A Houston judge has granted a pretrial motion declaring the death penalty unconstitutional, saying he believes innocent people have been executed, the Houston Chronicle reports. "Based on the moratorium (on the death penalty) in Illinois, the Innocence Project and more than 200 people being exonerated nationwide, it can only be concluded that innocent people have been executed," state District Judge Kevin Fine said.
Fine said trial judges are gatekeepers of society's standard for decency and fairness. "Are you willing to have your brother, your father, your mother be the sacrificial lamb, to be the innocent person executed so that we can have a death penalty so that we can execute those who are deserving of the death penalty?" he said. "I don't think society's mindset is that way now." Fine's ruling will be appealed and almost certainly reversed. If judges "feel strongly enough, sometimes they'll grant a motion like this to buck the system, just to stir the waters,” said University of Houston law Prof. Sandra Thompson.
Posted by Dudley Sharp
Sunday, March 14, 2010 01:26
Judge Fine gets caught with his pants down
Dudley Sharp, contact info below
3/10/10
Judge Fine is not truly backing off or rescinding his finding that the Texas death penalty statute is unconstitutional. It is a tactical withdrawal to cover his ass.
I suspect it won’t matter what happens in the April 27th hearing. Judge Fine will repeat his original error/finding.
Judge Fine realized that he looked like a fool and/or an idiot because he was wrong on the facts and the law in his first two episodes. (1)
The judge, now, says “. . . he still wants more information on whether the state’s death penalty statute is unconstitutional because it allows for the possible execution of an innocent person.” Thus, the hearing.
To repeat, Judge Fine there is no law or opinion that finds that due process must be infallible. Since the first incarcerations and the first executions, man has always known that there was always the “possibility” of actual innocents being imprisoned and/or executed and that, in both cases, due process may not reveal that actual innocence prior to their deaths, or ever.
In other words, the judge has already made up his mind that due process must be infallible and no matter what occurs in the hearing, he has already decided to support his original ruling, not matter how fallible his understanding of the facts and the law.
That is also why Judge Fine is also in error in saying that he is not challenging the constitutionality of the death penalty, but instead that the statute is unconstitutional. No judge, what you are doing, as if you don’t know it, is challenging the constitutionality of due process that is not perfect.
The April hearing will welcome in a bunch of anti death penalty legal specialists who will try to cover Judge Fine’s rear.
It matters not a wit what the state/prosecution side will say to contradict the anti death penalty cabal, inclusive of the judge. Judge Fine will repeat his original error/finding and then he will be overturned. He just wants the show, first.
The king’s new clothes.
1) a) “Judge Fine was injudicious and irresponsible”, Dudley Sharp, 3/5/10 and
b) “Judge’s Clarification Puts Him in More Hot Water: Texas Death Penalty Ruled Unconstitutional”, Dudley Sharp, 3/7/10
both at www.opposingviews.com/i/texas-death-penalty-ruled-unconstitutional-appeal-likely