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    Becky With the Bad GradesHamilton Nolan
    8/02/16 11:03am

    This still remains a challenging series to grapple with, so thank you for writing them. Dealing with this issue can be so complicated as I am anti-death penalty in the abstract, but often find myself bending towards “okay, in this case it’s warranted” when I read particularly egregious fact patterns (and try to counteract within myself).

    The thing that I always wrestle with are the claims of innocence. I suppose some of that is seeded in psychology, but he helped another person rob and kill a gas station attendant. Maybe somebody from Texas can explain it a little better, but that law of the parties sounds like a plain application of the felony murder rule, which seems to fit the facts as briefly described here. So, the culpability seems, for better or worse*, resolved, even though one can more than fairly quibble about the punishment levied for that culpability. (*yes, there’s potentially something to be said about mens rea and low IQ; didnt want to get too into the weeds). Despite my aforementioned reservations about the death penalty as a punishment, I have a fairly strong distaste for any excuses that a person who assisted in ending a life is innocent despite not pulling the trigger.

    Really wish we could get the victim’s family’s perspective, like I’ve seen for previous pieces (Jasper perhaps?). It’d really help contextualize the entire situation, and on a personal level.

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      ReburnsABurningReturnsBecky With the Bad Grades
      8/02/16 11:12am

      Good thoughts.

      I think one issue people who are against the death penalty tend to have with murder is that while many of us would say that prison should aim to rehabilitate inmates, instinctively and intuitively something in our gut says “murderers or people who helped a murder happen don’t deserve to enjoy life again”.

      And I think this is okay.

      If you take a life, why do you ever deserve to enjoy freedom again?

      Why should society have any moral obligation to take even the modest risk of your relapse should we come up with some magical treatment program that can be reasonably said to rehabilitate murderers or people who facilitated them like this man apparently did?

      I don’t think there is a good answer to these questions. The only real reason I oppose the death penalty in the case of murder, or even those who knowingly participated in a situation that they could have reasonably seen leading to a murder (such as an armed robbery) is that the inability to have true certainty all of the time means we can’t leave it up to the judgment of flawed, easily manipulated and often times biased human beings to decide when we really know for sure that someone murdered someone else.

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      bostonbakedburnerBecky With the Bad Grades
      8/02/16 11:24am

      If it could somehow be guaranteed that everyone on death row were 100% guilty, then I would not be opposed to the death penalty from a moral perspective. The issue, however, is that our justice system is incredibly flawed and nowhere close to 100% accurate when it comes to determining guilt or innocence. Why should we trust this same justice system to put people to death? I think this is a very tangible reason for why the capital punishment should be abolished.

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    HoldMeCloserTonyDanzigHamilton Nolan
    8/02/16 11:04am

    This is a really tricky case and it frequently comes up when talking about felony murder statutes b/c this is one is particularly messy.

    Wood’s problem is twofold: he signed a confession indicating that he knew the actual shooter was going to bring a gun and planned to use it if necessary, thus fulfilling the forethought and reckless indifference requirements from SCOTUS. He also stole the video evidence and later destroyed it well after the fact (negating the claim he thought he would also get killed if he didn’t do it). If he had turned over that tape to the cops and testified against the actual shooters, he likely would have avoided jail or served minimal time. He changed his story after the fact, but signed confessions are close to impossible to get tossed, particularly when he continued the crime well after the fact (by destroying the video evidence).

    Wood’s second problem is that (for some unknown reason) he prevented his defense lawyers from defending him during the penalty phase. If he had let his lawyers do their jobs, he probably would have gotten something like 25/life with parole eligibility (or something like that - I’m not super familiar with TX sentencing tho).

    Its a really tough/sad case, but there were a ton of chances for Woods to turn this case into a long stretch in jail as opposed to a death penalty case.

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      NoSkellingtonsHoldMeCloserTonyDanzig
      8/02/16 11:25am

      He is basically mentally retarded. I don’t think you can genuinely infer any strategy from the man for what he did prior, during or following the crime...

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      HoldMeCloserTonyDanzigNoSkellingtons
      8/02/16 11:30am

      If he’s made it this far through the system, he’s probably had his competency tested at least three to five times.

      An IQ of 80 isn’t dumb to the point of not understanding right from wrong. Also, he took the video evidence from the crime scene, and some period of time later destroyed it, indicating he has a firm grasp on action/consequence (not understanding cause/effect can be used as evidence of mental deficiency). Covering up evidence of a crime is a powerful indicator you know what you did was wrong.

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    BobbySeriousHamilton Nolan
    8/02/16 10:44am

    What. The. FUCK.

    Obama should pardon him. His sentence is obscene.

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      Bonzi777BobbySerious
      8/02/16 10:52am

      Obama can’t pardon him; his sentence is through the Texas court system. Obama can only pardon federal crimes. On this one, the buck stops with the Governor of Texas, and good luck with that.

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      CatdogWhispererBobbySerious
      8/02/16 10:52am

      Almost as obscene as his sentence structure...

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    CableCrasherHamilton Nolan
    8/02/16 11:07am

    I’m always amazed by the crimes that warrant the death penalty, but this one left a bad feeling in my stomach. Worst part is if he is spared he may be permanently disaffected with reality after this experience. There’s no guarantee he wouldn’t be a danger to anyone else out of pure spite. So sad.

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      Skipping along to our shared destructionCableCrasher
      8/02/16 12:53pm

      Maybe if we sought justice rather than vengeance we’d come to different corrections.

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      suppiluliumasCableCrasher
      8/02/16 2:11pm

      He was a criminal who played in a role in a murder, so I think he was kind of a danger to others even before this. He was probably just permanently disaffected with reality back then, too, though, so it’s understandable. Poor guy.

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    Josh SalaamHamilton Nolan
    8/02/16 11:28am

    Texas government is absurd.

    I can understand the argument for the death penalty in especially heinous cases—situations that remove all doubt about guilt and all humanity from the perpetrator—but these motherfuckers are looking for reasons to execute people. Then, they turn around and talk about being good, morally righteous Christians.

    It’s very sad.

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      UnknownUserJosh Salaam
      8/02/16 12:35pm

      So you don’t see killing another human, or knowingly helping in killing a human as a heinous act?

      I am going out on a limb and say you don’t se a problem with any pre-birth abortion either?

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      Josh SalaamUnknownUser
      8/02/16 2:01pm

      “I can understand the argument for the death penalty in especially heinous cases...”

      Yes, murdering or intentionally aiding in the murder of another person is a heinous act. But given our judicial system’s, shall we say, imperfect record for establishing actual guilt as well as human being’s capacity for contrition and change, I do not have such a cavalier attitude towards the death penalty as an eye for an eye.

      When you have cases that demonstrate an unrepentant malignancy and leave no room for doubt, I can appreciate the pursuit of capital punishment.

      As for abortion, nope.

      It’s not something to be taken lightly and certainly shouldn’t be used as de facto birth control, but as I believe life doesn’t begin until viability, I see no reason to force a human life into the world on the basis of a book that was written more than two millennia ago, then extended by men with a clear political agenda over the next 1600 years (and change).

      It’s pathetic—virtually every school of human thought has made tremendous advances over the last 400 years. But there’s the dogmatic religious crowd, digging its heels in and insisting. “Nope, we nailed it perfectly by the 1600s. No need to change our fundamentals.”

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    mostyoulostonacointossHamilton Nolan
    8/02/16 11:07am

    That Texas Bureau of Prisons link listing the upcoming scheduled execution dates like upcoming concerts and/or movie releases is the most sadistic thing I’ve seen in a long time.

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      Gamblor JDmostyoulostonacointoss
      8/02/16 11:46am

      So you think the public doesn’t have the right to know when the state is going to execute someone? That is odd.

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      UnknownUsermostyoulostonacointoss
      8/02/16 12:45pm

      Try researching what every one of them did. You might adjust you scale of what sadistic means..

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    RobHamilton Nolan
    8/02/16 11:44am

    So, out of curiosity. If Wood went directly to the authorities after he realized his “partner” killed the clerk, would he still have been charged with murder? Or would he just have received the charge of robbery?

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      SrynersonRob
      8/02/16 2:24pm

      If he’d gone straight to the police, he likely would have been able to get a plea deal under which he certainly would have avoided the death penalty and probably gotten substantially less time than a life sentence.

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      RobSrynerson
      8/03/16 12:40pm

      Maybe, but someone getting murdered while in the act of a felony = ??

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    BoogerFace2Hamilton Nolan
    8/02/16 11:02am

    This is depressing.

    I understand that he might have been involved in a conspiracy, but the fact that he didn’t have any involvement in the murder of someone but is scheduled to be executed seems to go against the 8th amendment of the Constitution.

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      SrynersonBoogerFace2
      8/02/16 2:23pm

      The felony murder rule predates the 8th Amendment and every state had some version of the felony murder rule on the books at the time the amendment was adopted, so it’s hard to argue that it is unconstitutional.

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      Space MothBoogerFace2
      8/02/16 3:11pm

      “he didn’t have any involvement in the murder”

      Facilitating a murder qualifies as involvement in that murder.

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    1PompadourHamilton Nolan
    8/02/16 6:57pm

    How is it justice to execute somebody who didn’t kill anyone? You can’t be held accountable for an act that somebody else had the intent of carrying out but did not communicate to you. Had he seen the murder take place and then run away, for example, he stood a good chance of getting shot himself. So he was, by his testimony, under duress from a murderer when he committed the robbery. At the very least, he deserves to live. I’m actually for the death penalty in cases of torture-murder, kidnapping with murder and so forth, the truly godawful crimes. But I don’t even think that conspiring with somebody else who actually commits the murder deserves the death penalty.

    Only if somebody puts his or her hands on the victim and causes by that act his death should capital punishment be considered. And then intent comes in —- if somebody robs a store and gets nervous and pulls the trigger, that is capital murder but I disagree with that. However if somebody enters a store with intent to shoot the clerk and does just that and then robs the store, that is capital murder. Everybody has their own standards, but Texas is so unjust that it is like another country and shouldn’t be permitted to maintain its aggressive schedule of executions or its unduly harsh death penalty laws. I don’t think the writers of the Constitution would have approved of such widely varying laws among the states, or they would have federalized serious crimes for the sake of consistent justice.

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      GrumpyEagleHamilton Nolan
      8/03/16 2:43pm

      Once again, this man and the way his case was handled represent the different levels of justice based on socioeconomic background. Like many of those you'll find in the maximum security prisons or even on death row, he came from an impoverished background, received minimal education that probably didn't cater to his disability, and ended up with a low-cost lawyer or overburdened public defender. (I hate to paint public defenders as "bad" necessarily; many of them are good, well-trained professionals who do care about their clients but are so overwhelmed with caseloads that they don't have time to do the kind of deep-dive legal defense they should.) Your average middle or upper class kid who ends up in trouble usually has a parent who will find him or her a lawyer immediately and get the wheels of justice greased a little better. Most of the racial inequities in sentencing occur because a larger percentage of defendants of color fall below the poverty line. And among whites, it's still the "wrong side of the tracks" folks that end up with the harsher sentences.

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