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Texas death row inmate at mercy of supreme court, and junk science

sacnoradhq 3y ago
It's awful. On death row in Texas for the crime of bringing their chronically ill child to the hospital in distress. Texas has a history of executing the disabled and presenting "expert" junk science as evidence. https://www.propublica.org/article/is-texas-still-executing-mentally-disabled-prisoners-108 https://www.propublica.org/article/is-texas-still-executing-... https://www.texastribune.org/2011/04/15/texas-psychologist-punished-in-death-penalty-cases/ https://www.texastribune.org/2011/04/15/texas-psychologist-p... Illinois had similar problems with the death penalty, including likely executing innocent people. Arkansas executed an innocent but convicted person in 2017 who was subsequently cleared by DNA evidence. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/making-sense-chaos/202105/new-dna-evidence-suggests-executed-man-was-innocent https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/making-sense-chaos/2... So it seems the death penalty cannot be enforced if it cannot be investigated or adjudicated with a necessary and sufficient degree of rigor. It also doesn't serve a purpose as a deterrent (criminals aren't smart enough to anticipate outcomes). Furthermore, it makes the society that dispenses it appear governed by a 3rd-world authoritarian regime. Finally, it's an expensive process and a bloodlust spectacle. Better off keeping cretins alive behind bars for the remote possibility of rehabilitation and let them live with themselves rather than giving them an easy out.
ram4jesus 3y ago
[flagged]
- kitanata 3y ago
  Uggh. Look an armchair unqualified and outrage opinion by someone on Hacker News who has no idea what they are talking about. Look up febrile seizure. Every parent know them. The recommendation by most doctors is to only bring in your child if their fever reaches 104, which he did. You know what almost all new parents do? They bring their kids to the doctors at the slightest sign of trouble. You know what happens the first few times you do this? The doctors tell you to stop and they tell you you are over reacting. If you were a parent, you’d know that.
- stuartjohnson12 3y ago
  Lots of people deeply distrust big medical institutions. These aren't just shallow, weakly held beliefs based on a shrug, we're talking people willing to avoid medical care up until their own death. Sometimes, very smart, highly successful people who are admired by a great many. What he did was massively negligent, but I'm not sure it's a good use of anyone's resources to keep him permanently locked up for 30+ years.
  - harpooniker 3y ago
    Did their daughter have these sincerely held beliefs?
    - Retric 3y ago
      First nobody said taking her to the hospital when he did was negligent he was convicted of shaken baby syndrome not delaying care.
kitanata 3y ago
Here is an uncomfortable truth. This man is in prison because of ableism. This is why body language “experts” are grifters and charlatans. This is why you shouldn’t convict people on a hunch, and why as a professional you don’t say shit you are unqualified to say. Ableism kills.
- quickthrower2 3y ago
  Sexism and agism may have come into play too. “Creepy man, probably a peado” type thinking.
  - Ekaros 3y ago
    And that is why trials should be blind... The characteristics of perpetrator should not be shown or told to jury.
- vorpalhex 3y ago
  No he's in prison because multiple witnesses testified they saw him shake and hit and scream at his child for crying, repeatedly.
  - Arainach 3y ago
    Source?
    - vorpalhex 3y ago
      https://www.texastribune.org/2016/06/17/appeals-court-halts-east-texas-mans-execution/ https://www.texastribune.org/2016/06/17/appeals-court-halts-... Yes, this article is from 2016. Texas also has a strong law that allows throwing out "junk science". This case didn't make it through appeals because the forensic criteria that is suspect was such a small part of the evidence.
      - VHRanger 3y ago
        ... that's all mentioned in the article. The person alleging he hit the daughter is his ex wife and her own sister testified she is a recurrent liar.
GlumWoodpecker 3y ago
Powerful article. What strikes me as a layman (non-lawyer, non-law enforcement), is how prevalent these methods of forensic science have become, without any solid scientific basis backing them up - such as peer reviewed studies with quantifiable evidence. You'd think that in order for the state to take the life of a human being, you'd need to prove it using means that are more thoroughly vetted than "[one doctor] who in 1971 suggested the cause might be violent shaking" (emphasis mine).
- primer42 3y ago
  IMHO our system of law cares more about precedent than almost anything else. The first case addressing a situation sets the bar, which is backwards. The most important decisions are made when we, collectively, know least about the topic at hand.
  - wizerdrobe 3y ago
    As the saying goes, it’s a “legal” system rather than a Justice system. So long as you follow arcane procedure and precedent, the deeper facts don’t matter and don’t get much respect from the system.
  - dmvdoug 3y ago
    And criminal law and procedure doesn’t care about precedent as much as it cares about finality. Which is really backwards.
  - kmeisthax 3y ago
    Common law is only one basis of law and it's almost exclusively an English thing. In England, alternative bases of law were associated with horrific abuses of power. In response the Anglosphere has adopted a sort of extreme legal conservatism: anything other than inviolable natural rights decided on the basis of "we've always done it this way" is not freedom, but privilege[0]. Every acquittal binds the law, ideally forever. This is the same form of law that gives us things like "human rights are what you afford your worst enemy", which is contradictory[1], but sounds like a really strong bulwark against tyranny. Outside of the Anglosphere judges are free to ignore precedent, which they call "jurisprudence". This is a tradeoff: you get justice "in the moment" in exchange for less future surety about how the legal system will react. The legal system might just decide that you doing the exact same thing someone else did and got away with is now illegal. My personal opinion is that any basis of law can be used for tyranny, and that common law and inviolable rights are less protective than we have been propagandized to think. Even common law legal systems occasionally overturn precedent if they feel like it - remember when anti-abortion laws were a violation of the 4th Amendment until they weren't? [0] This even extends to the word "franchise", which means "French-ize", as in to be given freedoms by being turned into a Frenchman [1] What if your enemy seeks to take away your rights?
raptor99 3y ago
https://archive.ph/z33PC https://archive.ph/z33PC
Workaccount2 3y ago
I'm always bothered by how doctor's word is always taken as gospel. Anyone who's gone through the medical merry-go-round knows that doctors opinions on the same set of symptoms can be all over the place, some even outright idiotic.
- unyttigfjelltol 3y ago
  Folks identified the dad as weird and in over his head, so untrustworthy and guilty. This isn't isolated, it's the norm. So, for 30 years or so the medical community had this voodoo DX to justify locking up social outcasts. And they seem completely OK with having done so. The DX sort of is not accepted anymore. But, the article describes a list of other voodoo sciences that demonstrate something remains very broken in the process for establishing facts, and we see time and time again that systems you'd think are driven by analytical rigor are really just a school popularity contests all grown up.
  - SV_BubbleTime 3y ago
    That could all be true, but folks also testified they personally witnessed him violently shaking at least one kid. You can be against junk science, but entertain the likely possibility he also did it.
    - brookst 3y ago
      You can also entertain the possibility that he did it, while still wanting a justice system that insists on absolute proof of guilt before killing someone.
      - InSteady 3y ago
        * The daughter was sick from birth with breathing apnea, with bouts causing her to collapse and stop breathing. * Had severe undiagnosed pneumonia. * Was prescribed an opioid medication that is no longer deemed safe for children. * Had diarrhea and a fever of 104F for 5 days prior to her death. How can you not entertain the possibility that her death had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that someone claims a dude shook a child one time?
kyrra 3y ago
A version of this that just spells out the man's defense can be found on the opinion pages of WSJ: https://www.wsj.com/articles/texas-may-execute-a-man-based-on-a-scrapped-medical-theory-death-row-autism-prison-b3c44493 https://www.wsj.com/articles/texas-may-execute-a-man-based-o... The news side also had a piece on this: https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-debate-over-shaken-baby-syndrome-11655387830 https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-debate-over-shaken-baby-syn...
jncfhnb 3y ago
The most bonkers thing here to me is giving a man a death sentence because of a believed shaken baby death that he promptly took to the hospital.
- quickthrower2 3y ago
  That is what happens if you are innocent. An irony, because you wont make a deal so you can roll the dice on justice.
- vorpalhex 3y ago
  You realize a lot of abused kids are taken to the hospital by their abuser? Kids got a broken arm or a broken nose from being slapped around, abuser can't hide it forever. Eventually kids gotta go to school or cops are going to do a welfare check. Same thing if kid disappears off the radar.
  - jncfhnb 3y ago
    That’s a very different problem from shaken baby syndrome. See adjacent reply.
    - vorpalhex 3y ago
      Your assertion is simply wrong. SBS is not just a parent trying to shush a baby - it requires a very significant amount of force in a healthy infant. This is not a "oh shush let me hug you" thing, this requires repeatedly seriously jostling the baby hard enough to pinch it's airway off or bounce it's brain off the inside of it's skull. Usually repeatedly.
      - jncfhnb 3y ago
        I’m not saying it’s “let me hug you” I’m saying it’s out of desperation. And one of the biggest ways to avoid it is EDUCATION for parents who do not know better. Because most cases of this are not people intentionally murdering children but people who are at their wits end and desperately need help, the bare minimum of which is a mental note that this particular form of desperate exhaustion is dangerous to the child. And as a general rule, KILLING people because they made a mistake is really fucking dumb.
SamoyedFurFluff 3y ago
The way death row inmates are treated is arguably a reason to be against death row. There was also a case where a person on death row couldn’t present exculpatory evidence to prove his innocence because his last appeals lawyer didn’t do it. The Supreme Court literally decided you can prove you have evidence that proves your innocence, that you were done dirty by an incompetent lawyer, it doesn’t matter, you should still be killed. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinn_v._Ramirez https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinn_v._Ramirez
- boomboomsubban 3y ago
  One of the other death row inmates mentioned in the article as having failed the junk science law, Kosoul Chanthakoummane, was partly convicted for hypnosis induced testimony. The appeal response on calling it junk science was, paraphrased, "hypnosis induced testimony was known to be bogus in ~2005, when your trial was. You should have argued it then." That alone is terrible. But to make that bullshit even worse, Texas continued to use hypnosis induced testimony until 2021. It makes me wonder when the last death penalty sentence for "shaken baby syndrome" was in Texas.
  - lisper 3y ago
    Why? Shaken Baby Syndrome is a real thing. https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/shaken-baby-syndrome/symptoms-causes/syc-20366619 https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/shaken-baby-s... [UPDATE] To those of you downvoting me, would you kindly explain why? It seems like a reasonable question to me.
    - YeGoblynQueenne 3y ago
      lisper, it sounds like the only source you've consulted on Shaken Baby Syndrome (SBS) is the Mayo Clinic website. SBS is a subject with a very long history and surrounded by great controversy [1]. I urge you to look a bit further and make an effort to understand why there is controversy. For example, the Wikipedia article on SBS has a section on "Legal Issues" that gives some details. Or you may find informative Wikipedia's article about Waney Squier, a doctor who was involved in SBS cases as an expert witness: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waney_Squier https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waney_Squier The "Legal Issues" section on the SBS also mentions Waney Squire's case. ____________________ [1] Btw, this is a "controversy" in the sense of often acrimonious debate between experts and not in the sense of the "controversy" that Young Earth Creationists demand be taught in schools. It's a controversy about methodology and medical and science ethics; the kind of thing that gets up some scientists' noses.
aqme28 3y ago
Another similar story about a man executed by Texas based on junk arson science: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/09/07/trial-by-fire https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/09/07/trial-by-fire
dimal 3y ago
I’m always confused why conservatives tend to support the death penalty. The conservative ethos is to reduce the power of the state to prevent abuse, but giving the state the right to kill a citizen clearly goes against that. How can you mistrust the state in almost every aspect of society, yet trust it to only kill people that “deserve” it?
- junofan 3y ago
  I think most people would be in favor of more protections. But even Socrates argued for the death penalty. Upholding the norm of proportionality in Western philosophy isn’t generally seen as abuse.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - lapcat 3y ago
    > But even Socrates argued for the death penalty. This is a gross misunderstanding. Socrates was sentenced to death for "corrupting the youth" in a sham trial. Some friends of Socrates offered to smuggle him out of Athens and escape his death sentence, but Socrates argued against that, for various reasons. There's no evidence that Socrates supported and promoted the death penalty in the abstract.
    - brookst 3y ago
      This. And even if Socrates wrote an eloquent argument for the death penalty, he would be the first to reject the use of his name as an argument unto itself.
- dbmikus 3y ago
  The two party system oversimplifies things, so you end up with "small government" and "traditional government" in the same bucket.
  - lapcat 3y ago
zackees 3y ago
[dead]
Rebuff5007 3y ago
Wow, I did not realize there are easily accessible public records of Texas' current death row inmates: https://www.tdcj.texas.gov/death_row/dr_offenders_on_dr.html https://www.tdcj.texas.gov/death_row/dr_offenders_on_dr.html Credit to the guardian article for linking this. What a weird world.
- philshem 3y ago
  For those who received capital punishment, the same site also hosts their last statements. https://www.tdcj.texas.gov/death_row/dr_executed_offenders.html https://www.tdcj.texas.gov/death_row/dr_executed_offenders.h... It's one of the grimmest open data sets around. And the source of this dataviz from Reddit: https://imgur.com/t61UIgH https://imgur.com/t61UIgH https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/26rui7/oc_a_word_cloud_of_all_the_final_words_spoken_and/ https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/26rui7/oc_...
jmyeet 3y ago
There is absolutely no justification for the death penalty no matter how you look at it. None. From a purely economic POV, it makes no sense. Compare the average annual cost per state prison inmate [1] ($22,000 for Texas) to the annual cost of a death row inmate. For example, $90,000 per inmate per year for Nevada [2]. In addition capital cases are significantly more expensive to try. Each Federal execution cost an estimated $1 million [3]. Since 1973, at least 190 people sentenced to death have been exonerated [4]. People exonerated of crimes tend to skew heavily towards minorities, particularly African-American [5][6], which shows it's not really about the severity and certainty of a conviction but instead emotional retribution disproportionately targeted at black people. The American carceral state is an abject failure and a blight on humanity. We have 4% of the world's population but 25% of the world's priosners. If locking people up worked, this would be the safest country on Earth. [1]: https://www.vera.org/publications/price-of-prisons-2015-state-spending-trends/price-of-prisons-2015-state-spending-trends/price-of-prisons-2015-state-spending-trends-prison-spending https://www.vera.org/publications/price-of-prisons-2015-stat... [2]: https://www.leg.state.nv.us/App/NELIS/REL/76th2011/ExhibitDocument/OpenExhibitDocument?exhibitId=17686&fileDownloadName=h041211ab501_pescetta.pdf https://www.leg.state.nv.us/App/NELIS/REL/76th2011/ExhibitDo... [3]:https://interrogatingjustice.org/death-sentences/the-cost-of-federal-executions-trump/ https://interrogatingjustice.org/death-sentences/the-cost-of... [4]: https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/policy-issues/innocence https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/policy-issues/innocence [5]: https://innocenceproject.org/dna-exonerations-in-the-united-states/ https://innocenceproject.org/dna-exonerations-in-the-united-... [6]: https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/policy-issues/innocence https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/policy-issues/innocence
lost_tourist 3y ago
It's been like 10 years since experts declared this stuff junk science and they still haven't vacated/retried all those cases? Just goes to show you how lazy DA's can be.
rossant 3y ago
See also John Grisham's piece on this case : https://www.wsj.com/articles/texas-may-execute-a-man-based-on-a-scrapped-medical-theory-death-row-autism-prison-b3c44493 https://www.wsj.com/articles/texas-may-execute-a-man-based-o...
_8j50 3y ago
Hear me out, capital punishment should be allowed but the execution of each inmate should depend on a referendum at the polls. For example, new highway spending, municipal bond issuance and other stuff gets put on the ballot. Consent to take the life of a person who has committed capital crimes should be directly granted by the people. Advocates for the inmate can campaign for leniency but voters must vote assuming guilt since the inmate is already convicted. Lack of turnout or refusal to grant consent means the inmate gets life without parole. There aren't enough executions for this to be an issue and a person's life shouldn't depend on legalist bureaucrats. Also, a guilty verdict alone shouldn't be enough to put their name on that ballot. Overwhelming evidence needs to be present.
dakial1 3y ago
As a father I can't even imagine how horrible it would be to lose a child and then being accused of doing it. Also this brings to my mind a recent conversation I had with friends who live in the US (I'm Braziian) on how horrible the health system (even private) is. Hospital refusing emergencies to avoid litigation risk, no service given but bill sent anyway, totally superficial diagnosis no even touching the patient... I'm not surprised that DRs and Nurses would simply make absurd statements like the ones in the article.

It's awful. On death row in Texas for the crime of bringing their chronically ill child to the hospital in distress. Texas has a history of executing the disabled and presenting "expert" junk science as evidence. https://www.propublica.org/article/is-texas-still-executing-mentally-disabled-prisoners-108 https://www.propublica.org/article/is-texas-still-executing-... https://www.texastribune.org/2011/04/15/texas-psychologist-punished-in-death-penalty-cases/ https://www.texastribune.org/2011/04/15/texas-psychologist-p... Illinois had similar problems with the death penalty, including likely executing innocent people. Arkansas executed an innocent but convicted person in 2017 who was subsequently cleared by DNA evidence. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/making-sense-chaos/202105/new-dna-evidence-suggests-executed-man-was-innocent https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/making-sense-chaos/2... So it seems the death penalty cannot be enforced if it cannot be investigated or adjudicated with a necessary and sufficient degree of rigor. It also doesn't serve a purpose as a deterrent (criminals aren't smart enough to anticipate outcomes). Furthermore, it makes the society that dispenses it appear governed by a 3rd-world authoritarian regime. Finally, it's an expensive process and a bloodlust spectacle. Better off keeping cretins alive behind bars for the remote possibility of rehabilitation and let them live with themselves rather than giving them an easy out.

ram4jesus 3y ago

[flagged]

kitanata 3y ago
Uggh. Look an armchair unqualified and outrage opinion by someone on Hacker News who has no idea what they are talking about. Look up febrile seizure. Every parent know them. The recommendation by most doctors is to only bring in your child if their fever reaches 104, which he did. You know what almost all new parents do? They bring their kids to the doctors at the slightest sign of trouble. You know what happens the first few times you do this? The doctors tell you to stop and they tell you you are over reacting. If you were a parent, you’d know that.
stuartjohnson12 3y ago
Lots of people deeply distrust big medical institutions. These aren't just shallow, weakly held beliefs based on a shrug, we're talking people willing to avoid medical care up until their own death. Sometimes, very smart, highly successful people who are admired by a great many. What he did was massively negligent, but I'm not sure it's a good use of anyone's resources to keep him permanently locked up for 30+ years.
- harpooniker 3y ago
  Did their daughter have these sincerely held beliefs?
  - Retric 3y ago
    First nobody said taking her to the hospital when he did was negligent he was convicted of shaken baby syndrome not delaying care.

kitanata 3y ago

Here is an uncomfortable truth. This man is in prison because of ableism. This is why body language “experts” are grifters and charlatans. This is why you shouldn’t convict people on a hunch, and why as a professional you don’t say shit you are unqualified to say. Ableism kills.

quickthrower2 3y ago
Sexism and agism may have come into play too. “Creepy man, probably a peado” type thinking.
- Ekaros 3y ago
  And that is why trials should be blind... The characteristics of perpetrator should not be shown or told to jury.
vorpalhex 3y ago
No he's in prison because multiple witnesses testified they saw him shake and hit and scream at his child for crying, repeatedly.
- Arainach 3y ago
  Source?
  - vorpalhex 3y ago
    https://www.texastribune.org/2016/06/17/appeals-court-halts-east-texas-mans-execution/ https://www.texastribune.org/2016/06/17/appeals-court-halts-... Yes, this article is from 2016. Texas also has a strong law that allows throwing out "junk science". This case didn't make it through appeals because the forensic criteria that is suspect was such a small part of the evidence.
    - VHRanger 3y ago
      ... that's all mentioned in the article. The person alleging he hit the daughter is his ex wife and her own sister testified she is a recurrent liar.

GlumWoodpecker 3y ago

Powerful article. What strikes me as a layman (non-lawyer, non-law enforcement), is how prevalent these methods of forensic science have become, without any solid scientific basis backing them up - such as peer reviewed studies with quantifiable evidence. You'd think that in order for the state to take the life of a human being, you'd need to prove it using means that are more thoroughly vetted than "[one doctor] who in 1971 suggested the cause might be violent shaking" (emphasis mine).

primer42 3y ago
IMHO our system of law cares more about precedent than almost anything else. The first case addressing a situation sets the bar, which is backwards. The most important decisions are made when we, collectively, know least about the topic at hand.
- wizerdrobe 3y ago
  As the saying goes, it’s a “legal” system rather than a Justice system. So long as you follow arcane procedure and precedent, the deeper facts don’t matter and don’t get much respect from the system.
- dmvdoug 3y ago
  And criminal law and procedure doesn’t care about precedent as much as it cares about finality. Which is really backwards.
- kmeisthax 3y ago
  Common law is only one basis of law and it's almost exclusively an English thing. In England, alternative bases of law were associated with horrific abuses of power. In response the Anglosphere has adopted a sort of extreme legal conservatism: anything other than inviolable natural rights decided on the basis of "we've always done it this way" is not freedom, but privilege[0]. Every acquittal binds the law, ideally forever. This is the same form of law that gives us things like "human rights are what you afford your worst enemy", which is contradictory[1], but sounds like a really strong bulwark against tyranny. Outside of the Anglosphere judges are free to ignore precedent, which they call "jurisprudence". This is a tradeoff: you get justice "in the moment" in exchange for less future surety about how the legal system will react. The legal system might just decide that you doing the exact same thing someone else did and got away with is now illegal. My personal opinion is that any basis of law can be used for tyranny, and that common law and inviolable rights are less protective than we have been propagandized to think. Even common law legal systems occasionally overturn precedent if they feel like it - remember when anti-abortion laws were a violation of the 4th Amendment until they weren't? [0] This even extends to the word "franchise", which means "French-ize", as in to be given freedoms by being turned into a Frenchman [1] What if your enemy seeks to take away your rights?

raptor99 3y ago

https://archive.ph/z33PC https://archive.ph/z33PC

Workaccount2 3y ago

I'm always bothered by how doctor's word is always taken as gospel. Anyone who's gone through the medical merry-go-round knows that doctors opinions on the same set of symptoms can be all over the place, some even outright idiotic.

unyttigfjelltol 3y ago
Folks identified the dad as weird and in over his head, so untrustworthy and guilty. This isn't isolated, it's the norm. So, for 30 years or so the medical community had this voodoo DX to justify locking up social outcasts. And they seem completely OK with having done so. The DX sort of is not accepted anymore. But, the article describes a list of other voodoo sciences that demonstrate something remains very broken in the process for establishing facts, and we see time and time again that systems you'd think are driven by analytical rigor are really just a school popularity contests all grown up.
- SV_BubbleTime 3y ago
  That could all be true, but folks also testified they personally witnessed him violently shaking at least one kid. You can be against junk science, but entertain the likely possibility he also did it.
  - brookst 3y ago
    You can also entertain the possibility that he did it, while still wanting a justice system that insists on absolute proof of guilt before killing someone.
    - InSteady 3y ago
      * The daughter was sick from birth with breathing apnea, with bouts causing her to collapse and stop breathing. * Had severe undiagnosed pneumonia. * Was prescribed an opioid medication that is no longer deemed safe for children. * Had diarrhea and a fever of 104F for 5 days prior to her death. How can you not entertain the possibility that her death had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that someone claims a dude shook a child one time?

kyrra 3y ago

A version of this that just spells out the man's defense can be found on the opinion pages of WSJ: https://www.wsj.com/articles/texas-may-execute-a-man-based-on-a-scrapped-medical-theory-death-row-autism-prison-b3c44493 https://www.wsj.com/articles/texas-may-execute-a-man-based-o... The news side also had a piece on this: https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-debate-over-shaken-baby-syndrome-11655387830 https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-debate-over-shaken-baby-syn...

jncfhnb 3y ago

The most bonkers thing here to me is giving a man a death sentence because of a believed shaken baby death that he promptly took to the hospital.

quickthrower2 3y ago
That is what happens if you are innocent. An irony, because you wont make a deal so you can roll the dice on justice.
vorpalhex 3y ago
You realize a lot of abused kids are taken to the hospital by their abuser? Kids got a broken arm or a broken nose from being slapped around, abuser can't hide it forever. Eventually kids gotta go to school or cops are going to do a welfare check. Same thing if kid disappears off the radar.
- jncfhnb 3y ago
  That’s a very different problem from shaken baby syndrome. See adjacent reply.
  - vorpalhex 3y ago
    Your assertion is simply wrong. SBS is not just a parent trying to shush a baby - it requires a very significant amount of force in a healthy infant. This is not a "oh shush let me hug you" thing, this requires repeatedly seriously jostling the baby hard enough to pinch it's airway off or bounce it's brain off the inside of it's skull. Usually repeatedly.
    - jncfhnb 3y ago
      I’m not saying it’s “let me hug you” I’m saying it’s out of desperation. And one of the biggest ways to avoid it is EDUCATION for parents who do not know better. Because most cases of this are not people intentionally murdering children but people who are at their wits end and desperately need help, the bare minimum of which is a mental note that this particular form of desperate exhaustion is dangerous to the child. And as a general rule, KILLING people because they made a mistake is really fucking dumb.

SamoyedFurFluff 3y ago

The way death row inmates are treated is arguably a reason to be against death row. There was also a case where a person on death row couldn’t present exculpatory evidence to prove his innocence because his last appeals lawyer didn’t do it. The Supreme Court literally decided you can prove you have evidence that proves your innocence, that you were done dirty by an incompetent lawyer, it doesn’t matter, you should still be killed. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinn_v._Ramirez https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinn_v._Ramirez

boomboomsubban 3y ago
One of the other death row inmates mentioned in the article as having failed the junk science law, Kosoul Chanthakoummane, was partly convicted for hypnosis induced testimony. The appeal response on calling it junk science was, paraphrased, "hypnosis induced testimony was known to be bogus in ~2005, when your trial was. You should have argued it then." That alone is terrible. But to make that bullshit even worse, Texas continued to use hypnosis induced testimony until 2021. It makes me wonder when the last death penalty sentence for "shaken baby syndrome" was in Texas.
- lisper 3y ago
  Why? Shaken Baby Syndrome is a real thing. https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/shaken-baby-syndrome/symptoms-causes/syc-20366619 https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/shaken-baby-s... [UPDATE] To those of you downvoting me, would you kindly explain why? It seems like a reasonable question to me.
  - YeGoblynQueenne 3y ago
    lisper, it sounds like the only source you've consulted on Shaken Baby Syndrome (SBS) is the Mayo Clinic website. SBS is a subject with a very long history and surrounded by great controversy [1]. I urge you to look a bit further and make an effort to understand why there is controversy. For example, the Wikipedia article on SBS has a section on "Legal Issues" that gives some details. Or you may find informative Wikipedia's article about Waney Squier, a doctor who was involved in SBS cases as an expert witness: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waney_Squier https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waney_Squier The "Legal Issues" section on the SBS also mentions Waney Squire's case. ____________________ [1] Btw, this is a "controversy" in the sense of often acrimonious debate between experts and not in the sense of the "controversy" that Young Earth Creationists demand be taught in schools. It's a controversy about methodology and medical and science ethics; the kind of thing that gets up some scientists' noses.

aqme28 3y ago

Another similar story about a man executed by Texas based on junk arson science: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/09/07/trial-by-fire https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/09/07/trial-by-fire

dimal 3y ago

I’m always confused why conservatives tend to support the death penalty. The conservative ethos is to reduce the power of the state to prevent abuse, but giving the state the right to kill a citizen clearly goes against that. How can you mistrust the state in almost every aspect of society, yet trust it to only kill people that “deserve” it?

junofan 3y ago
I think most people would be in favor of more protections. But even Socrates argued for the death penalty. Upholding the norm of proportionality in Western philosophy isn’t generally seen as abuse.
- deleted 3y ago
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- lapcat 3y ago
  > But even Socrates argued for the death penalty. This is a gross misunderstanding. Socrates was sentenced to death for "corrupting the youth" in a sham trial. Some friends of Socrates offered to smuggle him out of Athens and escape his death sentence, but Socrates argued against that, for various reasons. There's no evidence that Socrates supported and promoted the death penalty in the abstract.
  - brookst 3y ago
    This. And even if Socrates wrote an eloquent argument for the death penalty, he would be the first to reject the use of his name as an argument unto itself.
dbmikus 3y ago
The two party system oversimplifies things, so you end up with "small government" and "traditional government" in the same bucket.
- lapcat 3y ago

zackees 3y ago

[dead]

Rebuff5007 3y ago

Wow, I did not realize there are easily accessible public records of Texas' current death row inmates: https://www.tdcj.texas.gov/death_row/dr_offenders_on_dr.html https://www.tdcj.texas.gov/death_row/dr_offenders_on_dr.html Credit to the guardian article for linking this. What a weird world.

philshem 3y ago
For those who received capital punishment, the same site also hosts their last statements. https://www.tdcj.texas.gov/death_row/dr_executed_offenders.html https://www.tdcj.texas.gov/death_row/dr_executed_offenders.h... It's one of the grimmest open data sets around. And the source of this dataviz from Reddit: https://imgur.com/t61UIgH https://imgur.com/t61UIgH https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/26rui7/oc_a_word_cloud_of_all_the_final_words_spoken_and/ https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/26rui7/oc_...

jmyeet 3y ago

There is absolutely no justification for the death penalty no matter how you look at it. None. From a purely economic POV, it makes no sense. Compare the average annual cost per state prison inmate [1] ($22,000 for Texas) to the annual cost of a death row inmate. For example, $90,000 per inmate per year for Nevada [2]. In addition capital cases are significantly more expensive to try. Each Federal execution cost an estimated $1 million [3]. Since 1973, at least 190 people sentenced to death have been exonerated [4]. People exonerated of crimes tend to skew heavily towards minorities, particularly African-American [5][6], which shows it's not really about the severity and certainty of a conviction but instead emotional retribution disproportionately targeted at black people. The American carceral state is an abject failure and a blight on humanity. We have 4% of the world's population but 25% of the world's priosners. If locking people up worked, this would be the safest country on Earth. [1]: https://www.vera.org/publications/price-of-prisons-2015-state-spending-trends/price-of-prisons-2015-state-spending-trends/price-of-prisons-2015-state-spending-trends-prison-spending https://www.vera.org/publications/price-of-prisons-2015-stat... [2]: https://www.leg.state.nv.us/App/NELIS/REL/76th2011/ExhibitDocument/OpenExhibitDocument?exhibitId=17686&fileDownloadName=h041211ab501_pescetta.pdf https://www.leg.state.nv.us/App/NELIS/REL/76th2011/ExhibitDo... [3]:https://interrogatingjustice.org/death-sentences/the-cost-of-federal-executions-trump/ https://interrogatingjustice.org/death-sentences/the-cost-of... [4]: https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/policy-issues/innocence https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/policy-issues/innocence [5]: https://innocenceproject.org/dna-exonerations-in-the-united-states/ https://innocenceproject.org/dna-exonerations-in-the-united-... [6]: https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/policy-issues/innocence https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/policy-issues/innocence

lost_tourist 3y ago

It's been like 10 years since experts declared this stuff junk science and they still haven't vacated/retried all those cases? Just goes to show you how lazy DA's can be.

rossant 3y ago

See also John Grisham's piece on this case : https://www.wsj.com/articles/texas-may-execute-a-man-based-on-a-scrapped-medical-theory-death-row-autism-prison-b3c44493 https://www.wsj.com/articles/texas-may-execute-a-man-based-o...

_8j50 3y ago

Hear me out, capital punishment should be allowed but the execution of each inmate should depend on a referendum at the polls. For example, new highway spending, municipal bond issuance and other stuff gets put on the ballot. Consent to take the life of a person who has committed capital crimes should be directly granted by the people. Advocates for the inmate can campaign for leniency but voters must vote assuming guilt since the inmate is already convicted. Lack of turnout or refusal to grant consent means the inmate gets life without parole. There aren't enough executions for this to be an issue and a person's life shouldn't depend on legalist bureaucrats. Also, a guilty verdict alone shouldn't be enough to put their name on that ballot. Overwhelming evidence needs to be present.

dakial1 3y ago

As a father I can't even imagine how horrible it would be to lose a child and then being accused of doing it. Also this brings to my mind a recent conversation I had with friends who live in the US (I'm Braziian) on how horrible the health system (even private) is. Hospital refusing emergencies to avoid litigation risk, no service given but bill sent anyway, totally superficial diagnosis no even touching the patient... I'm not surprised that DRs and Nurses would simply make absurd statements like the ones in the article.