Lisa Busby Wants the DNA Tested

A news report from NewsChannel10.com: Lisa Busby is Twila's daughter. She believes Hank Skinner is guilty of killing her mother and wants to see him executed. To expedite matters she is asking Lynn Switzer to allow the DNA be tested. "He needs to die. I mean test the DNA and get it over with," Busby said. "Kill him. That way we have something of peace and closure."

Actual Innocence Scorecard: What Does it Mean?

Last time we spoke seriously, I introduced my use of an Actual Innocence Scorecard as a means of ranking the likelihood that an innocent person was executed. In this post, I hope to clarify the meaning of the Actual Innocence Score. I'll use the case of Michael Blair as an example.

You can see Michael Blair's scorecard by clicking on the image to the right. Since it's an information-dense image, maximize the window in which it appears. Most browsers will allow you to enlarge the image further by simply clicking on it.

From the scorecard, you can get a quick overview of the case. "On September 4, 1993, seven-year-old Ashley Estell was with her family at  ... 

Off Topic: 3 Apr 2010

Chick-fil-A is a chicken-base fast-food chain second in the U.S. only to Kentucky Fried Chicken. Though of Southern origins, Chick-fil-A stores can now be found in most of our 57 50 states. (Our condolances to those of you living in Nevada, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, the Dakotas, Connecticut, Rhode Island and the Providence Plantations, Alaska, and Hawaii.)

The chain's founder is a devout Christian and he runs his business accordingly. All Chick-fil-A locations are closed on Sunday. For devoted fans, and there does seem to be a fair number of them, this is a matter of woe. The Urban Dictionary defines the term pollo domingo  as "An inexplicable and almost singular craving for Chik-fil-A on a Sunday afternoon, the one day a week Chick-fil-A is closed."

Comedy song writer Tim Hawkins has picked up on this. Try the embedded YouTube clip. It you like what he has to offer, check out his his web site for other samples. Try the one called "Short Songs.

Actual Innocence Scorecard: An Introduction

After having calculated that Texas has executed 54 innocent people, and after having vowed to review all 451 Texas lethal injections in search of those 54, I have developed an Actual Innocence Scoring program to allow summarizing and ranking of the cases. I'll introduce that scoring system below using Robert Nelson Drew as an example of someone who scored well (84 out of 100) and Melvin Wayne White as an example of someone who scored poorly (0 out of 100).

The Skeptical Spouse and I develop custom database solutions for a small list of clients using a database  system called Filemaker. I naturally turned to that software when faced with organizing and bringing some sense to all the data I am collecting about the 451 executions. By comparison with the solutions we develop for our clients, the Actual Innocence Scoring software is exceptionally simple. It is nonetheless my primary tool for evaluating the cases.

I wish to clarify up front that my scoring program does not and can not remove the subjective nature of my evaluation. The program merely allows me (forces me) to condense the case to a single screen, to consider individually the primary evidentiary components of a case, to assign a subjective score to each of those components, and to apply weighting factors to calculate an overall Actual Innocence Score.

To see the scorecard for Robert Nelson Drew, click on the image to the left. The scorecard for Melvin Wayne White is down and to the right (click "Read more"). Open either for a nearly full screen image in which the text becomes readable.

Judge Fine Is Asked To Recuse Himself

Patricia Lykos, District Attorney of Harris County (Houston and environs), has submitted a motion to Judge Fine that he recuse himself from the death penalty case of John Edward Green. Judge Fine is in the cross-hairs because he is planning to hold a hearing on the constitutionality of  the procedure by which the death penalty is implemented in Texas. I wrote of Judge Fine recently in Now For Another Cosmic Moment.

DA Lykos argues from several directions that Judge Fine is not impartial. I quote below from one argument where I believe she digs herself into a hole.

In the present case, Judge Fine has preordained the defendant's innocence by stating "I am not prepared to say that our society, that our citizenry is willing to let innocent people die so that the State of Texas can have a death penalty."  ... Such an argument would be irrelevant in the present case unless Judge Fine had already concluded the defendant was innocent. ... But the issue of the defendant's innocence must be resolved at the guilt stage of trial, not by the trial judge at a pretrial hearing. Judge Fine has demonstrated his favoritism toward the defendant in this case by implicitly making that determination prior to trial. And reasonable people, knowing all the circumstances, would harbor doubts on Judge Fine's impartiality. 

Now I'm not an attorney, and I assume most of you reading this are not attorneys. Nonetheless, I hope you can see the the problem here. In our system of justice, a defendant is (at least in theory) presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. While the words "innocent until proven guilty" are not found in the Constitution, they are embodied by protections such as the right to remain silent (thereby forcing the State to prove its case) and the right to a trial by jury (thereby forcing the State to prove its case to the citizenry.)

I believe Lykos has it upside down. She in fact suggests that only an unreasonable person "knowing all the circumstances, would harbor doubts on Judge Fine's impartiality."

I ask that DA Lykos step aside because of her obvious effort to taint the jury pool.

tsj

2 Apr 2010