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What do you think? Will Preston Hughes be executed in Texas on Thursday??


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What do you think? Will Preston Hughes be executed in T... - 11/12/2012 7:29:44 AM   
stellauk


Posts: 1360
Status: offline 		The election of a new President can often bring attention to someone awaiting execution. Back in 1992 Clinton broke off his campaign to sign the death warrant of Ricky Ray Rector in Arkansas, believed by some to be mentally retarded. The election of George W. Bush brought attention to the case of Gary 'Shankofa' Graham in Texas in 2002.

However the reelection of Barack Obama to the White House has not brought any attention to the case of Preston Hughes who is scheduled to be executed in Texas this coming Thursday, November 15.

Here is where you will find the Texas Department of Criminal Justice factsheet on Preston Hughes.

Hughes was convicted in the September 1988 stabbing deaths of Shandra Charles, 15, and her three year old cousin Marcell Thomas. The two victims were found lying on a dirt path behind a Houston restaurant. Charles was still alive and told police that 'Preston tried to rape me'. Lab tests later revealed that she had been raped. The girl's dying statement led police to an apartment block at the end of the dirt path. Hughes was the only 'Preston' living there. The police found the girl's eyeglasses in the apartment and evidence of blood on Hughes' clothing.

Hughes gave two statements to police before finally admitting to the murders. Both victims died of stab wounds.

However there's been a campaign led by a blogger - the Skeptical Juror - which shows just how easily someone innocent can be sent to death row and executed for a crime they didn't commit.

There is also the article in the Huffington Post

Briefly, about the case:

The confessions Both confessions took place in the middle of the night and were not videotaped by Houston police. On both confessions violence was either used or threatened and during the second confession the police threatened Hughes with his life.

Furthermore the confessions do not match up either with each other or with the crime scene evidence. Both victims died as a result of precise stab wounds yet Hughes confessed to 'wildly stabbing' the victims repeatedly.

The dying declaration According to the autopsy report of the wounds on the teenager's body she had died due to both the carotid artery and jugular vein being severed. The victim would have lost brain function within 90 seconds. The first cop didn't arrive on the scene for 15 minutes. There was no way that the victim could have identified Hughes or anyone else as her assailant.

The murder weapon From forensic evidence the murder weapon was a double edged blade which was 5/8 of an inch wide, and not the one inch thick single edged knife police recovered from Hughes' apartment. The Houston crime lab was unable to link the blood on Hughes knife with any of the victims.

The bloodied clothing No blood was actually found on Hughes clothing other than some traces in follow up testing and they could not determine whether it was human blood or not.

The eyeglasses The authorities claimed that the teenager's eyeglasses were found in the couch in Hughes' apartment during a search, but were not recorded in the inventory of items taken from the apartment. Suspiciously later they appeared in a photograph taken in Hughes apartment and were probably planted. Furthermore during the trial a member of the prosecution team was seen to borrow make up from a woman at the court to smear over the eyeglasses which were to be used in evidence.

Much of the lab testing didn't take place in a laboratory but on the witness stand during the trial.

The court appointed defense lawyer Patrick MacCann has been Hughes defense lawyer for 14 years and has not raised the issue of innocence and refuses to do so. Hughes has repeatedly tried to dismiss MacCann as his defense lawyer. In this recent article in the New York Times MacCann refused to comment on why he will not pursue Hughes' claims of innocence.

'We don't like each other,' Preston Hughes says of his lawyer Mr MacCann, 'I don't feel that someone who doesn't like me is going to do anything for me.'


What do you think? Your thoughts and comments welcome.





< Message edited by stellauk -- 11/12/2012 7:31:29 AM >

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RE: What do you think? Will Preston Hughes be executed ... - 11/12/2012 7:33:16 AM   
TheHeretic


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Status: offline 		Yes. He'll be executed.

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RE: What do you think? Will Preston Hughes be executed ... - 11/12/2012 7:53:11 AM   
Aylee


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Status: offline 		To actually get to the execution of a person in the US is a long and complex process.  Why should we let this guy live?  What or whose intrest is being served? 

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RE: What do you think? Will Preston Hughes be executed ... - 11/12/2012 7:57:03 AM   
TheHeretic


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Status: offline 		You do understand that both Clinton and Bush II were governors of the states involved, and had jurisdiction in the matters, right?

And here's another tidbit. The same electorate that gave Obama California's 55 electoral votes also voted to keep the death penalty on the books in this state.

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RE: What do you think? Will Preston Hughes be executed ... - 11/12/2012 8:35:19 AM   
Yachtie


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Status: offline 		If the 'evidentiary facts' presented in the OP are correct... something is rotten in Denmark.

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RE: What do you think? Will Preston Hughes be executed ... - 11/12/2012 10:17:49 AM   
Owner59


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Status: offline 		If the guy is poor and or black......yes.

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RE: What do you think? Will Preston Hughes be executed ... - 11/12/2012 10:31:52 AM   
SadistDave


Posts: 801
Joined: 3/11/2005
Status: offline 		He's black. I believe the children were black as well.

- Black-on-black crime - The courts don't really care. (Tragic, but true)
- The crime involved the rape of a child and the murder of 2 children.
- As Aylee pointed out, there is a fairly involved process to actually get someone to a death chamber.

I don't see a reprieve in the mans future...

-SD-

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RE: What do you think? Will Preston Hughes be executed ... - 11/12/2012 10:38:57 AM   
stellauk


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quote:

ORIGINAL: Aylee

To actually get to the execution of a person in the US is a long and complex process.  Why should we let this guy live?  What or whose intrest is being served? 


Okay, so by following that rationale we can also apply it to recent events in Benghazi, right?

I mean, international relations is terribly complex, and only a couple of people got killed.

It's not like it's anything major, is it? I mean, shit happens.



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RE: What do you think? Will Preston Hughes be executed ... - 11/12/2012 10:50:33 AM   
DaddySatyr


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Status: offline 		What do you think? Will Preston Hughes be executed in Texas on Thursday??

Good riddence to bad rubbish.



Death to (actual) rapists.



Michael

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RE: What do you think? Will Preston Hughes be executed ... - 11/12/2012 11:18:38 AM   
Moonhead


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quote:

ORIGINAL: DaddySatyr

What do you think? Will Preston Hughes be executed in Texas on Thursday??

Good riddence to bad rubbish.



Death to (actual) rapists.



Michael

There's some doubt that he actually raped anybody.

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RE: What do you think? Will Preston Hughes be executed ... - 11/12/2012 11:35:57 AM   
PeonForHer


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Any lawyers in the house? This doesn't look as though it'd stand up in a British court.

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RE: What do you think? Will Preston Hughes be executed ... - 11/12/2012 11:38:49 AM   
mnottertail


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Status: offline 		And it wouldnt stand up in most american courts, but it is Texas and they have a history and a pride in doing this sort of frontier justice, fuck any facts to contrary.  Somebody gotta hang. 

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RE: What do you think? Will Preston Hughes be executed ... - 11/12/2012 11:39:26 AM   
kalikshama


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Status: offline 		This is Texas. He will be executed, and from the seemingly invalidity of the dying declaration alone, seems like executed unjustly, which is why I am against the death penalty.

ps - I might be for the death penalty in some cases if the sentence were guaranteed to be just, which is not possible.

pps - As I was typing that, I remembered two other problems I have with the death penalty:

1. It does not work as a deterrent (Eighty-eight percent of the country's top criminologists do not believe the death penalty acts as a deterrent to homicide)
2. The death penalty is infected with racial bias

It is tempting to pretend that minorities on death row share a fate in no way connected to our own, that our treatment of them sounds no echoes beyond the chambers in which they die. Such an illusion is ultimately corrosive, for the reverberations of injustice are not so easily confined. -Justice William Brennan (1987)

< Message edited by kalikshama -- 11/12/2012 11:58:37 AM >

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RE: What do you think? Will Preston Hughes be executed ... - 11/12/2012 11:44:15 AM   
wilddreams17


Posts: 14
Joined: 6/27/2010
Status: offline 		oh my ... from the factsheet in post 1 I d say he might not even found proven guilty in most countries -
apart from that the death penalty is a blemish on the high moral standards of the USA that brings them on a level with Iran and China ...

and yes they will execute him by all means if only to keep that system of legal state murder afloat no matter what, and to entertain the "righteous" ...

a shame nonetheless


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RE: What do you think? Will Preston Hughes be executed ... - 11/12/2012 11:50:30 AM   
Moonhead


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quote:

ORIGINAL: PeonForHer

FR

Any lawyers in the house? This doesn't look as though it'd stand up in a British court.

I'd fucking hope it wouldn't.

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RE: What do you think? Will Preston Hughes be executed ... - 11/12/2012 11:52:53 AM   
mnottertail


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Status: offline 		But you're a civilized peoples, excepting the picts, and the scousers.

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RE: What do you think? Will Preston Hughes be executed ... - 11/12/2012 12:22:27 PM   
fucktoyprincess


Posts: 2337
Status: offline 		I do not support the death penalty, for all of the reasons discussed by others like Kali above.

So while this man may be executed, I think it is wrong.

I see nothing wrong with life imprisonment for serious crimes (rather than the death penalty). Loss of freedom over an entire lifetime actually seems to me a greater punishment than death.

And, surprisingly, it is often cheaper for society to simply opt for life imprisonment, as the death penalty process is a hugely expensive one.

Also, interestingly, many of the crimes that horrify the most, are often committed by people who are mentally unstable and therefore cannot be executed, anyway.

So taking all these considerations into account (including what others have said), I just feel the death penalty serves no useful purpose, and simply marks us as an uncivilized society.

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RE: What do you think? Will Preston Hughes be executed ... - 11/12/2012 12:24:35 PM   
Moonhead


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quote:

ORIGINAL: mnottertail

But you're a civilized peoples, excepting the picts, and the scousers.

They don't have the death sentence in Wales or Liverpool, either, Ron.


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RE: What do you think? Will Preston Hughes be executed ... - 11/12/2012 12:26:31 PM   
Moonhead


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quote:

ORIGINAL: fucktoyprincess
And, surprisingly, it is often cheaper for society to simply opt for life imprisonment, as the death penalty process is a hugely expensive one.

Why is that a surprise?
You've had people in prison for "death" since the fucking 'sixties who're going to croak of natural causes before you gas, electrocute or shoot them...

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RE: What do you think? Will Preston Hughes be executed ... - 11/12/2012 12:35:41 PM   
fucktoyprincess


Posts: 2337
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quote:

ORIGINAL: Moonhead


quote:

ORIGINAL: fucktoyprincess
And, surprisingly, it is often cheaper for society to simply opt for life imprisonment, as the death penalty process is a hugely expensive one.

Why is that a surprise?
You've had people in prison for "death" since the fucking 'sixties who're going to croak of natural causes before you gas, electrocute or shoot them...


I only say this because many conservatives who support the death penalty think it's cheaper, when, in fact, it's not. They go on and on about how they don't want their tax dollars spent keeping some low life in jail all their life, but they fail to take into consideration all the tax dollars spent on the death penalty legal process. And yes, while the process drags on, we are still paying for their imprisonment also. Again, add the death penalty to the growing list of things that conservatives are completely illogical on......

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