Quote:
Originally Posted by Rebellion";p="
I can't trust a website or an organization that is clearly against the death penalty to prevent evidence in an unbiased fashion. I can't remember his name, but there is someone (I believe in Memphis) who is sentenced to death for murder.
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Research all you want. Here are a few more to research:
Willie Darden (Florida): Darden was convicted of the murder of a store owner during an attempted robbery. Alibi evidence later surfaced from two independent witnesses came to light in 1986. The witness stated that Darden could not have committed the murder. State and federal rules governing the discovery of newly discovered evidence following trial, however, prevented the evidence from ever being addressed in any court. Even before this new evidence emerged, the U.S. Supreme Court was bitterly divided over the case and upheld the conviction by a narrow five to four majority. The dissenting justices criticized the majority for being "willing to tolerate a level of fairness and reliability so low it should make conscientious prosecutors cringe." Darden was executed on March 15, 1988.
David Spence (Texas): Spence, the prosecution argued, committed triple murder at the direction of Muneer Deeb, who the state claimed was a drug dealer. Deeb allegedly wanted several people dead and then presented evidence that linked the targets of the murder for hire to Deeb. The prosecution than argued that Spence killed the wrong people because he mistook them for the intended target. Someone other than Spence, Terry Harper, confessed to the crime on four separate occasions to four separate people including at least twice prior to the bodies being found. [fn 2] Under Texas evidentiary law at the time of trial the confession of a person not charged with the crime for which the accused is inadmissible and therefore the prosecution did not have to turn over the evidence. Following the trial, many, if not most, of the prosecution's jailhouse informants came forwarded and admitted either perjuring themselves or receiving some form of restitution for their testimony. Deeb, the person who supposedly hired Spence to do the killing, had his capital conviction reversed on appeal unrelated to innocence. At Deeb's new trial much of the evidence unearthed by Spence's legal team was used to obtain Deeb an exoneration. Spence was the -- execution under then Governor Bush. For more details see Bob Herbert's articles in the New York Times , as well as HBO's The Execution machine.
James Adams (Florida) Adams was convicted of first-degree murder, sentenced to death, and executed in 1984. A witness who identified Adams as driving the car away from the victim's home shortly after the crime was later discovered that this witness was angry with Adams for allegedly dating his wife. A second witness heard a voice inside the victim's home at the time of the crime and saw someone fleeing. He stated this voice was a woman's; the day after the crime he stated that the fleeing person was positively not Adams. More importantly, a hair sample found clutched in the victim's hand, which in all likelihood had come from the assailant, did not mach Adams' hair. Much of this exculpatory information was not discovered until a skilled investigator a month before Adams' execution examined the case.