Executed man's guilt is questioned

[Eugene]

Source: Associated Press

Executed man's guilt is questioned

By JIM SALTER, Associated Press Writer
40 minutes ago

ST. LOUIS - To the very end, convicted killer Larry Griffin shouted
his innocence to the world — through court filings, in pleas to the
governor and to nearly any reporter willing to listen.

None of it helped. Griffin, strapped to a white gurney, was executed
by injection.

Now, 12 years later, St. Louis' chief prosecutor will soon release a
report offering an opinion on whether Missouri put an innocent man
to death.

The report, two years in the making, has no legal weight but could
have a powerful effect on the nation's death penalty debate. Nearly
1,100 people have been executed in the United States in the modern
era that began with Gary Gilmore's death by firing squad in Utah in
1977, and not one has been proved innocent after the fact.

-snip-

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070625/ap_on_re_us/execution_wrong_man_1

[MNDemNY]

1. That should end the debate.

[RaleighNCDUer]

4. Naw. Don't you know that factual innocence is insufficient grounds

to overturn a legally arrived at verdict?

[MNDemNY]

5. This guy's already dead.

[atreides1]

7. Scalia Wisdom

[RaleighNCDUer]

8. Yep. The guy who expected to be sitting in Roberts' seat. nt

[Psephos]

2. There is no stronger argument against the death penalty than this kind of nightmare n/t

[ThomCat]

3. If the one witness could definitively testify that the accused

was not there, and he was coerced into not testifying... I could be sick just thinking about it.

If the police really did only show the other witness one photo, and insisted that it was the killer, then that is a clear case of railroading the suspect.

If this guy was really innocent, I hope there's enough evidence to make that case very strongly, and I hope this has a huge impact. I'd love to see that prosecutor's career end, and the family get massive compensation for what they've been through.

[MidwestTransplant]

6. "and not one has been proved innocent after the fact."

And that's because evidence is destroyed after the execution. Some is even destroyed before the execution. So you can't PROVE a person at that point. There have been plenty of instances of recanted testimony, etc.