Kinja reply list

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JohninNewYorkHamilton Nolan
2/10/15 2:07pm
I'm asking this honestly - what is the purpose of publishing these items? Is it to offer a glimpse into the life of a convict on death row? Is it to drum up support for abolishing the death penalty? Is it to retry their convictions in a blog comment section? Point out the heartless, corrupt nature of the American Justice System? All of the above?
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  Hamilton NolanJohninNewYork
  2/10/15 2:14pm
  The point is to let you hear from people you might not otherwise hear from.
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  iceman295JohninNewYork
  2/10/15 2:23pm
  If as a society, you are willing to let your justice system kill those who are determined fit to be executed, you should at least read their story.
  
  If at any point you can't or won't hear from those condemned to die, you cannot support the death penalty. That is the price paid for capital punishment.
  
  Full disclosure: i am a canuck, so it may seem like im sitting on a high horse here, but i do read these, and believe that anyone advocating for the death penalty here, should do the same.
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DeathocracyHamilton Nolan
2/10/15 2:33pm
Its kinda nice to read the letters that actually address the questions given. This perspective of death row life is really insightful.
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  amgarreDeathocracy
  2/10/15 2:42pm
  Yes. This one was really insightful after the "I'm really innocent" stuff. I never thought about the problems you'd have remembering when things occurred if every day was the same?
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SlickWillieHamilton Nolan
2/10/15 2:10pm
wow, says in that article one of the killers had their charges dropped, due to lack of evidence. I'd be pissed if I was a family member of the victims. Or, well, the family members of the victims who didn't stab them to death that is.
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  carlinemomSlickWillie
  2/10/15 2:53pm
  Actually, it wasn;t dropped for lack of evidence - it was dropped because he was the one who went to the police -
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  SlickWilliecarlinemom
  2/10/15 2:57pm
  I'm guessing that is the unofficial reason, since the article said lack of evidence, but either way. Still would be pissed.
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LtCmndHipsterHamilton Nolan
2/10/15 3:05pm
"I on the other knew nothing about her or even knew that I had an attorney because she had never introduced herself as they are normaly [sic] stated to do... as part of any investigation, the attorney needs to talk to the inmate in order to have any kind of proper investigation."

This isn't very accurate. Habeas proceedings are purely law-based; by definition, they do not "retry" the case, and don't require any additional investigation. It wouldn't be possible to show that a confession was coerced in a Habeas proceeding if that issue wasn't brought up on trial, because there would be nothing on record for a judge to base that finding on.
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  Peter still hates KinjaLtCmndHipster
  2/10/15 6:29pm
  Any habeas attorney (hell—any criminal defense attorney, or practically any client representing attorney at all) who tells you they can do their job well without talking to their client is a shitty habeas attorney. By the time habeas rolls around, almost everyone knows the law of the case inside and out. What people miss are facts that change how the law applies. And given that most (not all, but most) of the prosecutors pushing those cases are honest, legitimate, competent attorneys who have no interest in seeing an innocent person put to death, finding facts that change the equation can be a powerful tool.
  
  As an example, one of my mentors once took a habeas appeal on a 25 year drug trafficking w/ guns sentence for a guy who was pulled over in Texas for "not wearing his seatbelt" (also known driving-while-being-black). The cops, having the basis for a questionable arrest, dragged him out of the car and searched the car under what was the prevailing search law. Finding a pile of drugs and guns, he was fucked, and served several years after his conviction.
  
  My mentor didn't see the habeas case as a purely legal case because, on the facts in the record, it was pretty cut and dry. So he went to the scene of the arrest, to try and find new facts, and found something interesting: the stop had occurred in front of a strip mall, but the "street" he'd been stopped on was actually a driveway into the parking lot. And in that jurisdiction you didn't need to wear a seatbelt to operate a motor vehicle if you were on private property. That fact changes the entire equation—the bad stop, no longer objectively for an actual offense, gets thrown out along with the evidence they seized, and the conviction got vacated.
  
  In criminal defense, facts are KING.
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  LtCmndHipsterPeter still hates Kinja
  2/10/15 6:56pm
  Fascinating! My experience is only at the Federal level, which ever since AEDPA habeas relief is basically impossible, so I'm assuming your anecdote is in a state proceeding? How exactly, procedurally, did he introduce evidence that the street was actually a driveway? Can a state judge take judicial notice of new evidence like that in a habeas proceeding?
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Jennifer C. MartinHamilton Nolan
2/10/15 3:06pm
The eeriness of the reality that he will be completely forgotten is really striking, especially considering this man is now dead. As always, my favorite feature - thank you for sharing.
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  chancyrendezvousJennifer C. Martin
  2/10/15 4:02pm
  That's what hits home for me about most of these letters: how easy it is to write people off as unworthy of empathy, common decency, being remembered.
  
  And I have a small personal stake in it, too. I have a mentally ill family member who's had struggles with drugs and the law and he lives in a rough city. He could easily be in the wrong place at the wrong time and find himself in a really bad situation. Despite the fact that he's a very kind and gentle person when he's well, based on what he looks like on paper he'd never get a fair shake. He could be writing one of these letters, and that's heartbreaking.
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  YourExFutureWifechancyrendezvous
  2/10/15 4:41pm
  Mentally ill people are deserving of understanding and compassion.
  
  Mentally ill people who do not understand what "taking a life" means ... Unfortunately, there's no teaching that. And society deserves to be protected from that.
  
  I have an opiate-addicted, mentally retarded family member who is close to me. I also have a family (on the other side) who is on generation three of dysfunction, due to my grandmother's cold blooded murder.
  
  I love my family member, he's a light in my life. But if he murdered someone? I would have to side with the rest of society - we shouldn't exist at the whim of those who don't understand the repercussions of murder.
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structengrHamilton Nolan
2/10/15 2:21pm
This one is particularly eerie, being a San Antonio crime and me growing up here knowing about this crime. This is also on of the more interesting ones as he actually answers most of the questions.
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  flatlander2structengr
  2/10/15 6:09pm
  I found it interesting that it contains one less jailhouse religious conversion than what's standard. There ARE atheists in foxholes!
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Myxomatosis Hamilton Nolan
2/10/15 2:11pm
I wonder if anyone from the Innocence Project ever looked into his case. I mean, I'm sure everyone on Death Row screams "I was framed! False Confession!", but Homicide is the crime for which IP gets the highest rates of exonerations for.

I'm curious as to what they would find if they had more funding/resources.

I'm trying to find more info to confirm if this guy's lawyers really bungled things as much as Prieto claims, but can't find a thing. Just an appeal based on mental illness... I wish we could have more information on these cases when Nolan publishes the letters. I mean, I understand the point of them being a stand-alone publication, but still. Can we just have a little more?
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  unicornzMyxomatosis
  2/10/15 2:48pm
  I couldn't find great numbers, but according to one study, about 25% of criminals executed between 2007-2012 admitted guilt before execution.
  
  Only about 10% maintain innocence throughout.
  
  The rest (65%) never made strong claims one way or another.
  
  http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cf…
  
  According to the Innocence Project website, about 30% of the people who have been exonerated by DNA evidence made false confessions.
  
  Also, recently forensic psychologists in the UK found they were able to plant false memories and illicit false confessions of violent assault from 70% of study volunteers by using specific questioning techniques
  
  http://pss.sagepub.com/content/early/…
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  TemperanceMyxomatosis
  2/10/15 6:46pm
  I worked at an Innocence organization while in law school. This guy sounds like every other not-actually-innocent inmate that we receive letters from. At my org, something like .... 95% of the letters were clearly not from innocent inmates, and maybe 1-2% were legit. The others were strong maybes.
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Herb & SpiceHamilton Nolan
2/10/15 2:06pm
So he didn't snitch and got the switch. Think I would have preferred stitches.
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carlinemomHamilton Nolan
2/10/15 2:42pm
He got between $200 and $300 for his actions as well as $140 he got from pawning jewelry he stole. He and his friends were coked up, went to the victim's home where they were invited in for breakfast, and then killed them (I am sure all three participated in the killing) with screwdrivers and an ice pick (the little kind you use to chip ice out of an ice bucket for drinks, not the big kind you go mountain climbing with).

Dallas officials opted not to prosecute him for the organized theft ring (he helped stage the theft of laptops worth $676,000 - which seems like a big number to me - from a warehouse where he worked in Dallas). They decided that since he had already been convicted and sentenced to the death penalty, it was pointless to pursue the charges against him in this Dallas case.

The guy who went to police to confess to the crime did not get charged but the other guy, Jesse Hernandez, is doing life. For what it's worth, Arnold seemed to have some artistic abilities - you an see a little about what he did on the Minutesbeforesix website.
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Quantum SuicideHamilton Nolan
2/10/15 2:46pm
Devastating. 20 years old when he was convicted and sentenced to death? As in, one year out of his teens?

This letter was absolutely heartbreaking, from the details of his child abuse to his desperate desire to be a better person (when he talked about his clean cell, that's as human as it gets).

Thank you for publishing this. I can only hope people actually read the full letter/article before they bring the blood-thirsty comments.

This is a human being that is now deceased. Show some compassion, please.
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