Justice
photo: Richard Harris
Yet another story about the terrible state of Justice in the US.
"...When Havard's attorneys took Lauridson's review to the Mississippi Supreme Court in 2006, however, the justices summarily dismissed it. In a ruling Franz Kafka and Joseph Heller could have conspired to write, the court found that Lauridson's opinions on Hayne's testimony did not qualify as new evidence. Rather, the justices said, it was evidence Havard should have produced at his initial trial. Of course, Havard couldn't have produced such evidence, because the trial court refused to give him funding to hire his own expert..."
A man waits to be executed on evidence supplied by a completely discredited source.
Click here for the whole article.
And as more and more prisons become for profit businesses this will only get worse.
Yet another story about the terrible state of Justice in the US.
"...When Havard's attorneys took Lauridson's review to the Mississippi Supreme Court in 2006, however, the justices summarily dismissed it. In a ruling Franz Kafka and Joseph Heller could have conspired to write, the court found that Lauridson's opinions on Hayne's testimony did not qualify as new evidence. Rather, the justices said, it was evidence Havard should have produced at his initial trial. Of course, Havard couldn't have produced such evidence, because the trial court refused to give him funding to hire his own expert..."
A man waits to be executed on evidence supplied by a completely discredited source.
Click here for the whole article.
And as more and more prisons become for profit businesses this will only get worse.
Beyond the fact that the US is one of the only two First World countries to have the death penalty (click here for a list of countries which still execute), beyond the fact of miscarriages of justice causing the execution of innocent people, is the issue of fairness in application.
"...A number of factors unrelated to the crime, including race, geography and money, influence the sentencing of capital punishment as much as, if not more than, the severity of the actual crime, according to the study released Wednesday by the Death Penalty Information Center.
Defendants who kill white victims are far more likely to be sentenced to death than those who kill black victims, the study found. Further, a vast majority of U.S. executions occur in only a handful of states; the quality of defense a defendant is able to afford affects his chances of receiving the death penalty; and county budgets are often a deciding factor in whether a district attorney will seek the death penalty or not. A number of these cases are overturned on appeal and assessed very differently the second time around, suggesting the decisions are often unjustified.
"The lingering problem with death penalty is that it is applied unevenly and unfairly," Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, told HuffPost. "It's not always a matter of the worst crimes getting the worst sentences. Those that have fewer resources or don't get great lawyers or don't have someone reinvestigating are going to end up getting the death penalty, while the worst crimes sometimes get good representation and don't."
As an example, the DPIC report pointed to the case of Gary Ridgway, a serial killer in Washington State who pled guilty to murdering 48 people in 2003 and was given a life sentence in exchange for detailed confessions about the victims. By contrast, Teresa Lewis, a mentally disabled woman in Virginia who stood by as two men shot her husband and son, was handed the death penalty while the two murderers received life sentences."
Read the rest of the report here.
"...A number of factors unrelated to the crime, including race, geography and money, influence the sentencing of capital punishment as much as, if not more than, the severity of the actual crime, according to the study released Wednesday by the Death Penalty Information Center.
Defendants who kill white victims are far more likely to be sentenced to death than those who kill black victims, the study found. Further, a vast majority of U.S. executions occur in only a handful of states; the quality of defense a defendant is able to afford affects his chances of receiving the death penalty; and county budgets are often a deciding factor in whether a district attorney will seek the death penalty or not. A number of these cases are overturned on appeal and assessed very differently the second time around, suggesting the decisions are often unjustified.
"The lingering problem with death penalty is that it is applied unevenly and unfairly," Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, told HuffPost. "It's not always a matter of the worst crimes getting the worst sentences. Those that have fewer resources or don't get great lawyers or don't have someone reinvestigating are going to end up getting the death penalty, while the worst crimes sometimes get good representation and don't."
As an example, the DPIC report pointed to the case of Gary Ridgway, a serial killer in Washington State who pled guilty to murdering 48 people in 2003 and was given a life sentence in exchange for detailed confessions about the victims. By contrast, Teresa Lewis, a mentally disabled woman in Virginia who stood by as two men shot her husband and son, was handed the death penalty while the two murderers received life sentences."
Read the rest of the report here.
The Center for Equal Opportunity and Opposition to Racism (CEOOR) has just issued their latest report on the trafficking of human beings into Belgium. According to the Royal Decree establishing it "The Centre's task is to promote equality of opportunity and to combat all forms of discrimination, exclusion, restriction or preferential treatment based on: a so-called race, skin colour, descent, national or ethnic origin, sexual orientation, marital status, birth, wealth, age, religion or ideology, present or future state of health, disability or physical characteristics."
The report finds that faced by an increasing array of laws and policing techniques the slavers and exploiters have professionalized their modes of operation and diversified beyond prostitution to include migrant workers and human smuggling. For instance, the days of pimps keeping watch on their girls from close by are over, replaced by shell companies with older girls or "lady's companions" as phony independants, while the principals stay safe back in Bulgaria, Romania or Albania. Minibusses bring undocumented workers from Bulgaria into the Turkish neighborhoods in certain Belgian cities to work construction. Every three months they are returned to Bulgaria to procure a new 90 day visa. "The networks use the 90 day European right of residency of citizens of the new member states of the Community to exploit them." Russian slavers have taken over the restroom operations in gas stations and staff them with illegals.
Many of these people work willingly since the economic situation at
home is worse, but they are certainly being exploited, their rights are
non-existent, and the social cost is heavy.