Monday, May 14, 2007

The death penalty draws new fire (guest post by Uranus)

(update: language warning for this post)

After 20 years of preparing investigations for prosecution for our state, Janet says there is no point investing public funds warehousing human beings in prison with no thought of returning them to society in a better state. That kind of thinking can change the world.

So can
this gem: three of the nation's largest newspapers have reversed 100 years of history in calling for an end to the death penalty:

Three established U.S. newspapers, two of them among the 10 largest in the country, in three different states have in the past weeks abandoned their century-old support of the death penalty and become passionate advocates of a ban on state-sponsored killing.

The newspapers — the Chicago Tribune in Illinois, the smaller Sentinel in Pennsylvania and the Dallas Morning News in Texas — announced their change of heart in strongly-argued editorials following a series of investigative articles highlighting the flaws in the death penalty system in their states and country.

It's hard to imagine anyone in Texas being against the death penalty, where killing of all kinds is such a rich heritage. It's that way in Oklahoma as well. As you recall, when Oklahoma City police lab chemist Joyce Gilchrist was ignominiously fired for gross incompetence, I wrote to my representatives in Washington asking them to consider repealing the death penalty. I received a nasty reply from silly person Jim Inhofe, who told me his constituents want blood vengeance and don't care about guilt. Go shoot some cats, Jim, and shut the fuck up.

Curtis Edward McCarty was released last week after TWENTY TWO YEARS in prison on death row for rape and murder after DNA evidence proved his innocence:

A judge Friday dismissed a 22-year-old murder charge against an Oklahoma prison inmate whose conviction was based largely on the testimony of fired Oklahoma City police chemist.

Judge Twyla Mason Gray ruled that the case Curtis Edward McCarty could not escape the taint of former police chemist Joyce Gilchrist.

Oklahoma County District Attorney David Prater said his office will not appeal the decision. McCarty, 42, who was twice convicted of the 1982 murder of Pamela Kaye Willis, 18, and sentenced to die three times, is expected to be released from prison later Friday.

McCarty was originally convicted in 1986, but the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals overturned that ruling based on Gilchrist's improper testimony about hair and semen evidence. He was convicted again in 1989; that conviction was overturned in 2005.

McCarty lost a bid to have the charges dropped in November 2005.

Gilchrist was fired on Sept. 25, 2001, after 21 years at the Oklahoma City Police Department as a chemist. She had been investigated by the FBI, and investigations were launched into more than 1,400 of the cases assigned to Gilchrist.

Gilchrist had the nerve to sue the city for firing her because she is black. The case was dismissed. There are other links, including video, at that site. Three others she put on death row have been released. Why this cunt is still at large I don't know. She has made me a noisy advocate against ministries of hate and death.

3 comments:

«—U®Anu§—» said...

I called Gilchrist a cunt, and I'm glad I did. I showed this to Janet, and she said she'd have called her a murderer. Janet met Gilchrist and said she is gregarious but strange. I had the idea Gilchrist saw herself as being on a personal quest to put innocent white men on death row. Because of people like her who do haphazard evidentiary presentations and juries of people who think it's their job to render guilty verdicts despite evidence that is so thin it doesn't exist, I've had reason to rethink my previous opinion the death penalty is acceptable.

After years of making this argument, it's finally beginning to become a matter of serious deliberation. It has taken a very long time. So, don't hold back--sound off with that unpopular opinion and vulgar language! Who knows? You may be the vehicle upon which humanity rides out of ancient times.

lukery said...

it's a word that i don't use for one reason or other - and i know that there are some who read the blog who think that my language is offensive - so i just provided a warning.

«—U®Anu§—» said...

You're cool, Luke. I read far more widely than what I contribute suggests, and you remain the most talented, best judge of what is news. I chose my language with care, because I've never, NEVER seen a more offensive woman in my life. Her enabling district attorney, Bob Macy, was another loathsome piece of excrement. I haven't been able to find a good authoritative estimate of how many innocent people this pair put to death, and assume the study isn't finished.

I should also say that being in prison in Oklahoma is like doing time in Juarez. It's an easy way to contract a case of tuberculosis or get your guts torn out.

If someone stated I was an authority, I'd think I had failed. It's been my lot in life to wake people with something amusing, and learned long ago that those who complain are the most amused.