he was responsible for killing his three children, and now we realize that very well may have been a collosal blunder. oops. and we now wonder why the rest of the "civilized" world has done away with capital punishment.

i am a big advocate of the jury system, i think it may be the best system mankind has provided to decide guilt or innocence...but it isn't perfect, especially when the jury is given wrong information. and when you are dolling out the ultimate punishment, you damn well better be perfect. you better have dave chappelle reasonable doubt covered...strong enough to overcome the fact that the defendant made thriller...thriller.

until that time comes, how can we, as a society, condone sending people to possibly excrutiating deaths without absolute 100% certainty they committed the crimes we claim they have. but then, i guess if you are like the vast majority of society and manage to completely ignore any human aspect of criminal defendants, you have no problem treating them like vermin...unless of course Geraldo pops up on tv and points out that those defendants are suspected terrorists/insurgents being held in iraq...then you become appalled at the manner in which they are treated and demand all associated are impeached or sent to prison...but then the next week you totally forget about it and never realize that the prison system in this country is run much the same way...but given that most of those folks were poor and/or black, you don't really give a shit anyways. but you didn't hear that from me...

in the end, just another example of what can go wrong when a society begins to overemphasize the rule of law...

the pope may tell catholics they can slap a rubber on and go at it...of course only in the confines of a marriage when one partner is infected with hiv and the other is trying to avoid it....but it's a start i guess. on the other hand...gee thanks pope, it appears you caught up with the rest of industrialized catholics. of course, if your concern is saving life, as the pope is claiming, then why in gods name would it not also be acceptable to use a condom as birth control given that so many in the third world die from starvation and such? and i guess the pope would be admitting that fucking for fun in marriage is ok...seeing as how you wouldnt be doing it to have a kid...but i guess that is a small loophole that didnt occur to them. and i wonder...what happens if the young child you are molesting has hiv? do you get to use a condom then? or what if the young child doesn't and you are trying to avoid giving yours to the kid? then is a condom ok? or do you have to wed them first? but then the church won't do that...so i guess giving aids to kids is ok.

i've always been a late bloomer...