Dennis Elias’s Latest Tweet :. Injustice News Twitter Feed :.Mark Bennett | March 9, 2010
A Houston judge who ruled last week that the proceedings surrounding the Texas death penalty are unconstitutional rescinded his ruling this morning to schedule a hearing for lawyers on both sides to submit arguments on the issue.
(Houston Chronicle, from which the Keirnan and Allen quotes below also come)
While I wasn’t able to attend [...]
Mark Bennett | March 7, 2010
Friday, Fine clarified that he declared the procedures Texas has in place to carry out the death penalty unconstitutional, a legal parsing even to the prosecutors trying the case.
The Houston Chronicle clings doggedly to the false proposition that Kevin Fine “declared the death penalty unconstitutional Thursday.” On Friday Judge Fine clarified why he [...]
Mark Bennett | March 5, 2010
More news, documents, and analysis of Kevin Fine’s order holding the Texas death penalty procedure statute, Code of Criminal Procedure Article 37.071, unconstitutional:
Yesterday I brought you the motion, and the order Judge Fine signed. I explained how the press had the story wrong (the death penalty isn’t unconstitutional; the procedural statute is; correcting the statute [...]
Mark Bennett | March 4, 2010
A courtroom observer reports that Judge Fine took judicial notice of more than 200 death row inmates exonerated, most due to DNA retests, which called into question many more cases where DNA was not available to retest.
The following are approximate quotes from Judge Fine:
I must decide what our evolving standards or decency are, such that [...]
Mark Bennett | March 4, 2010
Brian Rogers of the Houston Chronicle reported today that Judge Kevin Fine of the 177th District Court “declared the death penalty unconstitutional.” This caused the Chronicle’s anonymous commenters to gibber ignorantly in righteous indignation like a cage full of unusually stupid monkeys. Which is always fun.
Paul Kennedy was immediately on the story, for which Jeff [...]
Mark Bennett | October 16, 2009
Cameron Todd Willingham’s trial lawyer, David Martin, on Anderson Cooper yesterday.
Awfully defensive for a guy who thinks he is right. Repeated highlights:
“You pour lighter fluid on a carpet and set it on fire, it looks just like those pictures.” (We’re not much on the scientific method here in Texas.)
“I have been a trial lawyer for [...]
Mark Bennett | September 2, 2009
I’ve been meaning to write this piece for a while, either as a blog post or as the framework for a piece of speculative legal fiction. Cindy Henley’s and Jeff Gamso’s comments to my post about the Cameron Todd Willingham case prompted me to do it now, rather than later . . . .
If you [...]
Mark Bennett | September 2, 2009
Cameron Todd Willingham died at age 36. Convicted of capital murder in Corsicana, Texas in 1991 for the fire death of his three daughters, Willingham was executed in 2004.
The evidence against Willingham? A jailhouse snitch, Johnny Webb, who
alleged that Willingham had confessed to him that he took “some kind of lighter fluid, squirting [it] around [...]
Mark Bennett | May 23, 2009
“There is no comparison between the crimes and the sentence,” said
Sheik Fadhil al-Janabi, a Sunni tribal leader in Anbar Province. “That
soldier entered an Iraqi house, raped their underage daughter and
burned her with her family, so this sentence is not enough, and it is
insulting for Iraqis’ honor.” (NYTimes.com)
When I read that Iraqi tribal leaders are upset [...]
Mark Bennett | March 23, 2009
I wrote way back in ought-seven about how criminal defense lawyers are unembarrassable. I find my unembarrassability challenged by this: Houston lawyer Jerome Godinich has blown deadlines to file writs of habeas corpus for death row prisoners three times.
In [two of the] cases, the lawyer waited until after business hours on the last day an [...]
