Quote of the Day

"A preexisting medical condition of the inmate was the reason tonight's procedure took longer than recent procedures carried out this year," - Gov. Jeb Bush

Translation;

"He had a bad liver that didn't absorb the poison very quickly, so we had to double dose him. That's why it took longer to kill him then the other people we've killed this year."

The crime took place 27 years go.. and he claimed he did not kill anybody.

Moments before his execution, Diaz again denied killing Joseph Nagy during a robbery at the Velvet Swing Lounge. There were no eyewitnesses to Nagy's Dec. 29, 1979, murder. Most of the club's employees and patrons were locked in a restroom, but Diaz's girlfriend told police he was involved.

Oh.. his girlfriend said he was "involved". Seems perfectly reasonable to kill him then. After all, if his girlfriend admits she might have lied about it, they can just dig him up and let him go I guess..

From another article;

Diaz was not convicted until 1984 after a trial in which he represented himself with the aid of a court-appointed attorney. The jury recommended death by eight votes to four.

A witness, Ralph Gajus, recently recanted his testimony, saying he lied on the witness stand in 1984 because he was angry with Diaz. Gajus was serving a 20-year sentence for second-degree murder.

** updated

From a persuasive and logical op/ed,

This is just one of a long line of such cases. Accusers recant, guilty parties confess, the lab makes a match that wasn't possible before. Since 1976, more than a thousand men and women have been executed in the United States. But during that same period more than 123 death-row inmates have been exonerated. That's a terrible statistical average. Put another way, more than 123 individuals truly guilty of savage crimes were walking free while someone else sat waiting on death row. And most, if not all, of those death-row inmates would have been wrongly executed if not for the lengthy appeals process death-penalty advocates like to decry.

There are innumerable reasons why capital punishment is wrong. There's only one reason why it's right - emotions.

And spare me the "we'll only execute people we know for sure are guilty". If there's one thing that should have universal understanding, it's that if there are human beings involved in any decision making process, regardless of the circumstances, mistakes will happen.

I'm not willing to be a mistake, so cannot morally subject anyone else to it. Capital punishment is an embarrassment to humanity.