Post by thinkinkmesa on Sept 13, 2011 11:58:07 GMT -5
Where's justice in the execution process?
Dr. Death. It was a fitting nickname for the tall gentleman with a spectral complexion who haunted the corridors of the Dallas County Courthouse in the 1980s.
Summoned by prosecutors to testify in more than 100 capital murder cases, Dr. James Grigson delivered his diagnosis with creepy Marcus Welby-ish solemnity. Sometimes without having met a defendant, he'd confirm what prosecutors needed jurors to hear - that the miscreant posed a continuing threat to society.
He checked an important box for prosecutors who, under Texas' death penalty law, had to prove to juries that the "future dangerousness" of a defendant warranted execution. Without his testimony, the cases would have been run-of-the-mill murders with ordinary prison sentences.
That he made a career of such testimony would ultimately earn him a denunciation by the American Psychiatric Association. His reputation was further sullied when his pronouncements turned out to be dead wrong.
Consider Randall Dale Adams, who once came within three days of execution for a murder he did not commit. At his 1977 trial for the shooting death of a Dallas police officer, Grigson declared Adams possessed a "sociopathic personality disorder" that would surely drive him to kill again. The subject of the acclaimed documentary The Thin Blue Line, Adams would later be exonerated.
More;
www.chron.com/news/kilday-hart/article/Where-s-justice-in-the-execution-process-2163606.php
Dr. Death. It was a fitting nickname for the tall gentleman with a spectral complexion who haunted the corridors of the Dallas County Courthouse in the 1980s.
Summoned by prosecutors to testify in more than 100 capital murder cases, Dr. James Grigson delivered his diagnosis with creepy Marcus Welby-ish solemnity. Sometimes without having met a defendant, he'd confirm what prosecutors needed jurors to hear - that the miscreant posed a continuing threat to society.
He checked an important box for prosecutors who, under Texas' death penalty law, had to prove to juries that the "future dangerousness" of a defendant warranted execution. Without his testimony, the cases would have been run-of-the-mill murders with ordinary prison sentences.
That he made a career of such testimony would ultimately earn him a denunciation by the American Psychiatric Association. His reputation was further sullied when his pronouncements turned out to be dead wrong.
Consider Randall Dale Adams, who once came within three days of execution for a murder he did not commit. At his 1977 trial for the shooting death of a Dallas police officer, Grigson declared Adams possessed a "sociopathic personality disorder" that would surely drive him to kill again. The subject of the acclaimed documentary The Thin Blue Line, Adams would later be exonerated.
More;
www.chron.com/news/kilday-hart/article/Where-s-justice-in-the-execution-process-2163606.php