That he appears to believe his church supports the death penalty and
that he’s willing to stake his job on that conviction is nothing short
of astonishing. But there it is: “If I thought that Catholic doctrine
held the death penalty to be immoral, I would resign,” he told an audience at Duquesne University Law School last month. “I could not be part of a system that imposes it.”
Nearly one-third of the 381 capital convictions in Pennsylvania have
been sent back for new hearings or reversed since the modern death
penalty took effect in 1979. Mistakes by defense lawyers were so obvious
that they deprived the accused of a fair trial.
Posted on Wed, Oct. 26, 2011
What defendant on trial for his life would willingly turn to a divorce lawyer with no experience in death-penalty cases?
Or to an attorney who had prepped for all of 15 minutes?
Or a Bible-quoting counsel who rattled off the one verse that, whoops, convinced jurors to hand down a death sentence?
AMARILLO, Texas — A Texas death row inmate just weeks from
execution asked a federal court Monday to keep his civil rights lawsuit
alive while his attorneys try to get knives and other evidence turned
over for new DNA tests they claim will show he didn’t kill his
girlfriend and her sons nearly two decades ago.
But prosecutors who say Henry Watkins Skinner is just trying to
delay his death with a merit-less request asked the court to rule in
their favor and dismiss the lawsuit.
(CNN) -- Charisse Coleman has no real compassion for
the man who walked into the Thrifty Liquor Store in Shreveport,
Louisiana, in 1995 and put three bullets in her brother, Russell.
But she doesn't want Bobby Lee Hampton -- one of more than seven dozen killers on Louisiana's death row -- executed, either.
"My opposition to the death penalty has nothing to do with Bobby Lee
Hampton," Coleman said. "He's a bad dude. He's never going to be a good
dude. If I got a call that said Bobby Lee Hampton dropped dead in his
cell last night, I don't think it would create a ripple in my pond."
She added, though, "I will be goddamned if I will let Bobby Lee
Hampton make me a victim, too, by taking me down that road of bitterness
and revenge."
