After 22 years on death row, Paul House has now been cleared of murder charges with Tennessee state prosecutors asking for all charges to be dropped against him. He had been sentenced to die in 1986 and his case is already being used by opponents of the death penalty as an example why states should move to life without parole as the ultimate punishment in this country.
House would have been executed next month but will now be freed.
He was convicted in the 1985 murder of Carolyn Muncey, but there were a great number of problems in the trial and the evidence.
Muncey disappeared of Luttrell, Tennessee was dead after being badly beaten and raped. House was a friend of Muncey’s husband. Police found discrepancies in his alibi and noted that he had unexplained cuts and bruises. Most importantly, they submitted evidence that Muncey’s blood had been found on his jeans. It was later discovered that those samples were contaminated and unreliable. Moreover, later DNA found it was her husband’s semen found on the body. Blood under her fingernails and cigarette butts also did not match House.
In 2006, in House v. Bell, 547 U.S. 518 (2006), the Supreme Court ruled that he was entitled to a new trial with Justice Kennedy saying that the evidence could point to a different individual.
There is great speculation that Muncey was actually killed by her husband, here.
Patty
You are not interested in responding to my post? Or in further self-examination?
Either way, it’s fine with me.
Not interested…
Mike
You wrote: What this does show is that there was in the original trial, that without valid appeals would have led to this man’s death, was that the beyond a reasonable doubt standard was not met. The Death Penalty, given the iffy nature of our jurisprudence can not be a justifiable outcome.
For me, and I do not speak for anyone else, capital punishment is cruel and unusual. It seems to have been handed down from a time in history when we were clearly more barbaric and I’d like to think that humankind has become, well, more elevated than we wee during the time of say, The French Revolution or the Khmer Rouge or the 3rd Reich.
The violence we do to each other in the name of justice is not just. It is revenge and it ought to be beneath us as a civilization.
Our laws ought to reflect that and the allowance of reasonable doubt is meant to provide that safety net yet, still, I am sickened by the great numbers of african american men doing serious time for offenses that white men are able to avoid (crack vs. powder cocaine for instance) and that we our need to find a criminal to pay for every violent crime to a white child is unequal to that for non-white children.
Sally may have a point… just give the good christian ex-military moms guns and let them become our public executioners.
Patty
You wrote:
**Out of the frying pan and into the fire. eh…?
I don’t think you really want to go down this particular road of reasoning.
Besides being a parent, Sally is ex-military. If she was fit to serve, she’s certainly fit to vote – regardless of her education. **
Did you mean me? That I was out of some sort of frying pan and into some kind of fire, both clearly of your own imagination?
Is there a road that I ought to avoid? Is it also one of your making? How will I know when I get there? You gonna point it out for me?
Besides being a parent Sally is ex-military and this grants her what exactly? The right as a christian parent and christian ex-military to pull out a revolver and put a bullet in someone’s head so that she gets to feel better about herself and was able to do a little something special for the other gals down at the bowling alley? Heck, she has god to sort things out for and does not need to pay any attention to the actual rule of law which says something, I think, about taking that law into one’s own hands. I think that there is something about this I read once.
Seems to me Sally doesn’t need god to judge her actions she has already convinced god to do that for her in advance ( did this come with her honorable discharge?) and you appear to have spoken not only in her defense but in her absence.
Of course, Sally has the right to vote. Just like everyone else who calls into American Idol. I don’t know if you and Sally are the kinds of folks that the Framers were wary of when they decided not to grant the vote to all citizens. Maybe you are and maybe you are not. I don’t like to make things like this personal, so lets do this…. lets say that you and I have the same reasoning ability (we don’t) and that Sally can speak for herself.
How ’bout that?
mespo, I like it when you growl.
How’s that trial schedule?
Sarah:
Bear in mind we are talking about a verdict rendered by a jury and confirmed by a trial judge who also heard it. It has greater weight than an initial factual issue before a trier of fact. None of us were privy to the nonverbal ques and information the jury observed. I am willing to trust their judgment as to the credibility of witnesses. Why is your take any better that the 12 folks who heard it fresh? Cases have to end sometime, and I would uphold the jury verdict on the appellate level if there was evidence to support their verdict which in my view there exists in abundance. The Appellate Courts are not in the second guessing the jury business.
And lest you think this fellow’s propensity for violence against women is irrelevant, I ask you, would you accept him in your home with your teenage daughter around? That answer makes it relevant to me given the violent struggle that obviously occurred. Your argument in mitigation that he only did it once is preposterous on its face, by the way.
Sally:
“As a Christian, my take on it is….let God sort them out. Whether or not you agree with me, that’s what I truly believe.”
*************
So what? How does that statement add to the dialogue. I believe sincerely the moon is made of green cheese. Will that make it so? Will it convince one who has studied it or been there? Sincerely held beliefs are fine, but without support of manifest facts or reason tested evidence, they are self-deluding gossamer–and we are not in the gossamer business around here.
Mespo,
If there was enough doubt to get the Tennessee prosecutors to drop the charges, that is good enough for me. Doing that in the context of a State like Tennessee indicates that there is much wrong with the case. Eyewitness evidence is always problemmatic at best, especially not knowing the context of how the police first got the eyewitness statements.
What this does show is that there was in the original trial, that without valid appeals would have led to this man’s death, was that the beyond a reasonable doubt standard was not met. The Death Penalty, given the iffy nature of our jurisprudence can not be a justifiable outcome.
Out of the frying pan and into the fire. eh…?
I don’t think you really want to go down this particular road of reasoning.
Besides being a parent, Sally is ex-military. If she was fit to serve, she’s certainly fit to vote – regardless of her education.
You might ask our resident ‘voter-rights activist’ who posts here, ad nauseum, how, pray tell, did anyone considered her informed enough to instruct others in their exercise to vote when she wasn’t properly registered for at least three previous elections, herself – up to and including the weekend before this past one!
Not a joke…;)
Patty
How could I disagree with your assessment that Sally reacts emotionally? Of course she does.
This is the thing I find most disturbing, and it isn’t like she is not entitled to her opinion, it is that people without adequate education vote based on emotion and/or religious beliefs and sometimes when guided by those beliefs tend to act impulsively leaving the consequences of their behavior to an imaginary deity absolving themselves of any responsibility. Should Sally or others who think like her ever really act with bullets or frying pans I should think she/they could expect to be prosecuted according to the law and not according to her/their religious beliefs.
Again, my question was whether Sally is truly guided by her religious beliefs and do those beliefs really contain a provision for executions outside the law allowing for one god or another to sort it out later.
Your response to me was a joke, wasn’t it?
My response to Sally was not a joke.
How shall we protect ourselves from those who have given themselves the right to act as judge and jury on behalf of god? Does Sally really know what god wants and does she really believe that she is equipped to carry out god’s justice?
As a Christian, my take on it is….let God sort them out. Whether or not you agree with me, that’s what I truly believe.
—
Sally admits to reacting emotionally, ie not based on the law,
to crimes against children.
Watch out though, her weapons include some well-seasoned cast iron frying pans! And some of ’em are HOT.
We see this…
Sally…
Let god sort it out? You must mean as an alternative to the collection of evidence, a trial and the rule of law? Did I get that right? Just shoot everyone in the head and wait for god to pass sentence at some future date?
Hmmm. One wonders how you might feel should one of your offspring be a likely or unlikely suspect in a violent crime. Would you want to be the one to shoot him in the head ( I am assuming you have a son…. if not could you please imagine for the sake of taking your argument to its natural conclusion?) or would you want someone else? Maybe we could hire executioners for this specific purpose. How would you feel if said executioners were not a christian such as yourself.
Are you really guided into this position by your religious beliefs? Or is it the blood-thirty animal in you? I believe you invoked the mother bear in the instance of crimes against children. Oh, excuse me, sick crimes, as opposed to what? Healthy crimes?
Somehow I don’t really think you want to wait for god to sort anything, you seem to be equipped to act as god in your example. May I ask one other question? How do you know what is right in god’s eyes and what is not? Even if you think that the bullet in the head might not be god’s first choice you seem to have your defense all ready to go: you did/will do some heinous crime of your own to possibly protect others.
How shall we protect ourselves from you and from others like you?
Mespo, I think you’re putting too much faith in the eyewitness’ claim of seeing House that next day. I certainly don’t have much faith in eyewitness accounts. Especially in light of all the evidence pointing away from House. As for the blood on his jeans, the lab itself has acknowledged that they spilled some of her blood and there’s almost an entire vial of her blood unaccounted for.
As for his “proclivity” for rape, his one rape conviction is not evidence. We don’t convict people based on their propensity to commit a certain type of crime.
I think this is a perfect case to demonstrate how even cases that once seemed air-tight can fall apart over time and to show that it really is nearly impossible to know what happened in some cases with any degree of certainty.
Whatever happened to “let he who is without sin cast the first stone?”
Sally, I appreciate your honesty. I realize that I am no better than anyone else, and I cannot say that under the right circumstances I wouldn’t react viciously and violently. But perfectly human responses can be wrong, and one of the functions of the law is to reduce the influence of emotion on judgment.
get information on everyone from friends, celebrities to the president himself via http://www.trackle.com
As a Christian, my take on it is….let God sort them out. Whether or not you agree with me, that’s what I truly believe.
In the end, we all have to answer for our actions here on earth.
Although, I can’t lie about this, sick crimes against children (I’m talking rape and murder here) make me think that a bullet to the head is a much better answer to a trial and prison time. But that might just be the mother bear in me. And it still would not be right the action in God’s eyes, even if I say that I did it to protect others.
“Paul House has now been cleared of murder charges with Tennessee state prosecutors asking for all charges to be dropped against him.”
*********
That might be a bit of an overstatement. It appears the case has holes in it, but one thing appears certain and that is victim’s blood is on the House’s jeans. How it got there doesn’t seem too controversial, and coupled with the witnesses statement that he saw House coming from the site of the dumping of the dead body with his missing black shirt in hand would have given me reason to uphold that conviction. I acknowledge the flaws, but given House’s demonstrated proclivity for rape and violence and even in spite of his current illness, I am not so sure this is cause to strike up the band.
This is another example of what we were discussing on the Texas killing thread yesterday. God only knows how many innocent people have been wrongfully executed over the years.
I don’t understand the overwhelming support for the death penalty in this country. First of all, we could always be wrong. Our legal system is not perfect. It seems to be a regular occurrence that someone on death row is exonerated. Secondly, and I’m not sure if this is 100% true but I’ve heard it repeated many times, it costs more money and resources to go through all of the mandatory appeals than it would to just lock someone up in a cell for the rest of their life. I think our criminal justice system overall needs a massive overhaul, starting with the elimination of the death penalty.