{"id":5204,"date":"2011-06-25T04:28:58","date_gmt":"2011-06-25T11:28:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=5204"},"modified":"2011-06-25T04:34:22","modified_gmt":"2011-06-25T11:34:22","slug":"rich-perry-capital-murderer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2011\/06\/25\/rich-perry-capital-murderer\/","title":{"rendered":"Rick Perry: Capital Murderer"},"content":{"rendered":"

Most of you know that I am a long time opponent of the death penalty.\u00a0 There are many arguments against it, the most self-serving for the state\u00a0 of which is that it is more expensive to carry a capital case through to conclusion than it is to incarcerate a prisoner for natural life (without possibility. of parole).\u00a0 The Republicans have an answer.\u00a0 Their solution is to make it easier for the state to kill a man (or woman) by limiting convicts\u2019 right to appeal.\u00a0 However that makes it even more possible for innocent people to be executed.\u00a0 This is especially true now, because Republicans like Rick Perry care so little about your rights, that they have no compunction about committing capital murder through execution.\u00a0 Human life if far too precious to entrust it to \u201cpro death\u201d Republicans.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\"25PDeathPenalty\"Gov. Rick Perry, a likely GOP presidential candidate, faces a new burden: a searing documentary film, Incendiary<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/span>, that looks at the railroading of a suspect for an arson incident that killed his children. The executed convict was Cameron Todd Willingham<\/a>, but the new film and extensive print journalism makes a compelling case that he was wrongly convicted and that Gov. Perry brushed aside strong evidence for his innocence. <\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

UPDATE:<\/span><\/strong><\/span> The Week <\/em><\/span>magazine has a round-up story<\/a> on the impact of the execution headlined: “Rick Perry’s death penalty ‘disgrace’: A 2012 dealbreaker?<\/strong><\/span>As a presidential run looks likely for the Texas governor, questions resurface about his role in the execution of a man who, according to forensics experts, was innocent.”<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

As the Chicago Tribune<\/a><\/em><\/span> <\/span>summed up: “Man executed on disproved forensics… Fire that killed his 3 children could have been accidental.”<\/span><\/p>\n

Some highlights of its investigation, echoed by other accounts:<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

While Texas authorities dismissed his protests, a Tribune<\/em><\/span> investigation of his case shows that Willingham was prosecuted and convicted based primarily on arson theories that have since been repudiated by scientific advances. According to four fire experts consulted by the Tribune, the original investigation was flawed and it is even possible the fire was accidental.<\/span><\/p>\n

Before Willingham died by lethal injection on Feb. 17, Texas judges and Gov. Rick Perry turned aside a report from a prominent fire scientist questioning the conviction.<\/span><\/p>\n

This miscarriage of justice, though, probably sells well with Perry’s hard-core ideological base\u2026 [emphasis original<\/em>]<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Inserted from <Huffington Post<\/a>><\/p>\n

Rick Perry is unfit to be Governor of Texas, let alone president.<\/span><\/p>\n

Even, if there were a way to insure that the death penalty could be administered fairly and accurately, and there is not, killing someone is to show that killing is wrong is the ultimate hypocrisy.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Most of you know that I am a long time opponent of the death penalty.\u00a0 There are many arguments against it, the most self-serving for the state\u00a0 of which is that it is more expensive to carry a capital case through to conclusion than it is to incarcerate a prisoner for natural life (without possibility. […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5204","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5204","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5204"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5204\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5204"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5204"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5204"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}