Texas Set to Possibly Execute Another Innocent Man Today

[raccoon]

Published on Wednesday, March 24, 2010 by CommonDreams.org

Texas Set to Possibly Execute Another Innocent Man Today

by Dave Lindorff

The bloody-minded, death-obsessed state of Texas, which has already demonstrably executed at least one innocent man, Cameron Todd Willingham (who was falsely accused and ultimately killed by the state for the alleged arson "murder" of his two little children when in fact they'd died because of a fire caused by an electrical fault), is about to execute yet another probably innocent man today.

This time it's Hank Skinner, 47, who has spent 16 years on the state's bustling death row protesting his innocence in the 1993 New Year's Eve murder of his girlfriend, Twila Busby, and her two sons, aged 20 and 22.

The thing about Skinner's case is it would be relatively easy to prove whether or not he was really the killer of the three. There are two bloody knives that have never been tested for Skinner's DNA--or for the DNA of Twila's uncle, the man who had reportedly made several unwanted sexual advances at her earlier that evening, leading her to leave a party early, and who Skinner claims is the real killer. Nor was semen that was found on Twila Busby, who was raped, or skin found under her fingernails, ever DNA tested to see who they belonged to.

There were, to be sure, plenty of circumstantial reasons at the time of the trial to suspect Skinner. It is undisputed that he had been drunk and passed out on the couch in Busby's house shortly before the murders, which occurred in the same room he was in. The drunken Skinner also staggered from the home in Pampa, TX, his hands bloodied, following the killings. But Skinner maintains that he had cut his hand, falling off the couch, and that the blood was his own. He says he had woken up to find Busby and her sons already dead.

Incredibly, police investigators at the crime scene never took fingernail clippings from Busby, nor did they take a vaginal swab at the scene, though she had clearly struggled and had apparently been raped.

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/03/24-11

[gratuitous]

1. If there were any deterrent value to the death penalty

You'd think Texas would be so fucking safe you could run with a pair of scissors in each hand.

[LakeSamish706]

2. George W will be salivating over this I'm sure, since there were 150 some executions

on his watch. He just loves this sort of thing.

[sabbat hunter]

3. not that I support the death penalty

But if you listen to the prisoners, jails have nothing but innocent people in them.

To quote Red from Shawshank Redemption "You are looking at the only guilty man in Shawshank"

[sharp_stick]

4. Let's say the guy is guilty

what harm does it do to test the material that should have been tested in the first place? I'm sure Mr. Skinner will still be around so they can whack him at that time.

[RaleighNCDUer]

6. But those DNA tests would cost - gosh - twelve HUNDRED dollars!

You think the citizens of Texas are going to put up with that kind of useless profligate spending?

[sharp_stick]

8. I know but

I don't think it's the cost that would get them.

The thing that would piss off the Criminal "justice" system in Texas is the fact that he would not have been executed when they wanted to execute him. They get a charge out of executing prisoners in Texas and anyone that would try to take that away, even for a little while, pisses them off to no end.

[progressoid]

5. And the sun rises in the east.

[Name removed]

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