Twisted justice in Texas

This is an interesting story - a group of people are breaking the law in order to kill other people. Only, they are not the usual sort of people doing this, but rather they are officials from the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, and the people they are trying to kill, is the people on Death Row.

Death penalty states scramble for lethal injection drugs

Texas, which declined to comment on the pending case, is among 32 death-penalty states scrambling to find new drug protocols after European-based manufacturers banned U.S. prisons from using their drugs in executions -- among them, Danish-based Lundbeck, which manufactures pentobarbital. 

"The states are scrambling to find the drugs," says Richard Dieter, executive director of the Washington-based Death Penalty Information Center. "They want to carry out these executions that they have scheduled, but they don't have the drugs and they're changing and trying new procedures never used before in the history of executions." 

States have been forced to try new drug combinations or go to loosely regulated compounding pharmacies that manufacturer variations of the drugs banned by the larger companies. The suit against Texas alleges the state corrections department falsified a prescription for pentobarbital, including the patient name as "James Jones," the warden of the Huntsville Unit "where executions take place," according to court documents. Additionally, the drugs were to be sent to "Huntsville Unit Hospital," which, the documents say, "has not existed since 1983."

In short, a number of US states don't have the drugs they use to execute people any longer, after European companies have banned the use of those drugs for that purpose - the companies in question are threatening to stop exporting the drugs to the US if they are used to kill people.

In response, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice has, allegedly, tried to get the drugs in illegal ways.

Yes, you read that right: The Texas Department of Criminal Justice allegedly breaks the law in order to execute people.

I cannot even begin to understand the twisted priorities of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice - it is more important to them that people get executed than obeying the law they are supposed to help uphold!

Bad science and the death row

I know that this article is nine days old, but I thought it worth blogging about nevertheless.

Two Texans sent to death row by bad science

Two Texans convicted of committing murder by setting fires were convicted because of faulty investigations. This conclusion was reached by a study conducted by the Texas Forensic Science Commission. They retained Dr. Craig L. Beyler of Maryland to conduct the study, and reported their findings on August 25. The results corroborated those of another study conducted in 2006, by the Innocence Project.

In 1987, Ernest Willis was convicted of setting a fire which killed two women, and sent to death row. In 2004, a new district attorney suspected problems with the original investigation and ordered a new one, which resulted in Willis being freed.

In 1992, Cameron Todd Willingham was convicted of setting a fire which killed his 2 year old daughter and 1 year twins. He was executed in 2004. Willingham's prosecutor, John Henry Jackson, admits that some bad science was used in his case, but believes he was guilty, because of his jail house confession and because his feet weren't burned.

I am against the death penalty because I have the fundamental stance that it's not the role of society to kill, except in self-defense (and I don't believe that murdering someone who is locked away can in any way be considered self-defense). Even if I didn't have this viewpoint, I'd still be against the death penalty for the reason demonstrated here.

I don't know if Willingham was guilty or not, but at least part of the evidence used to convict him was based on bad science. This means that he didn't have due process when found guilty. Unlike Willis he won't have a chance to be freed though, as he has already been murdered by the State of Texas. It can be debated whether locking people up for years can be undone, but at least something can be done to undo the injustice - the same cannot be said about someone executed.

Hopefully this story will lead the State of Texas (the US state with the most executions, currently run by the governor with the most executions under his watch) to re-consider the death penalty, or at the very least, to go through the evidence used to convict people currently sitting on death row (or even better, commission the Innocence Project to do so).

Edit: The New Yorker also has an article on this story: Trial by Fire

Tripoli Six freed!

The six medics jailed and sentenced to death in Libya for the wrongful conviction of deliberately spreading HIV to the patients they were treating, were freed today.

After their sentence got changed to life in prison, the Bulgarian government asked for the rest of their sentence to be served in Bulgaria. When the medics arrived in Bulgaria, they were pardoned by President Georgi Parvanov of Bulgaria, thus ending their sentence, after they had spent 8½ years in jail.

The medics, 5 Bulgarian nurses and a Palistinian doctor, were freed as an result of the significant pressure put on Libya by the EU, and the hard negotiations between Libya and the EU. Libya got a treaty with the EU out of it, plus som financial aid for specific (medically related) projects.

The Palestinian doctor got a Bulgarian citizenship last month, enabling him to also serve the rest of his sentence in Bulgaria, and thus get pardonned by the Bulgarian president.

Medics Jailed in Libya Arrive Home (LA Times)
HIV medics freed after Libya-EU deal (Reuters)
Bulgarian Medics Pardoned (Sofia Echo, Bulgaria)
Libya Frees Bulgarian Nurses in AIDS Case (NY Times)