And if he had said that at his trial, or during his first appeal, he would be alive today.
I get it. He was convicted for a crime he didn't commit. (99.99% sure on that.) But he didn't have to run into the house to save one of his children. He just had to grab her rather than leaving her. And since he was not on fire at the time, he really has no point in that quote. In fact, he had to run past the fire to get to the front door. He could have grabbed his daughter and ran the other way, out the back door.
You're blaming Ms. Chatty and Mrs. Nosy instead of blaming yourself like you should. If they're distracting, pull over and tell them to shut up. If they don't then refuse to drive with them in the car and leave them right there.
I answer calls in my car all the time. Sometimes it's from the wife, sometimes a job. If you can't drive safely while holding a phone to your ear, you don't deserve to be on the road. There are distractions everywhere.
Police car over there, make sure I'm driving ok. Ambulance siren; where is it? Do I have to change lanes? Damn short green arrow, maybe I can floor it and make it through. Hey, I like this song. "Sweeeeet Hoooome Alabama" So, when that girl last night looked at me, I should have said....
And on and on.
If you are getting in accidents because you are talking to someone who isn't in the car with you, stop driving.
And, no, none of my accidents have been because I was on a cell phone. Or drunk/high.
He also left his children to burn to death in a house fire, thinking only about saving his own ass. So, I don't have a whole lot of sympathy for him. If my daughter was in a burning house, I would run into it to save her, even at the threat of my own life.
You've never been near a major fire. It's not the abstract "threat" of possible death that stops you... It's the insane heat, guaranteed 3rd degree burns over your entire body in seconds even several feet away from the flames if you don't have fire fighter's protective gear, that most people can't possibly imagine until they've been up-close and personal with it.
That's the thing though. The guy didn't have third degree burns, and his daughter didn't burn up. He had a slight singe, and she died of smoke inhalation. However you want to look at it is fine. But the guy left his child behind as he ran. The girl was right next to him, because she was who woke him up. All he had to do was put an arm around her, and then run.
As a matter of fact, your exact argument is how they knew he was lying. He claimed he tried to get to the twins in the front room, where the fire started. Yet he had no burns, and was only slightly singed. As you point out, he would have third degree burns if he was telling the truth. Yet, he insisted he wasn't lying, until it was too late to matter.
I've said it earlier, but I'll repeat it here. I don't think he deserved to die for what he did. But he dug his own grave, and it took years for him to do so. For that, I don't have much sympathy for him.
Thanks for the link. I bookmarked it and will watch it later when I have a chance.
Thankfully, no I've never been in a house fire, so haven't been scared of death by burning. But I have been in other situation that could mean life and death, and my thoughts were on how to get out without anyone dying.
Mr. Willingham was lying on his bed sleeping, and his little daughter came up and said there was smoke or a fire. He jumped up, saw the smoke, and ran for the front door. His dead daughter was found on or near the bed. He didn't even think to grab her and take her with him.
I can say for certain, in that situation, I would have saved at least one child. This is why I don't have sympathy for him. When his child's life depended on him, he acted like a wild animal and ran. Because of his action, his daughter died.
I can understand that the other two children, the twins, were not able to be saved, because they were indeed in the inferno. But to leave the child who woke him up, that was unconscionable. Then to lie about it, all through the trial and right up until his death was near before confessing. Why am I supposed to have sympathy for him then?
If he had told the truth at the beginning, he wouldn't have been convicted. If he had told the truth after he was sentenced, his lawyer could have acted on it much sooner. He quite simply dug his own grave.
And don't worry. I wouldn't fucking kill you over this either.
Are you kidding? I'd love to see sausages being made. All that good meat, and tasty fat, ground up into a pulp then squished into an animal intestine that still smells faintly of shit...
Basically, I agree with you on this guy. He got shafted. And if all death penalty cases were like this I would agree to abolish it. But this case is not the normal death penalty case. There were many reasons he was convicted and sentenced to death. Foremost among those was his own lies. Which is why I said he isn't the poster child for wrongful conviction.
The part of his case I found hardest to believe, when I read about it a couple years ago, was how wrong the assumptions of the way fire behaves were. The movie "Backdraft" had some of the things that they thought was how fire behaved, and the prosecution's experts followed it like a training manual. Turns out they were wrong, as another fire showed later.
But how did they never test those theories before? Not just that local fire department, but at several fire departments all across the country, years earlier, and publish the findings so everyone else would know they were wrong in so many ways. I know they do controlled burns, so why didn't they know for sure the difference in how glass crazes and cracks from slow or fast fires? Or how fire leaves marks on the floor similar to having gasoline poured on the floor and lit?
Imagine if auto accidents were treated the same way, with investigators comparing accident scenes with "The Fast and the Furious". Or naval training being based on "Battleship". No professional would accept that level of ignorance of basic knowledge.
The main thing this case accomplished was to show that fire inspectors really had no idea about half the things they made decisions on. They were either idiots or criminally inept, depending on how much they tried to figure out about fire. And from the details, I would go with criminally inept. If the investigators were put on trial, I would support convicting them.
With all that said, the case still isn't enough to ban capital punishment. It is mistakes like this that push the system to be more accurate, just like the programs using DNA to get convictions overturned. Ideally, I would want a perfect system, but I know that isn't humanly possible. We need it to be as accurate as it can be.
The post I replied to only mentioned the cost of execution. If that is the only criteria the person is concerned with, not due process or wrongful convictions, than the reality of the costs should be mentioned. Notice I didn't say that I support killing the convicted murderers within a month of their conviction. Only that that would resolve the cost issue the poster took issue with.
It isn't a deterrent because criminals know they have a 0.1% chance of being executed within a year of committing the most heinous murder, and a 0.0% chance of being executed for anything else (other than in Texas).
Put that up to 99% chance for all murder convictions, and what does that do to deterrence after five years?
The sarcasm is because those things affect millions of people, and millions of people don't turn into murderers and rapists. Saying you oppose the death penalty because of lack of prenatal care is a cop out in my opinion.
Does your opposition to the death penalty vanish if the convicted murderer came from a good home with plenty of pre- and post-natal care? If not, it isn't a valid point, because your opinion doesn't hang on it.
The other part of your argument also doesn't hold up very well. As I've said in other posts, get the system under control, and "the billions spent every year to execute a handful of criminals" would shrink to under a million. Rope and bullets are cheaper than decades of lawyers. So if you want to save billions of dollars, and then give all poor women better health care, execute the worst criminals a month after their conviction.
In conclusion, yes sarcasm was warranted for your post. Because it claimed two things that are not at odds with capital punishment, but tried to use them to prove capital punishment is wrong. Personally, I am fine with you guys that oppose capital punishment. I've voted for politicians that are opposed to capital punishment. I don't think we are at the stage where we can ensure no innocent person is convicted. You do want to make the system better. In that, I support you.
I just happen to think society would be better off with a strict and swift capital punishment system. Innocent people are being killed and raped every day. Innocent people are also being arrested or convicted, and then imprisoned, every day. Not executing murderers and rapists isn't keeping innocent people from being killed, raped, or imprisoned.
If the guy hadn't left his kids to die in a house fire, he wouldn't have been convicted. If he had admitted he left his kids to die in a house fire, he wouldn't have been convicted.
Instead, he left his kids to die in a house fire, thinking only to save his own skin. He then lied about trying to save his children, when it was obvious he hadn't. The jury went with the story that made sense, since this guy was lying about his actions.
I'd be fine with you giving it to me, if in exchange all people convicted of murder, rape, child molestation, grand theft, public corruption (as in politicians taking bribes), and corporate corruption (CEOs financially raping their company as with Enron) were swiftly executed upon conviction.
I would go to my death knowing my family would be much safer in the future, and that is all that matters to me.
Also, good to see you think people who disagree with you should die. Should I hazard a guess as to your political affiliation?
"Murder" is a legal fiction. As in one person killing another person is only defined as "murder" by the legal system itself. So, whatever version of one person killing another person is permitted by the legal system, by definition is not murder.
Only because of the endless appeals, and we are paying both sets of lawyers, court costs, guards, and all living expenses for decades. If you want to lower the cost, kill all convicted murderers and rapists within a month of their conviction. Throw in Enron-style grand larceny convictions as well, so it won't be called racist.
Oh no you're totally wrong. This guy obviously only became a murderer and rapist because of a lack of prenatal care. Giving his mother some vitamins would have completely solved the problem.
Sarcasm aside, I agree with you on the eternal appeals that keeps these guys alive for decades. I say give them all one appeal, that includes all of the items from the trial that they can claim were wrong. That appeal is heard and decided within the year. If it is approved, they get a new trial. If it is denied, they get hanged the next day.
Because if one of the justifications against the death penalty is its cost, this will keep the cost down quite well.
And if he had been honest at his trial, he would have been found innocent then. But he lied, and the jury could tell he was lying. So the prosecution's case made sense, and the jury convicted him.
He also left his children to burn to death in a house fire, thinking only about saving his own ass. So, I don't have a whole lot of sympathy for him. If my daughter was in a burning house, I would run into it to save her, even at the threat of my own life. Most parents would at least attempt to do so. He didn't, but claimed he did.
So, yes Texas most likely killed a man who didn't willingly kill his family. But he isn't the poster child of wrongful conviction you may think he is.
Government soldiers take lives in war, and cops take lives in gun battles on the streets. Is it your stance that both should be permanently disbanded?
If "the right to life" was so sacrosanct, the founding fathers would have never had a revolution to begin with, since people die in war. If either the Declaration of Independence or the 8th Amendment to the Constitution precluded the death penalty, capital punishment would have been outlawed in the 1700s. That didn't happen, so obviously, that was not the intent of passages in those documents that our country was founded on.
Slashdot Mirror
That is the most coherent argument for public transportation Hogwarts has seen these many years.
And if he had said that at his trial, or during his first appeal, he would be alive today.
I get it. He was convicted for a crime he didn't commit. (99.99% sure on that.) But he didn't have to run into the house to save one of his children. He just had to grab her rather than leaving her. And since he was not on fire at the time, he really has no point in that quote. In fact, he had to run past the fire to get to the front door. He could have grabbed his daughter and ran the other way, out the back door.
You can't do two things at once? What are you, 3 years old?
GROW UP AND DRIVE LIKE AN ADULT.
You're blaming Ms. Chatty and Mrs. Nosy instead of blaming yourself like you should. If they're distracting, pull over and tell them to shut up. If they don't then refuse to drive with them in the car and leave them right there.
Spoken like a true not-a-husband.
Lady, leave you man's balls alone. Stop torturing the guy by squeezing them while he's sleeping.
For the love of god, find some other way to make him stop snoring.
Shit, I'd be ok with him doing that to me for cutting him off.
As my cousin Vinny says, I could use a good ass-kicking.
Everyone who is driving a car is risking their own lives as well as everyone else's.
There were accidents long before cell phones.
If you don't like people dying in car accidents, ban automobiles. It's the only solution.
I answer calls in my car all the time. Sometimes it's from the wife, sometimes a job. If you can't drive safely while holding a phone to your ear, you don't deserve to be on the road. There are distractions everywhere.
Police car over there, make sure I'm driving ok. ....
Ambulance siren; where is it? Do I have to change lanes?
Damn short green arrow, maybe I can floor it and make it through.
Hey, I like this song. "Sweeeeet Hoooome Alabama"
So, when that girl last night looked at me, I should have said
And on and on.
If you are getting in accidents because you are talking to someone who isn't in the car with you, stop driving.
And, no, none of my accidents have been because I was on a cell phone. Or drunk/high.
You've never been near a major fire. It's not the abstract "threat" of possible death that stops you... It's the insane heat, guaranteed 3rd degree burns over your entire body in seconds even several feet away from the flames if you don't have fire fighter's protective gear, that most people can't possibly imagine until they've been up-close and personal with it.
That's the thing though. The guy didn't have third degree burns, and his daughter didn't burn up. He had a slight singe, and she died of smoke inhalation. However you want to look at it is fine. But the guy left his child behind as he ran. The girl was right next to him, because she was who woke him up. All he had to do was put an arm around her, and then run.
As a matter of fact, your exact argument is how they knew he was lying. He claimed he tried to get to the twins in the front room, where the fire started. Yet he had no burns, and was only slightly singed. As you point out, he would have third degree burns if he was telling the truth. Yet, he insisted he wasn't lying, until it was too late to matter.
I've said it earlier, but I'll repeat it here. I don't think he deserved to die for what he did. But he dug his own grave, and it took years for him to do so. For that, I don't have much sympathy for him.
Thanks for the link. I bookmarked it and will watch it later when I have a chance.
Thankfully, no I've never been in a house fire, so haven't been scared of death by burning. But I have been in other situation that could mean life and death, and my thoughts were on how to get out without anyone dying.
Mr. Willingham was lying on his bed sleeping, and his little daughter came up and said there was smoke or a fire. He jumped up, saw the smoke, and ran for the front door. His dead daughter was found on or near the bed. He didn't even think to grab her and take her with him.
I can say for certain, in that situation, I would have saved at least one child. This is why I don't have sympathy for him. When his child's life depended on him, he acted like a wild animal and ran. Because of his action, his daughter died.
I can understand that the other two children, the twins, were not able to be saved, because they were indeed in the inferno. But to leave the child who woke him up, that was unconscionable. Then to lie about it, all through the trial and right up until his death was near before confessing. Why am I supposed to have sympathy for him then?
If he had told the truth at the beginning, he wouldn't have been convicted. If he had told the truth after he was sentenced, his lawyer could have acted on it much sooner. He quite simply dug his own grave.
And don't worry. I wouldn't fucking kill you over this either.
Mauve?? I hate mauve!!
Ban the mauvey TPP!!
Are you kidding? I'd love to see sausages being made. All that good meat, and tasty fat, ground up into a pulp then squished into an animal intestine that still smells faintly of shit...
Ok, I see your point.
Basically, I agree with you on this guy. He got shafted. And if all death penalty cases were like this I would agree to abolish it. But this case is not the normal death penalty case. There were many reasons he was convicted and sentenced to death. Foremost among those was his own lies. Which is why I said he isn't the poster child for wrongful conviction.
The part of his case I found hardest to believe, when I read about it a couple years ago, was how wrong the assumptions of the way fire behaves were. The movie "Backdraft" had some of the things that they thought was how fire behaved, and the prosecution's experts followed it like a training manual. Turns out they were wrong, as another fire showed later.
But how did they never test those theories before? Not just that local fire department, but at several fire departments all across the country, years earlier, and publish the findings so everyone else would know they were wrong in so many ways. I know they do controlled burns, so why didn't they know for sure the difference in how glass crazes and cracks from slow or fast fires? Or how fire leaves marks on the floor similar to having gasoline poured on the floor and lit?
Imagine if auto accidents were treated the same way, with investigators comparing accident scenes with "The Fast and the Furious". Or naval training being based on "Battleship". No professional would accept that level of ignorance of basic knowledge.
The main thing this case accomplished was to show that fire inspectors really had no idea about half the things they made decisions on. They were either idiots or criminally inept, depending on how much they tried to figure out about fire. And from the details, I would go with criminally inept. If the investigators were put on trial, I would support convicting them.
With all that said, the case still isn't enough to ban capital punishment. It is mistakes like this that push the system to be more accurate, just like the programs using DNA to get convictions overturned. Ideally, I would want a perfect system, but I know that isn't humanly possible. We need it to be as accurate as it can be.
The post I replied to only mentioned the cost of execution. If that is the only criteria the person is concerned with, not due process or wrongful convictions, than the reality of the costs should be mentioned. Notice I didn't say that I support killing the convicted murderers within a month of their conviction. Only that that would resolve the cost issue the poster took issue with.
It isn't a deterrent because criminals know they have a 0.1% chance of being executed within a year of committing the most heinous murder, and a 0.0% chance of being executed for anything else (other than in Texas).
Put that up to 99% chance for all murder convictions, and what does that do to deterrence after five years?
The sarcasm is because those things affect millions of people, and millions of people don't turn into murderers and rapists. Saying you oppose the death penalty because of lack of prenatal care is a cop out in my opinion.
Does your opposition to the death penalty vanish if the convicted murderer came from a good home with plenty of pre- and post-natal care? If not, it isn't a valid point, because your opinion doesn't hang on it.
The other part of your argument also doesn't hold up very well. As I've said in other posts, get the system under control, and "the billions spent every year to execute a handful of criminals" would shrink to under a million. Rope and bullets are cheaper than decades of lawyers. So if you want to save billions of dollars, and then give all poor women better health care, execute the worst criminals a month after their conviction.
In conclusion, yes sarcasm was warranted for your post. Because it claimed two things that are not at odds with capital punishment, but tried to use them to prove capital punishment is wrong. Personally, I am fine with you guys that oppose capital punishment. I've voted for politicians that are opposed to capital punishment. I don't think we are at the stage where we can ensure no innocent person is convicted. You do want to make the system better. In that, I support you.
I just happen to think society would be better off with a strict and swift capital punishment system. Innocent people are being killed and raped every day. Innocent people are also being arrested or convicted, and then imprisoned, every day. Not executing murderers and rapists isn't keeping innocent people from being killed, raped, or imprisoned.
So, if they had used a bullet within a month of his conviction, you would be fine with capital punishment?
Because that's what I'm reading.
If the guy hadn't left his kids to die in a house fire, he wouldn't have been convicted. If he had admitted he left his kids to die in a house fire, he wouldn't have been convicted.
Instead, he left his kids to die in a house fire, thinking only to save his own skin. He then lied about trying to save his children, when it was obvious he hadn't. The jury went with the story that made sense, since this guy was lying about his actions.
Did he deserve to die? No.
Am I broken up that he died? No.
I'd be fine with you giving it to me, if in exchange all people convicted of murder, rape, child molestation, grand theft, public corruption (as in politicians taking bribes), and corporate corruption (CEOs financially raping their company as with Enron) were swiftly executed upon conviction.
I would go to my death knowing my family would be much safer in the future, and that is all that matters to me.
Also, good to see you think people who disagree with you should die. Should I hazard a guess as to your political affiliation?
"Murder" is a legal fiction. As in one person killing another person is only defined as "murder" by the legal system itself. So, whatever version of one person killing another person is permitted by the legal system, by definition is not murder.
Murder and rape are not "21st century crime"s. They are as old as humanity, and can be dealt with as they have been for thousands of years.
Only because of the endless appeals, and we are paying both sets of lawyers, court costs, guards, and all living expenses for decades. If you want to lower the cost, kill all convicted murderers and rapists within a month of their conviction. Throw in Enron-style grand larceny convictions as well, so it won't be called racist.
That ought to take care of old lobster head.
Oh no you're totally wrong. This guy obviously only became a murderer and rapist because of a lack of prenatal care. Giving his mother some vitamins would have completely solved the problem.
Sarcasm aside, I agree with you on the eternal appeals that keeps these guys alive for decades. I say give them all one appeal, that includes all of the items from the trial that they can claim were wrong. That appeal is heard and decided within the year. If it is approved, they get a new trial. If it is denied, they get hanged the next day.
Because if one of the justifications against the death penalty is its cost, this will keep the cost down quite well.
And if he had been honest at his trial, he would have been found innocent then. But he lied, and the jury could tell he was lying. So the prosecution's case made sense, and the jury convicted him.
He also left his children to burn to death in a house fire, thinking only about saving his own ass. So, I don't have a whole lot of sympathy for him. If my daughter was in a burning house, I would run into it to save her, even at the threat of my own life. Most parents would at least attempt to do so. He didn't, but claimed he did.
So, yes Texas most likely killed a man who didn't willingly kill his family. But he isn't the poster child of wrongful conviction you may think he is.
Government soldiers take lives in war, and cops take lives in gun battles on the streets. Is it your stance that both should be permanently disbanded?
If "the right to life" was so sacrosanct, the founding fathers would have never had a revolution to begin with, since people die in war. If either the Declaration of Independence or the 8th Amendment to the Constitution precluded the death penalty, capital punishment would have been outlawed in the 1700s. That didn't happen, so obviously, that was not the intent of passages in those documents that our country was founded on.