I have been highlighting the potential for a gross miscarriage of justice that was due to occur today in Texas when Melissa Lucio was to be executed for the murder of her two-year old child despite the increasing evidence that she might be innocent and the appalling way that she was interrogated, using many standard coercive methods, that resulted in a confession. The potential for a massive injustice was so great that state Republican lawmakers, even those who support the death penalty, joined in a bipartisan effort to have her case reviewed. Five members of the original jury that convicted her said that if they had been told the full story, they would not have voted to convict.
Yesterday, a state appeals court stayed the execution and sent her case back to a lower court to take into account new evidence.
New evidence presented by Lucio’s legal team in a 266-page petition suggested that the murder of her toddler daughter had never even happened. Medical and eye-witness evidence pointed towards Mariah having died after accidentally falling down a steep flight of stairs at Lucio’s rental home.
…Sandra Babcock, one of Lucio’s legal team and a professor at Cornell law school, said that the court’s decision paved the way for a new trial which would allow a jury to hear evidence that was not presented at her original trial in 2008. Five of the 12 jury members from that trial have said that had they known what is now known about the case they would have decided differently.
…Vanessa Potkin of the Innocence Project, who also represents Lucio, said: “Medical evidence shows that Mariah’s death was consistent with an accident. But for the State’s use of false testimony, no juror would have voted to convict Melissa of capital murder because no murder occurred.”
Jeff Leach, the Republican lawmaker who led the push in the Texas House for a delay of execution, greeted the news of the stay with delight, saying it would secure “justice for Melissa and for Mariah and the entire Lucio family”.
Earlier, Leach told the Guardian in an interview that the failings of the prosecution in Lucio’s case had shaken his belief in the death penalty. He said her treatment had “given me great pause and made me reconsider my stance on whether this is the way we want to do things in the state of Texas”.
In the US, some police and prosecutors seem to be willing to go to any lengths to obtain a conviction, even to the extent of coercing suspects, hiding exculpatory evidence, and using bad forensic ‘science’, They take advantage of people’s ignorance of the law and of their rights to get them to incriminate themselves.
Take the case of Antwaun Cubie.
Antwaun Cubie, at 18, had been in the police station in Oak Park, Ill. for hours. He said police had beaten him, and was frightened and exhausted. He wanted to call his mother, and but said a detective told him he needed to sign and date a document to make the call. Cubie signed the blank page.
The signature became part of a typed, two-page confession in which Cubie supposedly admitted to fatally shooting a friend. Cubie’s legal team agrees detectives falsified the confession. “The handwritten notes were destroyed. It’s not videotaped, it’s not recorded. You don’t know what went on in there. That means these are not his words,” says Joe O’Hara with the law firm Riley Safer Holmes & Cancila in Chicago, which has taken on Cubie’s case pro bono.
The typed confession, however, was a critical part of the case against Cubie, who never had a criminal record prior to his 1996 arrest. A judge sentenced him to life in prison. Cubie is now 44 years old and still behind bars.
…Some law enforcement agencies have developed a “noble cause” belief system in which they perceive themselves as fighting a war on crime. In this sense, the officer’s responsibility is only to the victim.
Police departments with a “noble cause” culture are more likely to develop “noble cause corruption,” which are illegal acts committed to secure a conviction. “The Magic Pencil,” in particular, is a noted form of noble cause corruption. With “The Magic Pencil,” a police officer fictionalizes an incident report with the purpose of criminalizing the suspect.
“The Magic Pencil” is associated with an over commitment to the cause, and a belief that the end goal of fighting crime justifies the means. It is similar to corrupt means such as “testilying” (lying on the witness stand), or torture during interrogation.
The death penalty is a terrible thing under the best of circumstances. To have it in such a flawed justice system as that which exists in the US will inevitably lead to the deaths of innocent people.
I am very glad for this turn of events, but this whole case is absurd on so many levels.
First off, criminal charges for a mother killing her own infant is just nuts. Either she is innocent (most probably) or she was not sane, in which case she needs psychiatric help, not prison and certainly not the death penalty.
Secondly, this is not ‘justice’ for the dead child. The only kind of justice available in a death case is to try to prevent a similar case from ever happening again, and that requires a careful, scientific understanding of what actually happened, and why; not rushing to find someone to imprison and/or execute. If the baby did die as a result of falling down steep stairs, we need to keep babies and steep stairs away from each other, not murder the first non-white person whom we can lay our hands on.
Thirdly, the death penalty is illogical. If you believe in an eternal afterlife governed by an infallible god, said god will mete out justice infintely better and eternally longer than we humans ever can, so there is no point in us even trying to punish a miscreant by death, it would be a meaningless blip in an eternity of god-given justice meting; OR if you don’t believe in an afterlife, then killing a criminal, unless you do it by torture, is actually relieving them of experiencing any punishment because we all have to die, the good and the bad.
@moarscience — Her story doesn’t account for the multiple partially-healed fractures found on autopsy. But I’ll grant that she spins a good sob story, just like every abuser does.
I’ll never understand why anyone would do this sort of thing. It’s just witch hunts and mob rule. The only modern “improvement” is they’re choosing who gets to be in the mob. Such progress. And it doesn’t even work as deterence* because the innocent people they scoop up plead their cases to the public (because they sometimes have no other recourse). Which educates the public that random people will get the punishment while the perpetrators need only be semi-competent at hiding to get away with no consequences.
* Punitive deterence has been demonstrated not to work in pet care, child rearing, interpersonal relationships, or any justice system; basically anywhere it pops up it fails badly. Just used it here as an example of a “your own arguments prove you’re wrong” thing.
WMDKitty @#2
Links, please?
#2 WMD
Convicting someone of murder requires building a case beyond a reasonable doubt that murder took place. The injuries found on the child are not being disputed, but their cause is. If the prosecution has good evidence that they were caused deliberately, then that would make the case. If they don’t, then the courts should not convict.
You see to have made your mind up that she is guilty. How then did the injuries occur, and how have you disproven her explanation? Remember, the burden is on those wanting a finding of guilty.
“criminal charges for a mother killing her own infant is just nuts”
Women aren’t ever criminally responsible for the death of their children?
Can men be held criminally responsible for the death of their children?
Can women be held criminally responsible for the death of other people’s children?
Can women be held criminally responsible for the death of adults? For anything?
Or are they all delicate empathetic likkle fwowers who could only cause pain if they are themselves ill -- traumatised by a horrible man, say -- and therefore just need a hug?
Do my wife’s job (child protection nurse) for a week. It would open your eyes to the kind of evil shit women are capable of towards their own kids every day. It might even make you a bit less repellently naive and sexist.
@#6
Gosh, is it cherry-picking season already?
FUCK OFF AND DIE, sonofrojblake!
Oh, and by the way, I think you are lying about your wife, too.
Lol. Literally. Such a rational response.
Lying about having a wife? Lying about her having a job? Or lying about what that job is? And you suspect this why?
It’s not a lie. She used to work A&E, but the shifts were killing her. The stories she brought home from there were upsetting, but only in the moment. The stories she brings home now upset me for days, sometimes weeks. There was a particularly distressing one last night, hence my intemperate response. But you keep telling yourself I’m lying, if it makes you feel more important.
Interesting, in an ironic way, that Ms. Lucio getting a new trial, (pending appeals by the state of the ruling to vacate), in which she will presumably be acquitted, is termed “justice”. She has spent 15 YEARS in prison, most of which was on death row, missed her children’s upbringing, and was robbed of her prime adult life. As I understand it, Texas compensates exonerees at $80K per year of incarceration, but requires that a court declare the person actually innocent, an entire legal process above and beyond mere acquittal. And just how do you measure the value of prime years of life spent whiling away the hours in an 8x10 prison cell?
We need to end qualified and absolute immunity for police, prosecutors, and judges; mandate open fie discovery for all criminal cases, end cash bail, vet all scientific evidence for objectivity and accuracy and make the state pay for competent indigent legal representation. Barring that, we should burn the entire thing to the ground, entomb the ashes in concrete, and drop it in the Marianas Trench.
@10: you forgot “end the barbaric practice of capital punishment”.
@moarscience — you’ve decided she’s innocent based on… what, exactly? Her lies? Her kids’ lies? The child had injuries that, categorically, could NOT have possibly been caused by a fall down the stairs.
It will in ANY system -- humans are fallible. I’ll trot this one out again:
I’ve long advocated for a national referendum on the death penalty, with two questions on the card:
1. Do you support having the death penalty?
2. Given that any possible system of justice is unarguably fallible, and that regardless of safeguards you may attempt to put in place mistakes are unarguably inevitable, and that this means that sooner or later you will definitely execute an innocent person -- do YOU, personally, volunteer, right now, to be that first person?
Anyone who votes “YES” to the first question but “NO” to the second is ignored, because what they actually mean is “I support having the death penalty, but only if it only applies to other people“.
Anyone voting “YES” to both is shot in the back of the head as they leave the polling booth.
This poll would have a number of benefits. It would show up the number of people who really don’t support the death penalty. It would ensure that anyone still vocally advocating the death penalty after the poll could be told to shut up, since they had their vote and they lost -- by definition nobody who supports the death penalty’s universal application would survive the poll. And the national intelligence level would leap overnight.
I can’t see any downside.
WMDKitty @12: Maybe you should read a bit more before rushing to judgment. Never mind the incompetence/malice of the police, prosecution, and her own defence attorney. How about an incompetent pathologist who jumped to unfounded conclusions about past abuse?
https://theintercept.com/2022/03/05/melissa-lucio-texas-death-penalty/
#12 WMD
You’re a medical professional now? Amazing! Another string to your crowded bow.
@11: Nice catch; thanks for the assist.
@WMDKitty: Please see the Innocence project page on Melissa.
@sonofrojblake
Your poll is pretty badly conceived. You can come up with many things you can support that you cant personally do -- so what ? (I support people getting a open heart surgery but you wont find me going anywhere near where I might likely faint!)
Even in terms of crime I would support arrest violent criminals but I never want to be a policeman -- does that actually mean something ? You seem to be implying that its hypocritical to support the death penalty but refuse to actually take a life yourself. We as a society have decided to confer some responsibilities to a collective rather than individual (law enforcement being one of them)
For someone who seems to oppose the death penalty , you do have some violent fantasies.
(I oppose the death penalty fwiw)
No, he’s saying it is hypocritical to support execution of innocent people -- an inevitability when execution is legal -- unless one is willing to be among those innocent people wrongfully executed.
OT: Could people just take the extra fucking couple of seconds to include at least the comment number they’re responding to? It makes reading so much easier.
sonofrojblake @13, rhetoric as argument is weak.
That’s a silly thing to opine, and therefore a weak rationalisation.
What you seek is someone who volunteers to be killed.
Not exactly the same situation as someone who has been wrongly accused, wrongly prosecuted and found guilty after exhausting all legal avenues.
A different cohort .
Worse, that “reasoning” has an analogous converse: given the existence of a death penalty, those who knowingly became subject to it by their actions volunteered to be killed.
TGAP Dad @#16,
Thanks for that link!
There’s a pretty strong smell of stupid coming from responses to my proposed poll.
@Deepak Shetty, 17:
Eh? Absolutely not. I am SAYING (not “implying”) that it’s hypocritical to support the death penalty, but not want to be executed yourself if you’re innocent, GIVEN that that is guaranteed to happen to somebody. I honestly can’t see how any English speaking person with an IQ over about 85 could read what I wrote and conclude what you concluded. I’d ask you to tell me, but rather by definition, you can’t. Onwards.
(before that, an aside: I’ve observed that among the kind of people who support the death penalty, there’s a very high proportion who would pull the trigger/lever/press the button themselves if given the chance, and they’re very keen to tell you so.)
@John Morales, 20:
Hmm… you didn’t think very hard (didn’t think at all?) before you started typing, did you?
I propose the poll in the expectation that adults with a basic functional intellect will see that what I seek is for people who “support the death penalty” to shut up and ideally (to use a rather childish phrase I read recently) “FUCK OFF AND DIE”. Or at the very least start to acknowledge that they’re fine with innocent people (OTHER innocent people) getting executed… because once they’ve accepted that, you can drill down into how it’s, y’know, mainly poor brown people getting executed so, racist and classist much? And so on. It’s something called a “thought experiment” -- ask a grownup. (Incidentally that’s one of the most unrealistic things about the ludicrous but enjoyable movie “Equilibrium”, with Christian Bale -- they violently execute rich educated white people.)
I should have thought it obvious that the idea of the poll is not proposed seriously, but I’m regularly guilty of communicating poorly and/or overestimating the comprehension abilities of commenters here, so my bad.
Actually, that reasoning is fine, and I have no problem with it. In fact, I’d go further -- on the basis of that very reasoning, I’d support the death penalty for some crimes… in a world where it could be absolutely 100% guaranteed that no innocent person would ever be executed. There are plenty of examples of people who’ve been convicted and imprisoned for crimes it’s hard to talk about with retching. I’ll just name one example -- the Moors murders. In that case, there was no real doubt that the people locked up for it were guilty. I’d have had no moral problem with ending their lives, quickly and humanely.
However, that would require a system, and any such system could, in principle, someday come for me, or some other innocent like, and again, Google this if you don’t know about it, Stefan Kisko. So -- no, absolutely not.
All the poll idea is intended to do is to make those who support capital punishment realise this crucial flaw and demonstrate their level of empathy by either going “ah, good point, I’ve changed my mind” or “nope, still support it, but hey, I’m white and well off so I can afford to, yay racism!”.
You write this only now? OK.
It’s just as silly by any name.
Right.
I just quoted you claiming otherwise; something to do with shutting up and dying.
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Anyway, I take it you don’t support, say, life imprisonment. Or lengthy incarceration of any kind. Or any severe(ish) penalty of any sort, based on the very same reasoning.
(Remember your own predicate? “It will in ANY system”)
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PS:
Be grateful for that.
^ Great moments in deliberate point-missing.
I’ve looked at everything. She’s guilty. The child in question was disabled, and disabled children are far more likely to be abused and killed by a parent/caregiver.
@John Morales, 23:
Well yes, because until “now” I made the assumption that I was dealing with adults with a basically functional intellect. Thanks for the correction.
You’re absolutely correct. The very same reasoning is applicable, because imprisonment is exactly the same as execution. Executed people can have visitors. Executed people can be educated and rehabilitated. Executed people can hope for people who are still alive to investigate their case, and then, if they’re proven to have been innocent, they can be released from, er… the afterlife, and compensated financially by the state for the bit of their life that was unjustly lost. So no, I don’t support incarceration for serious crimes, because… er… no, I simply can’t make your “logic” work here. It makes no fucking sense at all.
“Punishment” by the state in principle should achieve four things:
1. retribution -- victims and society feel better if bad things are done to bad people.
2. deterrence -- bad people should be encouraged to avoid doing bad things, or at least getting caught, for fear of the repercussions.
3. security -- even if it doesn’t make me feel better, and clearly didn’t work as a deterrent, if the scrotes who burgled my house are locked up then at least for that period they can’t be out burgling other people.
4. rehabilitation -- hopefully their time inside will be used usefully and they’ll come out less likely to reoffend.
In reality (4) only really seems to work in enlightened, forward looking, civilised countries, so obviously not the US. (2) isn’t really on the table as the death penalty has been repeatedly shown to be no deterrent to the crimes it’s used against. So you’re left with (1) and (3). Life imprisonment, or even just a long term, achieves exactly the same level of security as execution (barring escapes). What it doesn’t do is match (1) -- Yanks do love them a good hanging/electrocution/poisoning/other barbaric killing. It’s this last that I suspect is the reason the death penalty will never be got rid of in the USA -- the retributive nastiness is too solidly baked into the national psyche. /shrug/ Thank goodness I don’t have to live there.
sonofrojblake:
You’re getting there. Well done! 🙂
“I’ve long advocated for a national referendum on the life imprisonment, with two questions on the card:
1. Do you support having life imprisonment?
2. Given that any possible system of justice is unarguably fallible, and that regardless of safeguards you may attempt to put in place mistakes are unarguably inevitable, and that this means that sooner or later you will definitely imprison an innocent person — do YOU, personally, volunteer, right now, to be that first person?”
(It’s not my “logic”, it’s yours)
@sonofrojblake @22
Sorry I misread what you had typed(Im way below 85 btw -- If I was above I wouldnt respond to you!) .But your poll doesnt ask what you are saying. A death penalty advocate may very well say that if they were on trial for murder and that they were proved to be guilty beyond a reasonable doubt (by a legal standard) then they must be put to death -- secure in the knowledge that this is a low probability event. However You are asking for them to volunteer to be killed even if no such accusation or trial is conducted -- which isnt the same thing.
I assume you believe in some sort of punishment for some crimes though -- Your poll can be equally applied to any crime, is it not ? Given that we put people in jail for fraud/assault/etc and given that someone innocent will be convicted ,”do YOU, personally, volunteer, right now, to be that first person” ?
#25 wmd
…And also far more likely to stumble and fall, as the mother claims happened. I assume you looked at the innocence project link? Of course you did, you looked at ‘everything’ and you wouldn’t lie about that. Which means you read this particularly worrying section:
Oh you know what, this is bit is positively damning:
Remember, the default assumption is that all defendants are innocent, and this assumption means the burden of proof is on the prosecution. On the question of abuse of her children, the prosecution presented: nothing.
And on and on. In case it was not obvious, I flatly do not believe you read all of that page.
@John Morales, 27 AND Deepak Shetty, 28:
Neither of you appear able to comprehend that there’s a qualitative difference between imprisonment -- a temporary and on some level at least reversible state -- and death. Neither do you seem prepared to accept that this difference would warrant a different approach to deciding whether something should be done or not. On this basis, and on the basis that one of you has proudly stated that your IQ is below 85 and I’m therefore engaging in a battle of wits against an unarmed opponent, I’m going to give up here.
(Obviously I wouldn’t volunteer to be imprisoned wrongly today. Or be fined today. Or have to do community service today. None of those facts makes me a hypocrite for regarding them as acceptable and proportionate punishments for crimes, because I’m all for generously compensating people who’ve been wrongly convicted. You can’t do that with execution. If you can’t see that difference, there’s no point talking to you.)
sonofrojblake:
“Richard Phillips was 25-years old when he was imprisoned for a fatal shooting in Detroit in 1971-a case prosecutors now say was “based entirely” on false testimony from one witness. He was sentenced to life without parole. He was released in 2017 and exonerated in 2018 after the University of Michigan’s innocence project took up his case, declaring him the longest-serving innocent man in the United States.”
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wrongful_convictions_in_the_United_States)
45 years in prison, starting at the age of 25. Reversible, you say.
Heh. The grapes were sour. Sure.
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Look, what you imagine is a zinger of an argument is a silly bit of rhetoric. As I noted.
And it was badly expressed, too. For example, nobody could now be that first person, since it’s happened already.
(I know, I know. You were so proud of your shiny turd of a challenge you just had to add that in, with emphasis even)
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Finally, and I know this was parenthetical, but still: “None of those facts makes me a hypocrite for regarding them as acceptable and proportionate punishments for crimes, because I’m all for generously compensating people who’ve been wrongly convicted.”
Reminds me so much of the moral of Job. You know, in the Babble.
#31 John
Yes, the condition of ‘being imprisoned’ is reversible, unlike ‘being dead’. By looking up the extreme, you give a shining example of this difference. Compare/contrast: 45 years of imprisonment, 1 hour of being dead.
What about the condition of missing out on 45 years of life outside bars?
What about it? I don’t recall anyone claiming that can be reversed.
@31:
I was originally not going to bother answering this because it’s so monumentally obtuse and stupid, but I’m at a loose end, so…
No. Provably, to anyone who can read, I say something else. I say “that there’s a qualitative difference between imprisonment — a temporary and on some level at least reversible state — and death”. You took a six word phrase and read one word. From here on, how about I ignore five out of every six words you type? You might start making sense…
Imprisonment is “on some level” reversible, in the sense that one can be released from prison and, crucially, compensated fairly for the time lost. I’d say roughly a million pounds a year for every year inside, the money to be extracted from the net worth of any lawyer (or their estate) employed by the prosecution, according to some formula depending on their level of involvement. That might focus minds a bit. Obviously no amount of money could replace 45 years of your life (and as pointed out already, it’s instructive you felt the need to reach for the record as an example, where ANY example of the death penalty would do), but suddenly being rock-star-rich make take the edge off at least a bit, as long as, as stated, there’s a corresponding cost to at least some of those responsible for your incarceration.
Ah, you’re one of those people that think all English speakers live in the USA.
There’s a qualitative difference between any specific form of retribution and another.
So yes, like every other specific form, it’s qualitatively different from any other specific form — else it would not be a specific form.
I succinctly distilled your essential claimed difference — the supposed reversibility of any punishment other than death. I quoted you, even.
Heh. “Reminds me so much of the moral of Job. You know, in the Babble.”
LOL.
That makes you one of those people who think I am “one of those people that think all English speakers live in the USA.”
(But hey, feel free to clarify how you think it’s a linguistic obfuscation)
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So, perhaps make some actual attempt to try to sustain your silly, um, Gedankenexperiment, now that you have essayed its employment.
(Gone good for ya, in times past?)