[The Final Dakar]

*nod to OAW*
Read a powerful article on a wrongful conviction that I felt was worth sharing. What's really noteworthy is the dichotomy between the old and new prosecutor.
30 Years on Death Row - CBS News

Stroud now admits the cards and the system were stacked against Ford from the beginning: his court-appointed lawyers had never practiced criminal law.

Bill Whitaker: What kind of law did they practice?

Marty Stroud: One individual had general civil practice, and another one did succession, wills and estates.

Bill Whitaker: In a murder trial?

Marty Stroud: Here they are in a murder trial in Louisiana where a man was on trial for his life. And at the time I saw nothing wrong with that. In fact, I snickered from time to time saying that this was going to be...we're going to get though this case pretty quickly.

Stroud's case wasn't strong. There was no physical evidence linking Ford to the crime. The main witness incriminating Ford admitted in court she'd been coerced by police to make up her testimony. But what was more important to Marty Stroud was the composition of the jury.

Marty Stroud: There were no African Americans on the jury.

A court review of the new information found there was "credible evidence ... Glenn Ford was neither present at, nor a participant in, the robbery and murder of Isadore Rozeman."

Stroud's reaction when he was told Ford was innocent?

Marty Stroud: I thought I was going to throw up. Nauseous as it-- and I felt my face was just turning, like a fever. But then, the horror of knowing that yours truly had caused him all this pain.

Dale Cox: I don't know what it is he's apologizing for. I think he's wrong in that the system did not fail Mr. Ford.
Bill Whitaker: It did not?

Dale Cox: It did not...in fact...

Bill Whitaker: How can you say that?

Dale Cox: Because he's not on death row. And that's how I can say it.

Bill Whitaker: Getting out of prison after 30 years is justice?

Dale Cox: Well, it's better than dying there and it's better than being executed----

There may be no more controversial prosecutor in the U.S. than Dale Cox. Between 2010 and 2014, his Caddo Parish office put more people on death row per capita than anywhere else in the country.

Dale Cox: I think society should be employing the death penalty more rather than less.

Bill Whitaker: But there have been 10 other inmates on death row in Louisiana who have been exonerated. Clearly, the system is not flawless. Are you sure that you've gotten it right all the time?

Dale Cox: I'm reasonably confident that-- that I've gotten it right.

Bill Whitaker: Reasonably confident?

Dale Cox: Am I arrogant enough, am I narcissistic enough to say I couldn't make a mistake? Of course not.

Bill Whitaker: But until this information came out, the state was convinced that Mr. Ford was guilty.

Dale Cox: Yes.

Bill Whitaker: He could have been killed.

Dale Cox: Yes.

Bill Whitaker: And it would've been a mistake.

Dale Cox: Yes.

Bill Whitaker: It sounds like you're saying that's just a risk we have to take.

Dale Cox: Yes. If I had gotten this information too late, all of us would've been-- grieved beyond description. We don't want to do this to people who are not guilty of the crime they're charged with.

Bill Whitaker: Do you believe he should be compensated for the time he spent in prison?

Dale Cox: No, I think we need to follow the law. And the statute does not require that you be charged or convicted or arrested for any of these other crimes. The statute only requires that Mr. Ford prove he didn't do these other crimes.

Bill Whitaker: So he's guilty until proven innocent in this case?

Dale Cox: No, because it's not a question of guilt or innocence. It's a question of whether he's entitled to money...taxpayer money.

Bill Whitaker: But you say he has to prove that he's innocent of these other charges, these other crimes for which he's never been charged, for which he's never been tried.

Dale Cox: That's correct.

Bill Whitaker: He has to prove he's innocent of them in order to get the compensation?

Dale Cox: That's correct.

Bill Whitaker: I'm trying to understand. He was punished for something that he might have done. That doesn't seem fair.

Dale Cox: You want fairness...

Bill Whitaker: Isn't the law supposed to provide fairness?

Dale Cox: It is supposed to provide justice.

Bill Whitaker: You don't think he deserves compensation

Dale Cox: I think that the law must be followed.

[OAW]

Originally Posted by The Final Dakar 

*nod to OAW*

Originally Posted by The Final Dakar 

Read a powerful article on a wrongful conviction that I felt was worth sharing. What's really noteworthy is the dichotomy between the old and new prosecutor.
30 Years on Death Row - CBS News

I think this article highlights what's so wrong with the US justice system ... especially with respect to the death penalty. A system that's oriented around legality instead of justice. DA's who are rewarded for winning even at the expense of doing what's right. And the all too common "Any n*gger will do." mentality when it comes to securing convictions. The callous disregard for the human consequences when they get it wrong. Etc. An excerpt from another article about this DA ....

The only structure on the front lawn of the Caddo Parish courthouse, in downtown Shreveport, is a monument to the Confederacy, which includes the busts of four Confederate generals. A large stone slab on the ground is inscribed with the Confederate flag and a tribute to the “deeds and valor of the men who so gallantly, nobly, and conscientiously defended the cause.”

In the decades after the Civil War, Caddo Parish—home to the last capital of the Confederacy—had more lynchings than all but one county in the South. Several men were lynched in front of the courthouse. In 1914, when some Louisiana newspapers called for the abolition of the death penalty, an editorial in the Shreveport Times warned that without capital punishment the number of lynchings would rise: black criminals wouldn’t be able to reach the jail before they were overwhelmed by the “vengeance of an outraged citizenship.”

Juries in Caddo Parish, which has a population of two hundred and fifty thousand, now sentence more people to death per capita than juries in any other county in America. Seventy-seven per cent of those sentenced to death in the past forty years have been black, and nearly half were convicted of killing white victims. A white person has never been sentenced to death for killing a black person.

Since 2011, Dale Cox, a jowly sixty-seven-year-old man with thinning white hair, has been responsible for more than a third of the death sentences in Louisiana. When I met him at his office, which overlooks the courthouse, I asked him if he worried about the possibility that the parish’s fraught racial history and its approach to capital punishment were related, but he said that he didn’t see the connection. “People have played the race card in this country for so long, and at some point we really need to stop and say, ‘O.K., that was a long, long, long time ago. It’s different now.’ ” He said, “Yeah, a lot of terrible things have happened in the world everywhere. And in some places it gets better, like here. And in some places it doesn’t, like Africa or Kosovo.” He told me, “I don’t get this discrimination business, I really don’t.”

Cox, who is Catholic and went to a Jesuit school, was opposed to the death penalty at the start of his career, and in 1983, after working in the district attorney’s office for six years, he left, because he didn’t feel comfortable pursuing capital cases. He believed that it was God’s decision when to end someone’s life. He joined a civil firm while working part time as a special prosecutor. By 2011, when he returned to the office full time, he said that his thinking had evolved. After constant exposure to violence, he began to reinterpret the Bible. He thought about passages in which Christ was judgmental and unforgiving—Christ’s belief that it would be better if Judas Iscariot had never been born, for instance—and saw Him as retaliatory in ways that he hadn’t appreciated before. After the Church’s pedophilia scandals, Cox no longer felt obliged to follow its teachings precisely. He told me that “we just exclusively use the Old Testament over here,” and that he had ripped the New Testament out of all the Bibles. He quickly added, “That’s a joke!”

Last March, a former colleague of Cox’s published a letter in the Shreveport Times apologizing for causing an innocent black man to spend thirty years on death row. “We are simply incapable of devising a system that can fairly and impartially impose a sentence of death,” he wrote. When a journalist with the paper, Maya Lau, asked Cox for his response, he said that he thought courts should be imposing the death penalty more, not less. “I think we need to kill more people,” he told her. “We’re not considered a society anymore—we’re a jungle.”

Cox does not believe that the death penalty works as a deterrent, but he says that it is justified as revenge. He told me that revenge was a revitalizing force that “brings to us a visceral satisfaction.” He felt that the public’s aversion to the notion had to do with the word itself. “It’s a hard word—it’s like the word ‘hate,’ the word ‘despot,’ the word ‘blood.’ ” He said, “Over time, I have come to the position that revenge is important for society as a whole. We have certain rules that you are expected to abide by, and when you don’t abide by them you have forfeited your right to live among us.”

OAW

[The Final Dakar]

This was the most important part of that quote:

Cox does not believe that the death penalty works as a deterrent, but he says that it is justified as revenge

[subego]

Cox is correct about that part.

A penal system can achieve three things. Rehabilitation, deterrence, and retribution.

It doesn't really act as a deterrent. There's too much time between the act and the penalty. People are notorious for only focusing on short-term consequences. Not that I'm arguing the time should be shorter. It shouldn't

No one claims it acts as rehabilitation.

What does that leave?


That said, I see little difference between Cox and Stroud. Stroud feels bad he used to be the scum of the earth. Him and his "contrition" can go **** themselves.

Prosecutors are the lowest form of life.

[The Final Dakar]

Originally Posted by subego 

Cox is correct about that part.

Kind of. You're looking at his statement as a point of fact. I'm look at his statement as him presenting his opinion on how to handle criminal justice. In which case, he's absurdly wrong.

Originally Posted by subego 

That said, I see little difference between Cox and Stroud. Stroud feels bad he used to be the scum of the earth. Him and his "contrition" can go **** themselves.

Prosecutors are the lowest form of life.

Yeah, I'm on the fence here. Maybe he was naive, maybe he was indoctrinated, but it shouldn't take finding out you almost killed an innocent man to feel remorse. I'm also curious whether his brush with humility has led him to any kind of activist positions regarding the state of the criminal justice system. If not, hollow words.

[subego]

He was engaged in knowingly committing disgusting malfeasance at the time and admitted as such. That he presumably thought Ford was guilty is irrelevant.

**** Stroud.

[The Final Dakar]

Originally Posted by subego 

He was engaged in knowingly committing disgusting malfeasance at the time and admitted as such. That he presumably thought Ford was guilty is irrelevant.

**** Stroud.

He can't ever redeem himself?

[subego]

It's going to take a whole hell of a lot more than "whoops, I'm really sorry about that".

[The Final Dakar]

Originally Posted by subego 

It's going to take a whole hell of a lot more than "whoops, I'm really sorry about that".

I did cover that.

[subego]

I'm not sure what the exchange rate is from years of activism to years on death row, but assuming a a (generous) 1:1, he's still got time to do.

I also note it would be foolish of us to consider this an isolated incident.

**** Stroud.

[The Final Dakar]

Originally Posted by subego 

I also note it would be foolish of us to consider this an isolated incident.

*nod*

It should be noted, scumbag Harry Connick, Sr. was from LA too.

[subego]

I try to keep a check on my Northerner snobbery, but that gets tough when it comes to Louisiana.

[The Final Dakar]

Oddly, I do not have any snap judgements of LA. I reserve those Mississippi and Missouri.

[subego]

Missouri?

[OAW]

Originally Posted by The Final Dakar 

Oddly, I do not have any snap judgements of LA. I reserve those Mississippi and Missouri.

Hey hey!!!!!!

OAW

[The Final Dakar]

Originally Posted by OAW 

Hey hey!!!!!!

OAW

Please, I have most of the police misconduct thread as my trump card.

[OAW]

Well there is that.

OAW

[subego]

The takeaway I get from that thread is the phenomenon on display there is by no means unique.

[Cap'n Tightpants]

Originally Posted by subego 

Cox is correct about that part.

A penal system can achieve three things. Rehabilitation, deterrence, and retribution.

and protection for the rest of society. That's what incarceration of a career criminal is, social protection from that criminal.

[subego]

I'd file that under "retribution".

[Cap'n Tightpants]

I wouldn't. You have 5 chickens and 1 of them is attacking the other 4, so you put up a partition to keep the 1 away from the others, are you punishing the 1 or protecting the 4?

[subego]

Both?

FWIW, I consider this position to be arguable.

[BadKosh]

Everybody in prison is innocent. Just ask them.

[The Final Dakar]

Originally Posted by OAW 

Hey hey!!!!!!

OAW

Coincidental timing.

[subego]

Arkansas needs to step up its game.

[The Final Dakar]

Originally Posted by subego 

Arkansas needs to step up its game.

Actually it's Mississippi that's slacking.

[subego]

Looking at the map, I'm guessing if we moved Detroit to Mississippi, things would balance out properly.

[subego]

Also, shot himself? Girl toddlers are underrepresented.

[OAW]

Originally Posted by The Final Dakar 

Coincidental timing.

OAW