Four years after a US execution, a different man’s DNA is found on the murder weapon

[Idris2002]

Idris2002, dunno if he took a rope to Dublin, he didn’t in the U.K., what he did take to Ireland though was a revolver in case the natives took umbrage at the English hangman come to off a Paddy...

Or the revolver may be an urban legend like the rope.

 

[A380]

Most of the old Victorian Prisons still have the execution room. Primarily because it was basically just a two story room with the trap door between the two rooms and a big , six inch beam across the top room for the rope. Normally the condemned cell would have a second door, sometimes made to look like a book case of similar that led to the very short corridor to the upper room. Presumably it would be too much faff to dig out the beam and and change all those rooms unless you were re-modelling anyway.

I read Pierpont's autobiography which is equally chilling and fascinating. He prided himself on the speed from entering the cell to the person being dead as he thought that was kinder. The section on how he executed all of the Nuremberg Nazi criminals in batches is truly horrendous, even in a case where my opposition to the death penalty was massively tested. He indeed came to think there was no point to it all. It's a chilling but surprisingly reflective book and recommended for anyone thinking of the issues.

 

[tim]

The use of DNA as a tool for identifying people isn't as old as that. The first case that used DNA to convict was Colin Pitchfork in the late eighties.

It is a lifetime ago, which is why Colin Pitchfork is about to be released. There are so many people pointlessly incarcerated, but I feel uneasy about someone who brutally raped and murdered two women being released

Colin Pitchfork: Double schoolgirl murderer can be released

 

[Pickman's model]

It is a lifetime ago, which is why Colin Pitchfork is about to be released. There are so many people pointlessly incarcerated, but I feel uneasy about someone who brutally raped and murdered two women being released

Colin Pitchfork: Double schoolgirl murderer can be released

more than two lifetimes ago

 

[tim]

My Da had a story he'd heard once (at least I have it in my head that he told me this, but I don't actually remember him telling me this. . . ) about the time Pierrepoint was brought over to hang somebody by the Dublin government.

Pierrepoint had - or so the story went - gone into a pub in Dublin and was getting on famously with the regulars. . . at least until someone knocked over his bag, and the rope spilled out of it.

Thing is, though, Pierrepoint didn't travel with a rope, when he came to Dublin a rope was provided for him. I suppose Slavoj Zizek would have a psychoanalytic explanation for this one, all about the obscene nature of the spectacle and so forth.

existentialist - there are a few Commonwealth countries (only in the Caribbean?) where the last court of appeal for death row prisoners is still the Privy council in London.

This made me think of the Quare Fellow by Brendan Behan which I read at school, but have never seen. The film version is apparently not faithful to the play but does have Patrick McGoohan and is on Youtube. It probably doesn't feature Pierpoint's revolver.

 

[StoneRoad]

As I have said a (vast) number of times, I am opposed to the Death Penalty on several grounds.
The most dominant of which is that it can't be un-done if a mistake of some sort has been made.
Nor is it any sort of deterrent.

 

[Bahnhof Strasse]

It is a lifetime ago, which is why Colin Pitchfork is about to be released. There are so many people pointlessly incarcerated, but I feel uneasy about someone who brutally raped and murdered two women being released

Colin Pitchfork: Double schoolgirl murderer can be released

Two separate murders today would almost certainly attract a whole life tariff.

 

[Sue]

I read Pierpont's autobiography which is equally chilling and fascinating. He prided himself on the speed from entering the cell to the person being dead as he thought that was kinder. The section on how he executed all of the Nuremberg Nazi criminals in batches is truly horrendous, even in a case where my opposition to the death penalty was massively tested. He indeed came to think there was no point to it all. It's a chilling but surprisingly reflective book and recommended for anyone thinking of the issues.

I remember reading it when I was about 10. Looking back on it, it maybe wasn't super age appropriate...

 

[weltweit]

I am not altogether comfortable with the proposed release of Colin Pitchfork.

It seems for him life did not mean life.

 

[Pickman's model]

I am not altogether comfortable with the proposed release of Colin Pitchfork.

It seems for him life did not mean life.

could we keep platitudes off this thread pls

 

[existentialist]

I am not altogether comfortable with the proposed release of Colin Pitchfork.

It seems for him life did not mean life.

I don't think the idea is that everyone has to be comfortable with releases, or nobody would ever get released from prison. And "life" doesn't mean "in prison for life", it means that certain provisions within the sentence (probation, supervision, restrictions on activities and movements) will continue until the offender dies. Lots of people make that mistake, sometimes, I fear, wilfully.

 

[AnnO'Neemus]

But back to the OP...

Shouldn't whoever denied the request for DNA testing/ordered the execution to go ahead be tried for murder or conspiracy to murder? I mean, they caused an innocent man to be killed, which could have been avoided, so shouldn't there be some accountability for that?