Stone Age Chronicles

covenesque:

excitablehonky:

“Timely Justice,” my ass:

For a state with 24 death row exonerations under its belt (the highest in the country), you would think Florida might want to slow down its execution process to avoid putting innocent people to death. But Florida lawmakers are doing just the opposite

The Miami Herald calls the bill “unacceptable”:

As Mark Elliott, director of Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, points out, “That’s one exoneration for every three executions.”

That should give every Floridian pause.

Frank Lee Smith died of cancer on Death Row after 14 years in prison. Sadly, after his death, DNA testing proved he was innocent and also identified the real killer. What kind of justice did Mr. Smith get?

Natasha Lennard, writing for Salon, calls it “ill-named”:

In a most perverse admission, flagged by Khalek, Republican Senator Rob Bradley said “this is not about guilt or innocence, it’s about timely justice.” So long as proceedings through the Kangaroo court are swift, Bradley seems to admit, the lives of inmates are expendable.

Chris Hedges calls it “cynically named”:

William Van Poyck … is scheduled to die by lethal injection at 6 p.m. June 12 at Florida State Prison. He is a writer who has spent years exposing the cruelty of our system of mass incarceration. On June 12, if Gov. Rick Scott has his way, Van Poyck will write no more. And that is exactly how our political class of murderers wants it.

The New York Times calls it “grotesquely named”:

As the American Bar Association explained in a scathing 2006 report on the state’s death penalty system, Florida is one of the few states that allows a jury to recommend a sentence of death based on a majority vote rather than a unanimous one. Defendants charged with capital crimes often have woefully unqualified counsel, and are much more likely to be convicted and sentenced to death if the victim is white — a sign of racial disparity that is clearly unconstitutional. The flaws in Florida’s system, which soaks up huge amounts of resources, cannot be fixed. It is long past time to abolish capital punishment.

An MSN headline appropriately summarizes, “Florida’s death row Timely Justice Act is cool, unless you’re innocent“—which Juan Melendez can understand since he spent 18 years on death row before being exonerated in 2002: 

The “Timely Justice Act” would speed up a system we know has already sent innocent men, like myself, to death row. Some of these prisoners may be men like me, who have exhausted their legal appeals, yet keep trying to find a way to prove their innocence.

In multiple cases of current death row prisoners, we don’t know exactly what the legal claims are. Some of the men on Florida’s death row ran out of legal options simply because their attorneys missed filing deadlines.

In those instances, no court had the opportunity to evaluate the claims and determine whether they have merit. How can we possibly justify speeding up the execution of prisoners in those cases?

According to logic of the “Timely Justice Act,” any prisoner who has exhausted his appeals and been through a clemency process has had every opportunity and is ready for an execution date, regardless of the specific questions and issues that surround his case.

I am living proof that each case is unique and that the system must allow ample time for the truth to emerge.

Given Florida’s troubling track record on wrongful convictions, this legislation ensures the unthinkable — the execution of an innocent person.

There needs to be more outrage about this.

Dood is unpopular as hell. Rather than making up the millions lost during that drug testing welfare debacle, or making up the tourist revenue lost bc you decided to pass a driver’s license bs directed at brown ppl but pissed off much of canada (the biggest source of tourism Florida has), figuring out what to do with millions of empty foreclosed homes, fixing the shittiest public school system in the US, having a plan b after turning down free money to build a light rail system that would have brought millions in jobs and tourism revenue…he decides he can fix his image by killing prisoners, mostly poor, nonwhite ppl

Someone pls curbstomp this baldhead, thieving sack of shit

(via silas216)

thepoliticalfreakshow:

Shocking George Zimmerman Update of The Day: George Zimmerman Makes Stunning Reversal In Trayvon Martin Case, Waives His Right To Stand Your Ground Case, Will Face Trial For Murder of Trayvon Martin…Today’s Move Is A Possible Admission of Guilt

George Zimmerman’s attorneys stunned court observers Tuesday when they waived their client’s right to a “Stand Your Ground” hearing slated for April that might have led to a dismissal of the charges in the shooting death of unarmed teenager Trayvon Martin a year ago.

However, the defense lawyers didn’t say whether they would waive the immunity hearing outright. They left open the possibility for that hearing to be rolled into Zimmerman’s second degree murder trial. Zimmerman, a former neighborhood watch captain in his Florida subdivision, shot and killed the teen, who was visiting a house in the area.

The move allows the defense more time to prepare for the trial this summer, but also raises the stakes.

Florida’s controversial “Stand Your Ground” law entitles a person to use deadly force if he believes his life is threatened, and absolves them of an obligation to retreat from a confrontation, even if retreat is possible.

In recent weeks, the Zimmerman defense has suffered several legal setbacks. Judge Debra Nelson has ruled in favor of the state that Zimmerman’s bail conditions should not be loosened, and that Trayvon Martin family attorney Benjamin Crump was not required to sit for a deposition about his interactions with the state’s most important witness, a young woman who was the last known person to speak with Trayvon Martin before his death on February 26 2012.

It was the defense’s legal maneuvering which put Judge Nelson on the bench in this murder trial. Last summer Zimmerman’s team successfully argued that the previous judge, Kenneth Lester, was unfit to preside over the trial after a caustic bail ruling where he blasted Zimmerman for misleading the court about his financial situation.

Zimmerman contends that he shot and killed the 17-year-old Martin after the teen confronted him as he walked to his father’s girlfriend’s house. Were Judge Nelson to have accepted his account under Stand Your Ground, all criminal proceedings would have immediately stopped, and Zimmerman would have walked free.

But another unfavorable ruling by Nelson could have been interpreted by jurors as a sign of guilt. Waiving the hearing could also prevent the prosecution from picking apart Zimmerman’s testimony.

Before the April hearing was waived, Zimmerman’s defense set out to attack the credibility of witness 8, arguably the key witness in the upcoming trial.

Defense attorney Donald West asked the court for more information about the allegedly false account she gave attorneys. According to records obtained by ABC News she was on the phone with Martin as his confrontation with Zimmerman began. She claims he told her that he was scared of a strange man following him.

The state admitted that witness 8 lied when she stated that she did not attend Martin’s funeral because of a medical issue and that there are no medical records to support that claim. The defense wanted Nelson to question prosecutors about how they first learned that this claim was not true, but Nelson refused.

The defense also asked for law enforecement biographies of both Zimmerman and Martin, in particular Martin’s social media history. “It’s time and money to get some of the information here and we are running out of both,” said West.

In an earlier hearing the judge ruled that Zimmerman’s defense could subpoena Martin’s social media history but the undertaking is timely and expensive. Authorities agreed to hand over the documents to the judge so that she could review them and determine if the defense should have them.

(via recall-all-republicans)

mohandasgandhi:

motherjones:

The Trayvon Martin killing, one year later.

This really should have more notes.

(via reagan-was-a-horrible-president)

quickhits:

Second Amendment hero shoots man over loose dog.

Raw Story:

A Florida man is recovering from a gunshot wound after a motorist became angry and pulled a gun because a loose dog forced his pickup truck to stop.

Peter Harbachuk, 46, told the Tampa Bay Times that he and his wife were walking their 4-year-old golden retriever, Bella, when the dog escaped from her leash.

Bella darted in front of a pickup truck, forcing the vehicle to stop. After coming to a halt, a woman got out of the truck to yell at the couple.

Harbachuk said that he asked the woman to get back in her truck while he tried to get his dog back on the leash.

That’s when the woman got back in the pickup, and a man emerged with a gun.

“Some dude hopped out and he pointed a gun toward my head,” Harbachuk recalled. “I said, ‘Hey. This doesn’t have to go down like this.’”

The man then lowered his aim slightly, closed his eyes and fired a round into Harbachuk’s leg, he explained. The couple in the truck fled the scene before police and paramedics could arrive.

St. Petersburg police are searching for “a clean-shaven, muscular, 5-foot, 10-inch tall man between 30 and 35 years old. The woman was thought be about 5 foot, 5 inches and 20 to 25 years old. She was petite with short brown hair. The suspects may have been traveling in a dark Ford F-150 pickup truck.”

Just another day in America, where the insane proliferation of firearms makes everyone so damned safe, “This could’ve been anyone. It could’ve been my wife,” Harbachuk told the Times. “It could have been just any person walking down the street.”

Hey, on any other day he could’ve been the good guy with a gun, amirite?