Ohio delays execution due to "vein troubles"

This from the Associated Press:

LUCASVILLE, Ohio — Gov. Ted Strickland ordered a weeklong reprieve for a condemned inmate Tuesday after the Ohio execution team had problems finding usable veins for the lethal injection even after the inmate tried to help.

Executioners were unable for more than two hours to find veins that would accept fluid from an IV without collapsing for 53-year-old Romell Broom, who was sentenced to die for the rape and slaying of a 14-year-old Tryna Middleton in 1984. At one point, Broom covered his face with both hands and appeared to be crying.

This news just broke this evening, so I haven't had the opportunity to study Broom's case. It sounds like he is guilty of a truly horrendous crime. But to have a man prepare for death, be escorted to the execution chamber and strapped to the table, and then to try to kill him for TWO HOURS only to lead him back to his cell and tell him "Sorry for the inconvenience...what do you say we try again in a week?" If this isn't cruel and unusual punishment, I don't know what is.

My thoughts and prayers tonight are with Broom and his family, as well as with the friends and family of Tryna Middleton. May they all find peace without vengence.

Video and Comments from David Grann

Thanks to the Texas Moratorium Network for noticing my post from last night, and for putting together a remarkable collection of information about the Willingham case.

More on Willingham

A week ago, I posted about an article that appeared recently in The New Yorker detailing the conviction, appeals, and eventual execution of Cameron Todd Willingham for allegedly starting a fire that killed his three small children. I still believe that this is an important piece of reporting that needs to be read and shared.

On August 28, John Jackson, who was one of the prosecutors in the Willingham case and who is now a federal judge, published an op-ed piece in the Corsica Daily Sun, which is the local newpaper in Corsica Texas, where the Willingham fire occurred. Jackson, obviously, takes the opportunity to defend himself:

The Willingham trial has become a sort of cause celebre by anti-death penalty proponents because it seems to be an example of outmoded scientific techniques which led to a miscarriage of justice. In fact, the trial testimony...contains overwhelming evidence of guilt completely independent of the undeniably flawed forensic report.

Jackson goes on to list seven points that are supposed to prove that justice was served in the case.

The author of the New Yorker article, David Grann, defends himself by offering a point-by-point rebuttal of Jackson's claims. Both Jackson's letter and Grann's response are worth reading...neither is very long.

One of my favorite pieces in this back-and-forth is when Jackson reminds his readers that Willingham refused to take a lie detector test which could prove his innocence:

Consistent with typical Navarro County death penalty practice, Willingham was offered the opportunity to eliminate himself as a suspect by polygraph examination. Such opportunity was rejected in the most vulgar and insulting manner...

Grann responds:

I do not know if this is true, though it may be. After Willingham was charged with murder, he stopped coöperating with authorities. (On death row, Willingham wrote to several legal organizations asking them if they could give him a polygraph so that he could prove his innocence.) But even if he refused to take a polygraph after he was arrested, polygraphs are notoriously unreliable, and are not admissible in a court of law. As a result, defense attorneys routinely do not let their clients take polygraphs. Ernest Willis, who I discuss in my piece, was also convicted of committing arson, in a case that was eerily similar to Willingham’s. He had taken a polygraph, and the results were interpreted by police and the prosecutor as a sign that he was guilty. Evidence later emerged, however, that he had not set the fire, and he was exonerated and released, after seventeen years on death row. The idea that a lie-detector test (or the refusal to take one) could be considered evidence cuts to the core of the problems in the Willingham case: a reliance on unreliable and unsound scientific techniques. (emphasis mine)

I would add one piece to Grann's rebuttal. Jackson states in the conclusion to his column that:

The Willingham case was charged as a multiple child murder, and not an arson-murder to achieve capital status. I am convinced that in the absence of any arson testimony, the outcome of the trial would have been unchanged, a fact that did not escape the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals.

His argument here is that, even if Willingham didn't set the fire, he would still be eligible for the death penalty because the "crime" involved the "murder" of multiple children. The point that he is blatantly missing is that, if there was no fire, then the deaths of multiple children would not have occurred. I'm assuming that Judge Jackson is intelligent enough to see how flawed his logic is and am left thinking that he's simply hoping that his readers won't notice. The emperor is naked.

At some point, the people involved in the prosecution of this case are going to run out of excuses to hide behind and admit that they most likely executed an innocent man. And when that happens, we as a society will have to come to finally look at capital punishment as the barbaric practice that it really is.

Until then, I'm thankful people like Andrew Sullivan for spreading the word about stories like this.

Thoughts on Death and Justice

Last night I was reading an article from The New Yorker detailing the case of Cameron Todd Willingham, who was executed in Texas in 2004 for killing his three young children (three daughters...a two-year-old and a set of one-year-old twins) by setting fire to their home. Cameron maintained his innocence throughout the trial, conviction, and appeals...even refusing to accept a pre-trial plea bargain that would have kept him off of death row. His final words:

The only statement I want to make is that I am an innocent man convicted of a crime I did not commit. I have been persecuted for twelve years for something I did not do. Form God's dust I came and to dust I will return, so the Earth shall become my throne.

A report released last month by the Texas Forensic Science Commission, which reviewed the cases against Willingham and another convicted arsonist (Ernest Ray Willis) found that the evidence supporting arson as the cause of the fire wasn't as airtight as the prosecution presented it at the trial, and stated that:

The investigators had a poor understanding of fire science and failed to acknowledge or apply the contemporaneous understanding of the limitations of fire indicators. Their methodologies did not comport with the scientific method or the process of elimination. A finding of arson could not be sustained based upon the standard of care expressed by [National Fire Protection Association guidelines for fire and explosions investigations] or the standard of care expressed in fire investigation texts and papers in the period 1980-1992.

In short, neither Willingham nor Willis got a fair trial. Does this new report prove their innocence? Absolutely not. But it does show that each of them, on separate occasions, got railroaded by the same flawed justice system. Willis, by the way, was exonerated and released from prison in 2004 after spending 17 years on death row for a crime he didn't commit. Willingham, as I've already me ntioned, was executed while maintaining his innocence. His blood is on the hands of every one of us.

A recent issue of National Geographic gave a small piece of attention to the global prevalence capital punishment. And while it brings good news for opponents of the death penalty, it doesn't paint a pretty picture of our American justice system (via Sister Helen Prejean):

In the early 1800s an Englishman could be hanged for stealing a shirt. By the end of the 1900s, growing concern for individual rights had caused the death penalty to disappear from the United Kingdom and nearly everywhere else in the Western world. Two exceptions are Belarus and the United States, although this year New Mexico became the 15th state to outlaw capital punishment. Death-penalty opponents cite the exoneration of 131 people on death row since 1973 as well as the high cost of capital cases.

Defenders argue that the penalty offers justice and cite some studies that show it’s a deterrent. The practice is strong in culturally conservative areas—Japan, Saudi Arabia, Texas—and totalitarian regimes.

So while the use of capital punishment is decreasing dramatically worldwide, America is holding out as one of the few places that still practices what most of the developed world has found to be an ineffective and excessively cruel form of punishment. According to their data, in 2008 the United States ranked fourth worldwide in state sponsored executions...behind such warm-and-fuzzy countries as China, Iran, and Saudi Arabia and slightly ahead of Pakistan, Afghanistan, and North Korea.

China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, North Korea...these are the places that sanction the intentional killing of their citizens. Why are so many of us so proud to be counted among them? And why are we, as citizens, content to allow our government to continue to allow potentially innocent people to be put to death in the name of "justice"?