Monday, April 16, 2007

 

6th Circuit Lottery

The Enquirer, out of Cincinnati, had an in-depth piece in this Sunday's edition regarding the manner in which U.S. Sixth Circuit Appeals Court (which handles Tennessee death row appeals) deals with death penalty cases. The story prominently features the Paul House case.

The conclusions of the article should scare anyone. Inmates live or die based solely on what random drawing of a three judge panel they receive. For instance:

That's what happened last year when two Ohio inmates sought to delay their executions so they could join an appeal challenging lethal injection as cruel and unusual punishment. Jerome Henderson won his case in a 2-1 vote, but Jeffrey Lundgren went before a different panel and lost 2-1.
Lundgren was executed.

You can read the whole story here.

This article once again demonstrates how broken the death penalty system is in Tennessee and across the country. How can anyone claim that "justice is being done" when people literally live or die based on the luck of the draw? And for all those death penalty supporters out there who say that we need to get rid of these liberals who clog up the system, just think about Paul House, who the U.S. Supreme Court ruled no reasonable jury would convict, overruling the 8 Republican appointees who ignored the unbelievable preponderance of evidence pointing to his innocence!

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