America’s failure: Where hatred meets institutions

Mr. Perry, governor of Texas, has given a splendid example of trying to prevent political upheaval on sensitive issues. Only by causing raised eyebrows after several journalists pointed to the strange timing of events. If only those journalists could stop sticking their noses into ‘his’ business.

Because sensitive it is: The full penalty of law has long been contested, actually it still is. Many seem to regard the issue as some inherent moral principle or form of justice, as a right of retaliation for those that have suffered by the hands of criminals. But once again, the incontrovertible effects of capital punishment seem to send our limited perspectives ‘on guilty beyond reasonable doubt’ back to its proper hide-out.

I am of course, referring to the case of Cameron Todd Willingham, which resulted in his execution in 2004. He was found guilty of setting fire to the house, where his three daughters died in a sea of flames back in 1991. The reliability of the evidence has been brought in for questioning many times, with as many contradictory twists tied to it.

More recently, Mr. Beyler was assigned the task of a renewed investigation by an oversight board called the ‘Texas Forensic Science Board’. He was scheduled to report on 30^th of September. Two days before this event was to take place however, Mr. Perry decided to replace three of the four commission board members. In normal circumstances his reply and justification for this would seem to be acceptable, because “…their terms had expired”. And indeed they had, but the timing was, to say the least, peculiar and significant.

Because there can be no question Mr. Beyler condemned crucial evidence, and any judgment that was based upon it. Among other things he points to in his report is a testimony by Manual Vasquez, who was a deputy state fire marshal at the time. The “numerous indicators found in the debris”, that were taken to be proof of Willingham having deliberately set fire to the house, seem quite without force and painfully dogmatic when one takes a glimpse at the conclusions:

“Each and every one of the `indicators’ listed by Mr. Vasquez means absolutely nothing”.

“[The fire marshal]…had limited understand of fire science…. and seems to be whole without any realistic understanding of fires and how fire injuries are created”.

Embarrassing and hurtful are two words that seem to cover a wide array of cases, though not the conviction of a man that is by no means proven to be guilty as charged, in one of the world’s most powerful democracies. But Mr. Perry does not seem to think this should bear any influence in the upcoming elections of 2010, even though his state might have brought an innocent person to death. As quoted in the Economist, the stance of Bailey Hutchison explains it all: The business with the commission “was just giving liberals an argument to discredit the death penalty”.

No Mr. Hutchison, not entirely. The whole business of the death penalty does not need discrediting, because it is a procedure that fails any standard of justification that is taken to be reasonable in a western-value shaped society. If even most Jews have forsaken  to take an eye for an eye, then why not those who aren’t even committed to its truth in the first place? We should realize by now that an eye for an eye would leave us all blind.