14 ms·

Wrong man was executed in Texas, probe says

157 points by bitops 14y ago

losethos 14y ago
If you don't think the world is perfectly just, God said you are calling Him lazy. You're gonna make Him angry and He will make your life hell and you will get even more angry. http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=numbers%2011&version=NIV http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=numbers%2011&#38... here's what I suggest: change your view of the world by removing blinding road blocks placed by the devil... or God because you're a shithead He hates, anyway. You need food, clothing and entertainment. Do not covet. EWverybody dies, everybody has highs and lows, saints are known to suffer and not live happily ever after. Why you such a hater nonchristian? Looking at his disciples, he said: “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. 21 Blessed are you who hunger now, for you will be satisfied. Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh. 22 Blessed are you when people hate you, when they exclude you and insult you and reject your name as evil, because of the Son of Man. 23 “Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, because great is your reward in heaven. For that is how their ancestors treated the prophets. 24 “But woe to you who are rich, for you have already received your comfort. 25 Woe to you who are well fed now, for you will go hungry. Woe to you who laugh now, for you will mourn and weep. 26 Woe to you when everyone speaks well of you, for that is how their ancestors treated the false prophets. ---- Highs and lows balance. I figure God does not care much about lifespan. Look at Jesus. Jesus is famous after death like kennedy, I guess a person might like that. Peter Gadwa said "Child soldiers? Heck, most 14-year old boys I know would think that was heaven!" There's all kinds of false indignation and bad psychology. Indians marry girls at age 13. Fuck You, enemies of God. I love God and HATE His enemies. God says... C:\Text\BIBLE.TXT ses and Aaron were brought again unto Pharaoh: and he said unto them, Go, serve the LORD your God: but who are they that shall go? 10:9 And Moses said, We will go with our young and with our old, with our sons and with our daughters, with our flocks and with our herds will we go; for we must hold a feast unto the LORD. 10:10 And he said unto them, Let the LORD be so with you, as I will let you go, and your little ones: look to it; for evil is before you. 10:11 Not so: go now ye that are men, a
tvon 14y ago
I'm not entirely sure how this relates to HN.
- delinka 14y ago
  Does it need to "relate" to this site? If it doesn't get the votes, it'll be gone in no time.
  - Rudism 14y ago
    I bet that's what they used to say on Reddit...
- itsmequinn 14y ago
  So you're partly sure about how this relates to HN, or you're just being cwanky?
- Alienz 14y ago
  Try to think it is a parable: A flaw system (Texas court) exists today, and that kills people. So if you make a system today in good faith (e.g. a web or whatsoever) but didn't rule out all the flaws (which is hard), it can kill someday too.
delinka 14y ago
This is the entire reason people petition against the death penalty. And while I've said I can see the need for capital punishment, as a juror I would never sentence someone to death because mistakes happen, the wrong people are accused, evidence gets fucked (accidentally, intentionally), etc. The mistake isn't worth someone's life.
- asto 14y ago
  The death penalty is required. The judiciary just needs to have conclusive proof of the crime. For example, right now, in one of India's jails lies a man named Ajmal Kasab. He is one of the terrorists involved in the 26/11 attack on Mumbai. He was caught on tape mercilessly killing people with his AK47. If you do away with the death penalty entirely, how do you execute this fucker and others like him? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Mumbai_attacks http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Mumbai_attacks Edit: A lot of people asking similar questions. So I'll just answer them here. Being identified by eye-witnesses and being caught on camera are not the same thing. People make mistakes while remembering. Cameras don't. Further, he was apprehended by the army/police in the middle of his killing spree. There is NO WAY it was someone else. Handing him a life imprisonment just puts the system at risk. It will just lead to terrorists resorting to kidnap to release him as has been done in the past. A well known example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Airlines_Flight_814 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Airlines_Flight_814
  - corin_ 14y ago
    How do you execute him - you don't. Every person ever convicted is, in theory, because there was enough conclusive proof. Mistakes will always happen.
  - LinaLauneBaer 14y ago
    Why do you see execution as the only option here?
  - nilved 14y ago
    > If you do away with the death penalty entirely, how do you execute this fucker and others like him? what
koko775 14y ago
I know it's tacky to meta-complain, but public interest articles are one of the reasons I stopped reading Reddit. I am looking for one particular kind of "signal" in that signal-to-noise ratio, and while this might be of interest to a population including hackers, a population of hackers would likely not identify this article as relevant, outrageous though the article may be. I've noticed HN's articles growing steadily less and less interesting. Perhaps it's time to move again. Any suggestions? MeFi? Other sites? Does a new one need to be created?
- treyp 14y ago
  this is why there's a flag link for each submission Please don't submit comments complaining that a submission is inappropriate for the site. If you think something is spam or offtopic, flag it by going to its page and clicking on the "flag" link. (Not all users will see this; there is a karma threshold.) If you flag something, please don't also comment that you did. http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - ktsmith 14y ago
    > (Not all users will see this; there is a karma threshold.) The OP is below this threshold.
  - koko775 14y ago
    I can do that (I think I can flag, but this was not always the case), and silently grow to hate the content on HN as flagging fails to catch the borderline cases (and possibly devalue each individual flag). Or I can break that rule to voice displeasure and hope that someone shared that opinion enough to point me somewhere better, create somewhere better, or effect change. > If your account is less than a year old, please don't submit comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. (It's a common semi-noob illusion.) My account is over a year old (and I've lurked for longer). Therefore, I'm good! But in all seriousness, while it probably is not turning into Reddit, I'm certainly planning to relegate HN, for the purposes of my news browsing / time management, to a category shared with other spammy news sites, for somewhat similar reasons.
horsehead 14y ago
Fking ridiculous. Doesn't this make the prosecutors in this case guilty of murder?
- endersshadow 14y ago
  Murder means intent. It makes them guilty of manslaughter, at best. I don't know if there's any legal precedent for that (I'm not a lawyer), but I'd imagine that a civil case by the deceased's family for a wrongful death would be in order.
keithflower 14y ago
Related: California has placed the Savings, Accountability and Full Enforcement for California Act (the SAFE California Act) on the November 2012 ballot. The move to get this on the ballot was led by a former warden of California's San Quentin prison, Jeanne Woodford: “California is on the brink of replacing the death penalty with a sentence of life in prison with no chance of parole as the maximum punishment for murder,” Woodford said. “In November, voters will have the first opportunity ever to decide between the death penalty and a sentence of life in prison with absolutely no chance of parole. Back in 1978, we did not have an alternative sentence that would keep convicted killers behind bars forever. We certainly did not know that we would spend $4 billion on 13 executions. Our system is broken, expensive and it always will carry the grave risk of a mistake. SAFE California offers a solution with savings at a time when we’re laying off teachers and cutting vital services.” I urge support of this measure: http://www.safecalifornia.org/act http://www.safecalifornia.org/act
tptacek 14y ago
Categorically opposed to the death penalty for every possible reason: moral, religious, practical. But: what the hell is this article doing on HN? No shit, you say? Capital punishment is inane, unjust, and difficult to justify in a message board thread? Wow! Glad we sorted that out! Can we move on now? If every legitimate social justice issue had a hearing on HN, the front page would be nothing but social justice issues. Flagged.
- swombat 14y ago
  Completely agree. Stop upvoting this, folks!
  - gala8y 14y ago
    "Stop upvoting this, folks!" Why would you sound so alarmist? You can do your stuff (flagging, upvoting, downvoting, expressing your opinion, discussing, pointing to rules and what not) without telling HNs what they should or should not do.
    - tptacek 14y ago
      Why have guidelines at all?
      - lawnchair_larry 14y ago
        Oh, the irony. Please don't submit comments complaining that a submission is inappropriate for the site. If you think something is spam or offtopic, flag it by going to its page and clicking on the "flag" link. (Not all users will see this; there is a karma threshold.) If you flag something, please don't also comment that you did.
- alain94040 14y ago
  Flagged. The FAQ is clear: if this could be on CNN, then it shouldn't be on HN.
  - 14y ago
moldbug 14y ago
Great - independent, open-source defense lawyering. Make sure when you read a press release like this, though, that if there isn't a press release saying the courts have convicted an innocent man, there isn't a press release at all. Which means Professor Liebman and his students have wasted their time. Which they don't want to do, so they are anything but disinterested investigators. I mean, you're not going to see a headline that says "Murderer walks free in Texas, probe says." I mean, duh. That happens all the time, so who cares? There's certainly no market for an independent, open-source prosecution...
vibrunazo 14y ago
"Eye witness testimony is the lowest form of evidence in science. Which is sad, because it's the highest form of evidence in the court of law." Neil D. Tyson
tomkin 14y ago
In Ontario, Michael Rafferty & Terri-Lynn McClinic were recently convicted of the murder of Tori Stafford. Lots of pro-capital punishment banter as of late. In this case, it was pretty open/shut. You could say he is the perfect candidate for capital punishment. I wouldn't, but many would. My problem is – our judicial system pretending these people can be reconditioned, like a refurbished electronic or something. Terri-Lynn McClintic was wicked well before the murder, even doing things like microwaving a small dog until it cried. These people cannot be reconditioned. And when you take a look at the science, it comes down to bad wiring. So does killing them make sense knowing that they are mentally damaged and not simply moonlighting as maniacs? With tongue in cheek, we need Minority Report-style decommissioning. Technology to the rescue.
RedwoodCity 14y ago
With the American justice system it would have been cheaper to keep him in prison for life than to execute him for murder, due to the number of appeals allowed.
bitops 14y ago
OP here - apologies to the folks who don't think it's HN-worthy. I usually shy away from posting anything like this on HN, but IMHO the death penalty stimulates my intellectual curiosity. Usual politics and "gee whiz poll numbers" not so much. The death penalty is a deep issue, and I posted this on HN because I'd like to hear what the thoughtful folks in this community have to say on the topic. Also, since I see a lot of people misquoting the Hacker News submission guidelines here they are in full, emphasis mine. "Hacker News Guidelines What to Submit On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity. Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic."
- krschultz 14y ago
  I've often considered that a HN style politics page would be interesting if you could somehow keep it from turning into a flaming mess. That said, I don't believe this is Hacker News and I flagged it. It's going to devolve into politics in about 8 seconds and we try to avoid that.
  - bitops 14y ago
    That's a fair point. Unfortunately, it's too late for me to delete. Lesson learned - I'll refrain from posting this kind of story in the future.
reginaldo 14y ago
People are saying lots of things about the death penalty, with which I wholeheartedly disagree, but IMHO the really bad thing is this: DeLuna was sentenced to death and executed based only on eyewitness accounts despite a range of signs he was not a guilty man, said law professor James Liebman Eyewitness accounts are proven to be wrong again and again. They should not be used to convict anyone. Much less to the death penalty. The brain has this amazing (if a little buggy) capacity of sometimes being completely wrong and at the same time being absolutely sure that it is right (like it happens, for instance, when you see an optical illusion). I believe there was a time when they were useful (but even then, they were used to falsely accuse - sometimes intentionally, sometimes not). But now there's enough technology to make me think convictions should be made based only on material evidence. Eyewitness accounts should be used only to give context to the material evidence found. If there's not any, tough luck. I would have a very hard time reconciling if, for instance, being accused of rape/assault like it happened to this guy: http://articles.latimes.com/2011/jun/27/local/la-me-accused-20110628 http://articles.latimes.com/2011/jun/27/local/la-me-accused-...
- Dove 14y ago
  Eyewitness testimony is the leading cause of wrongful convictions, according to the Innocence Project: http://www.innocenceproject.org/understand/ http://www.innocenceproject.org/understand/
adrianwaj 14y ago
My view is that when someone is wrongly executed, justice is not finished - someone must be held accountable and punished. It's not just "oh well." Sometimes prosecutors are happy to see a conviction even if they know it's wrong, just for their reputations. These people, I'd argue, could be put to death too. Murder. You can't have the death penalty in a broken system, it enables the same crimes it attempts to deter, and with death there's no recourse. 20 rights and 1 wrong is just unacceptable. In reality, the false positives are apparently much, much more despicable. Just do a search on final statements for "innocent" or "innocence."
TYPE_FASTER 14y ago
Not for the first time: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/09/07/090907fa_fact_grann http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/09/07/090907fa_fact_...
laserDinosaur 14y ago
..and that's just like Linux vs Microsoft.
mxfh 14y ago
The original source seems to be this more sophisticated article at The Guardian which was published earlier today. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/may/15/carlos-texas-innocent-man-death http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/may/15/carlos-texas-inn...
systematical 14y ago
And this is why the death penalty should be outlawed. If there is even a 0.001% chance we could execute an innocent person than its not worth it. Unfortunately I think the probability of executing an innocent person is much higher. Humans are imperfect and should not play god.
mhartl 14y ago
Would people be so torqued up if this were a wrongful imprisonment in Massachusetts instead of a wrongful execution in Texas? I doubt it, which suggests that this story may be pushing buttons in your brain other than injustice == bad. Wrongful conviction is bad in any case; the death penalty aspect is simply inflammatory. Executions are irreversible, but so is imprisonment. They might let you out if they discover you're innocent, but there's no way to refund you your lost time.
acuozzo 14y ago
Carlos' last words: http://www.tdcj.state.tx.us/stat/dr_info/delunacarloslast.html http://www.tdcj.state.tx.us/stat/dr_info/delunacarloslast.ht...
anamax 14y ago
I'll bet that >100 other innocents who were treated far worse by the system were killed by prison during the time Texas took to execute this guy. And, this would continue even if the US abandoned the death penalty. If you're looking to save innocents from being killed by prison, death row is the wrong place to look. No matter how inadequate you feel the process is for death penalty cases, it's significantly worse for folks who get other sentences. Since prison kills people (and not just with "live without parole).... No, they don't "get a [meaningful] chance to prove their innocence. They just die, killed by prison just as much as someone intentionally executed.

157 points by bitops 14y ago

If you don't think the world is perfectly just, God said you are calling Him lazy. You're gonna make Him angry and He will make your life hell and you will get even more angry. http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=numbers%2011&version=NIV http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=numbers%2011&#38... here's what I suggest: change your view of the world by removing blinding road blocks placed by the devil... or God because you're a shithead He hates, anyway. You need food, clothing and entertainment. Do not covet. EWverybody dies, everybody has highs and lows, saints are known to suffer and not live happily ever after. Why you such a hater nonchristian? Looking at his disciples, he said: “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. 21 Blessed are you who hunger now, for you will be satisfied. Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh. 22 Blessed are you when people hate you, when they exclude you and insult you and reject your name as evil, because of the Son of Man. 23 “Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, because great is your reward in heaven. For that is how their ancestors treated the prophets. 24 “But woe to you who are rich, for you have already received your comfort. 25 Woe to you who are well fed now, for you will go hungry. Woe to you who laugh now, for you will mourn and weep. 26 Woe to you when everyone speaks well of you, for that is how their ancestors treated the false prophets. ---- Highs and lows balance. I figure God does not care much about lifespan. Look at Jesus. Jesus is famous after death like kennedy, I guess a person might like that. Peter Gadwa said "Child soldiers? Heck, most 14-year old boys I know would think that was heaven!" There's all kinds of false indignation and bad psychology. Indians marry girls at age 13. Fuck You, enemies of God. I love God and HATE His enemies. God says... C:\Text\BIBLE.TXT ses and Aaron were brought again unto Pharaoh: and he said unto them, Go, serve the LORD your God: but who are they that shall go? 10:9 And Moses said, We will go with our young and with our old, with our sons and with our daughters, with our flocks and with our herds will we go; for we must hold a feast unto the LORD. 10:10 And he said unto them, Let the LORD be so with you, as I will let you go, and your little ones: look to it; for evil is before you. 10:11 Not so: go now ye that are men, a

tvon 14y ago

I'm not entirely sure how this relates to HN.

delinka 14y ago
Does it need to "relate" to this site? If it doesn't get the votes, it'll be gone in no time.
- Rudism 14y ago
  I bet that's what they used to say on Reddit...
itsmequinn 14y ago
So you're partly sure about how this relates to HN, or you're just being cwanky?
Alienz 14y ago
Try to think it is a parable: A flaw system (Texas court) exists today, and that kills people. So if you make a system today in good faith (e.g. a web or whatsoever) but didn't rule out all the flaws (which is hard), it can kill someday too.

delinka 14y ago

This is the entire reason people petition against the death penalty. And while I've said I can see the need for capital punishment, as a juror I would never sentence someone to death because mistakes happen, the wrong people are accused, evidence gets fucked (accidentally, intentionally), etc. The mistake isn't worth someone's life.

asto 14y ago
The death penalty is required. The judiciary just needs to have conclusive proof of the crime. For example, right now, in one of India's jails lies a man named Ajmal Kasab. He is one of the terrorists involved in the 26/11 attack on Mumbai. He was caught on tape mercilessly killing people with his AK47. If you do away with the death penalty entirely, how do you execute this fucker and others like him? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Mumbai_attacks http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Mumbai_attacks Edit: A lot of people asking similar questions. So I'll just answer them here. Being identified by eye-witnesses and being caught on camera are not the same thing. People make mistakes while remembering. Cameras don't. Further, he was apprehended by the army/police in the middle of his killing spree. There is NO WAY it was someone else. Handing him a life imprisonment just puts the system at risk. It will just lead to terrorists resorting to kidnap to release him as has been done in the past. A well known example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Airlines_Flight_814 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Airlines_Flight_814
- corin_ 14y ago
  How do you execute him - you don't. Every person ever convicted is, in theory, because there was enough conclusive proof. Mistakes will always happen.
- LinaLauneBaer 14y ago
  Why do you see execution as the only option here?
- nilved 14y ago
  > If you do away with the death penalty entirely, how do you execute this fucker and others like him? what

koko775 14y ago

I know it's tacky to meta-complain, but public interest articles are one of the reasons I stopped reading Reddit. I am looking for one particular kind of "signal" in that signal-to-noise ratio, and while this might be of interest to a population including hackers, a population of hackers would likely not identify this article as relevant, outrageous though the article may be. I've noticed HN's articles growing steadily less and less interesting. Perhaps it's time to move again. Any suggestions? MeFi? Other sites? Does a new one need to be created?

treyp 14y ago
this is why there's a flag link for each submission Please don't submit comments complaining that a submission is inappropriate for the site. If you think something is spam or offtopic, flag it by going to its page and clicking on the "flag" link. (Not all users will see this; there is a karma threshold.) If you flag something, please don't also comment that you did. http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- ktsmith 14y ago
  > (Not all users will see this; there is a karma threshold.) The OP is below this threshold.
- koko775 14y ago
  I can do that (I think I can flag, but this was not always the case), and silently grow to hate the content on HN as flagging fails to catch the borderline cases (and possibly devalue each individual flag). Or I can break that rule to voice displeasure and hope that someone shared that opinion enough to point me somewhere better, create somewhere better, or effect change. > If your account is less than a year old, please don't submit comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. (It's a common semi-noob illusion.) My account is over a year old (and I've lurked for longer). Therefore, I'm good! But in all seriousness, while it probably is not turning into Reddit, I'm certainly planning to relegate HN, for the purposes of my news browsing / time management, to a category shared with other spammy news sites, for somewhat similar reasons.

horsehead 14y ago

Fking ridiculous. Doesn't this make the prosecutors in this case guilty of murder?

endersshadow 14y ago
Murder means intent. It makes them guilty of manslaughter, at best. I don't know if there's any legal precedent for that (I'm not a lawyer), but I'd imagine that a civil case by the deceased's family for a wrongful death would be in order.

keithflower 14y ago

Related: California has placed the Savings, Accountability and Full Enforcement for California Act (the SAFE California Act) on the November 2012 ballot. The move to get this on the ballot was led by a former warden of California's San Quentin prison, Jeanne Woodford: “California is on the brink of replacing the death penalty with a sentence of life in prison with no chance of parole as the maximum punishment for murder,” Woodford said. “In November, voters will have the first opportunity ever to decide between the death penalty and a sentence of life in prison with absolutely no chance of parole. Back in 1978, we did not have an alternative sentence that would keep convicted killers behind bars forever. We certainly did not know that we would spend $4 billion on 13 executions. Our system is broken, expensive and it always will carry the grave risk of a mistake. SAFE California offers a solution with savings at a time when we’re laying off teachers and cutting vital services.” I urge support of this measure: http://www.safecalifornia.org/act http://www.safecalifornia.org/act

tptacek 14y ago

Categorically opposed to the death penalty for every possible reason: moral, religious, practical. But: what the hell is this article doing on HN? No shit, you say? Capital punishment is inane, unjust, and difficult to justify in a message board thread? Wow! Glad we sorted that out! Can we move on now? If every legitimate social justice issue had a hearing on HN, the front page would be nothing but social justice issues. Flagged.

swombat 14y ago
Completely agree. Stop upvoting this, folks!
- gala8y 14y ago
  "Stop upvoting this, folks!" Why would you sound so alarmist? You can do your stuff (flagging, upvoting, downvoting, expressing your opinion, discussing, pointing to rules and what not) without telling HNs what they should or should not do.
  - tptacek 14y ago
    Why have guidelines at all?
    - lawnchair_larry 14y ago
      Oh, the irony. Please don't submit comments complaining that a submission is inappropriate for the site. If you think something is spam or offtopic, flag it by going to its page and clicking on the "flag" link. (Not all users will see this; there is a karma threshold.) If you flag something, please don't also comment that you did.
alain94040 14y ago
Flagged. The FAQ is clear: if this could be on CNN, then it shouldn't be on HN.
- 14y ago

moldbug 14y ago

Great - independent, open-source defense lawyering. Make sure when you read a press release like this, though, that if there isn't a press release saying the courts have convicted an innocent man, there isn't a press release at all. Which means Professor Liebman and his students have wasted their time. Which they don't want to do, so they are anything but disinterested investigators. I mean, you're not going to see a headline that says "Murderer walks free in Texas, probe says." I mean, duh. That happens all the time, so who cares? There's certainly no market for an independent, open-source prosecution...

vibrunazo 14y ago

"Eye witness testimony is the lowest form of evidence in science. Which is sad, because it's the highest form of evidence in the court of law." Neil D. Tyson

tomkin 14y ago

In Ontario, Michael Rafferty & Terri-Lynn McClinic were recently convicted of the murder of Tori Stafford. Lots of pro-capital punishment banter as of late. In this case, it was pretty open/shut. You could say he is the perfect candidate for capital punishment. I wouldn't, but many would. My problem is – our judicial system pretending these people can be reconditioned, like a refurbished electronic or something. Terri-Lynn McClintic was wicked well before the murder, even doing things like microwaving a small dog until it cried. These people cannot be reconditioned. And when you take a look at the science, it comes down to bad wiring. So does killing them make sense knowing that they are mentally damaged and not simply moonlighting as maniacs? With tongue in cheek, we need Minority Report-style decommissioning. Technology to the rescue.

RedwoodCity 14y ago

With the American justice system it would have been cheaper to keep him in prison for life than to execute him for murder, due to the number of appeals allowed.

bitops 14y ago

OP here - apologies to the folks who don't think it's HN-worthy. I usually shy away from posting anything like this on HN, but IMHO the death penalty stimulates my intellectual curiosity. Usual politics and "gee whiz poll numbers" not so much. The death penalty is a deep issue, and I posted this on HN because I'd like to hear what the thoughtful folks in this community have to say on the topic. Also, since I see a lot of people misquoting the Hacker News submission guidelines here they are in full, emphasis mine. "Hacker News Guidelines What to Submit On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity. Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic."

krschultz 14y ago
I've often considered that a HN style politics page would be interesting if you could somehow keep it from turning into a flaming mess. That said, I don't believe this is Hacker News and I flagged it. It's going to devolve into politics in about 8 seconds and we try to avoid that.
- bitops 14y ago
  That's a fair point. Unfortunately, it's too late for me to delete. Lesson learned - I'll refrain from posting this kind of story in the future.

reginaldo 14y ago

People are saying lots of things about the death penalty, with which I wholeheartedly disagree, but IMHO the really bad thing is this: DeLuna was sentenced to death and executed based only on eyewitness accounts despite a range of signs he was not a guilty man, said law professor James Liebman Eyewitness accounts are proven to be wrong again and again. They should not be used to convict anyone. Much less to the death penalty. The brain has this amazing (if a little buggy) capacity of sometimes being completely wrong and at the same time being absolutely sure that it is right (like it happens, for instance, when you see an optical illusion). I believe there was a time when they were useful (but even then, they were used to falsely accuse - sometimes intentionally, sometimes not). But now there's enough technology to make me think convictions should be made based only on material evidence. Eyewitness accounts should be used only to give context to the material evidence found. If there's not any, tough luck. I would have a very hard time reconciling if, for instance, being accused of rape/assault like it happened to this guy: http://articles.latimes.com/2011/jun/27/local/la-me-accused-20110628 http://articles.latimes.com/2011/jun/27/local/la-me-accused-...

Dove 14y ago
Eyewitness testimony is the leading cause of wrongful convictions, according to the Innocence Project: http://www.innocenceproject.org/understand/ http://www.innocenceproject.org/understand/

adrianwaj 14y ago

My view is that when someone is wrongly executed, justice is not finished - someone must be held accountable and punished. It's not just "oh well." Sometimes prosecutors are happy to see a conviction even if they know it's wrong, just for their reputations. These people, I'd argue, could be put to death too. Murder. You can't have the death penalty in a broken system, it enables the same crimes it attempts to deter, and with death there's no recourse. 20 rights and 1 wrong is just unacceptable. In reality, the false positives are apparently much, much more despicable. Just do a search on final statements for "innocent" or "innocence."

TYPE_FASTER 14y ago

Not for the first time: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/09/07/090907fa_fact_grann http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/09/07/090907fa_fact_...

laserDinosaur 14y ago

..and that's just like Linux vs Microsoft.

mxfh 14y ago

The original source seems to be this more sophisticated article at The Guardian which was published earlier today. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/may/15/carlos-texas-innocent-man-death http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/may/15/carlos-texas-inn...

systematical 14y ago

And this is why the death penalty should be outlawed. If there is even a 0.001% chance we could execute an innocent person than its not worth it. Unfortunately I think the probability of executing an innocent person is much higher. Humans are imperfect and should not play god.

mhartl 14y ago

Would people be so torqued up if this were a wrongful imprisonment in Massachusetts instead of a wrongful execution in Texas? I doubt it, which suggests that this story may be pushing buttons in your brain other than injustice == bad. Wrongful conviction is bad in any case; the death penalty aspect is simply inflammatory. Executions are irreversible, but so is imprisonment. They might let you out if they discover you're innocent, but there's no way to refund you your lost time.

acuozzo 14y ago

Carlos' last words: http://www.tdcj.state.tx.us/stat/dr_info/delunacarloslast.html http://www.tdcj.state.tx.us/stat/dr_info/delunacarloslast.ht...

anamax 14y ago

I'll bet that >100 other innocents who were treated far worse by the system were killed by prison during the time Texas took to execute this guy. And, this would continue even if the US abandoned the death penalty. If you're looking to save innocents from being killed by prison, death row is the wrong place to look. No matter how inadequate you feel the process is for death penalty cases, it's significantly worse for folks who get other sentences. Since prison kills people (and not just with "live without parole).... No, they don't "get a [meaningful] chance to prove their innocence. They just die, killed by prison just as much as someone intentionally executed.