Bending the Third Rail
Because We Should, We Can, We Do
Wednesday, May 03, 2006
Another Chink in the Wall
TalkLeft has a very important story up today. One of the big arguments of death penalty proponents is that "we've never executed and innocent person". Afterall, with all those judicial activists judges providing all those safeguards, how could we?

Those of us who are against the death penalty have always speculated that an innocent probably has been executed, but without proof.

Until now:
Arson experts have found that Texas executed a man whose crime may not have been a crime at all. The fire for which he was executed appears to have been an accidental one. Junk science and inadequately trained experts are the culprit.
The story gets even more compelling through the power of the internet. It turns out that a child of one of the investigators in the case weighs in on the case in the comments section of TalkLeft.
I'm really glad you posted about this. See, one of those experts is my father, John Lentini, so many of these cases are somewhat personal to me, as he would spend hours upon hours going over reports at our kitchen table, finding error after error that simple scientific analysis could have prevented.
If you want all the details, including evidence of other innocence being executed (and there are a lot provided by the commenter) go read about it.

Looks like a smoking gun to me.
Written at 9:14 AM by Greyhair.
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