Liberty Corner: Saving the Innocent? (Part II)

Wednesday, July 27, 2005

Saving the Innocent? (Part II)

I ended "Saving the Innocent?" with the following quotation and observation:

The story is told of a Chinese law professor, who was listening to a British lawyer explain that Britons were so enlightened, they believed it was better that ninety-nine guilty men go free than that one innocent man be executed. The Chinese professor thought for a second and asked, "Better for whom?" 238
That's the question, isn't it? Better for whom? It's better for the guilty, who may claim more victims, but certainly not better for those victims.

And in the next post ("Sunday's Question"), I asked this:

Is a rabid dog any less dangerous because of its brain abnormalities, because it doesn't know what it's doing, because it's not fully grown, or because it's merely defending its territory?

Now I read this in today's paper:

[Texas] Gov. Rick Perry changed the 28 sentences to life in prison after the Supreme Court ruled that juveniles cannot be executed because of the Eighth Amendment ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

History shows release is possible for some of them.

Death penalties [in Texas] were halted for four years after the 1972 Supreme Court decision in Furman vs. Georgia.

According to state prison records reviewed by The Dallas Morning News, 40 of the 47 Texas inmates who left death row then have been released from prison.

Two died in prison and five remain behind bars.

At least two who were released killed again. One was Kenneth McDuff, who was convicted in 1992 for killing two women. He was executed in 1998.

Of the 40 who were released, 22 committed new offenses ranging from misdemeanors to murder. About half of those paroled returned to prison because of new crimes or violations of parole. Many led quiet lives.