texas as murderer, prosecutors that don't care about justice...

a little over 3 years ago I wrote a bit about the story of cameron todd willingham, a man executed, nay, murdered by the state of texas in 2004 because it used lying hacks to convict him of capital murder in the alleged arson which killed his three children. a group known as the innocence project, a wonderful collection of attorneys and students dedicated to exonerating those wrongly on death row (of which, anyone in the business knows, there are plenty), basically completely debunked the case against willingham. the chicago tribune investigated the matter a bit further and concluded that texas very likely killed an innocent man. now, the new yorker has reported on a commission put together by the state of texas to look into such shenanigans which has discovered that, beyond a reasonable doubt, texas killed an innocent man.

for those of you that don't know, willingham was in his early 20s when a fire broke out in his home. he tried in vain to get to his three toddlers but was unable to do so. once outside the home, witnesses initially reported that he was hysterical in his attempts to regain access to the home to get to his children...to the point that he was restrained by authorities. however, the so-called "forensic experts" decided that the fire was clearly an arson that had to have been deliberately set because no natural fire would burn the way it did. suddenly, witness statements started to change and willingham was portrayed as acting oddly for someone who's children were being burned. willingham maintained his innocence (up until the needle delivered the deadly poison) and refused a plea deal that would have spared his life. the jury (stacked with death penalty supporters as I have written before) was out all of one hour.

and now, actual experts that know the science of fire and its characteristics have examined the evidence and conclusively ruled out arson, going so far as to basically call the original "experts" complete hacks that did not understand a thing about fire and the way it behaves. all this while we learn from israel that dna evidence is easier to manufacture than fingerprints. and yet we still cling to putting people to death in a very apparently flawed system, a system of which we can now say, beyond any reasonable doubt, is responsible for the death of innocent persons.

which really is not all that surprising when you have the very opposite of the types of persons that should be prosecuting cases actually doing it. rather than people concerned with the rule of law and doing justice and representing the people (including any allegedly accused of crime), we have some of the least ethical, win-at-all-costs persons with obscene amounts of discretionary power wielding the giant hammer of the state against you and I. take a case of mine for instance...

a man is shot once and dies from the gunshot wound. the police and DA's office know the dead guy had a record a mile long, including such wonderful things as nearly choking his wife to death, breaking into a girlfriend's parents home to beat her severely and crack her jaw in two places, and connections to drug cartels of which he bragged. they hear from co-workers of the shooter and the shooter himself that the dead guy repeatedly threatened the shooter and others around him with death or great bodily harm by pulling knives on a 65 yr old man, showing off his gang tatoos and bragging about his ability to have people disappear and explicitly stating "I will kill you." they know he was extremely intoxicated when he died and that moments earlier he had threatened to kill the shooter again, to the extent that multiple people had to restrain him from attacking the shooter, even after the shooter displayed his weapon and asked to be left alone. every person they interview validates the shooter's story...except one. of course that one person has a serious substance abuse problem, and tells a tale with obvious falsehoods that they know to be false (like placing the shooter in a big white truck...when all involved know the dead guy was in the big white truck). but this one person is facing 40 plus years for beating the shit out of his boyfriend and nearly biting his thumb off while on probation. and this one person gets a deal from the prosecution to six months time served...and his testimony is wildly different than that of any reasonable person otherwise associated with the case. and it directly conflicts with the information investigators received from the plethora of unbiased people also around at the time (in addition to the co-workers of the shooter). the prosecutor calls only the one snitch that got that great deal...ignoring all the people he knows about that show this guy is a lying sack of shit just wanting to get out of jail. and this is your justice system.


I would've changed my fucking lock...