Posted: June 26, 2015
Lester Bower was executed in Texas
on June 3 despite maintaining his innocence throughout the 30 years he
spent on death row. The evidence of Bower's innocence included testimony
from a woman who said that her boyfriend and three of his friends --
not Bower -- had committed the murders for which Bower was executed. The
witness came forward in 1989, after reading that Bower had been
sentenced to death for the crime her boyfriend had confessed to
committing six years earlier. In 2012, a judge rejected Bower's request
to present the testimony to a jury, saying, "the new evidence produced
by the defendant could conceivably have produced a different result at
trial...it does not prove by clear and convincing evidence that the
defendant is actually innocent." Maurice Possley, a senior researcher
for the National Registry of Exonerations,
explained the judge's decision: "He points out in pretty clear terms
that this guy probably would have been found not guilty had this
evidence been available at trial. But now, all these years later, he
can’t meet the new standard, which is actual innocence. That was not the
standard at trial. Then it was guilty beyond a reasonable
doubt." Samuel Gross, editor and co-founder of the registry, said, "To
me it’s one of the most troubling features of our justice system. In the
absence of procedural error, you have no effective escape valve. We
don’t have a procedure for reviewing convictions for accuracy."
No comments:
Post a Comment