On this day in 1945, Lena Baker became the first and only woman to be executed by electrocution in Georgia.
Baker was charged with capital murder for killing her employer, Ernest Knight, who told Baker that he would kill her before she would ever leave again. While entering the execution chamber at the Georgia State Prison, Baker said: “What I done, I did in self-defense. I have nothing against anyone. I am ready to meet my God.”
In 2005, 60 years after her execution, the Georgia Parole Board issued Baker a full and unconditional pardon.
(via californiaafrican)
cnn
For Chris Matthews: TRIAL BY FIRE, Did Texas execute an innocent man? - The New Yorker
Ladies and gentlemen, I present you the Republican Party in 2011.
“The upshot is that Perry is essentially an accessory to murder. He executed an innocent man, displaying zero interest in the man’s innocence. When a commission subsequently investigated the episode, Perry fired its members.
It is telling that the political culture that has nurtured Perry is so morally demented that demonstrating that he blithely executed an innocent man is not a political liability.” - Jonathan Chait
You’ve heard the old phrase “You are what you eat.” A new photography venture called The Last Meals Project amends the adage into “You were what you ate.” Photographer Jonathon Kambouris juxtaposes death row mug shots with a description of the inmate’s last meal, and then superimposes photos of the food on top. The effect is quieting and humbling, bringing the viewer closer to the humanity behind the menace. Read more …
“I would like the firing squad, please”
Ronnie Lee Gardner - Utah is set to execute a convicted killer by firing squad after a judge agreed Friday to the inmate’s request for the method, renewing a debate over what critics see as an antiquated, Old West-style of justice. Gardner, 49, was sentenced to death for killing an attorney 25 years ago during a failed escape attempt and shootout.
continue reading… ap
wow! are we a third world nation?
“From this day forward, I no longer shall tinker with the machinery of death. For more than 20 years I have endeavored to develop rules that would lend more than the mere appearance of fairness to the death penalty endeavor. Rather than continue to coddle the court’s delusion that the desired level of fairness has been achieved, I feel obligated simply to concede that the death penalty experiment has failed. It is virtually self-evident to me now that no combination of procedural rules or substantive regulations ever can save the death penalty from its inherent constitutional deficiencies. Perhaps one day this court will develop procedural rules or verbal formulas that actually will provide consistency, fairness and reliability in a capital-sentencing scheme. I am not optimistic that such a day will come. I am more optimistic, though, that this court eventually will conclude that the effort to eliminate arbitrariness while preserving fairness ‘in the infliction of [death] is so plainly doomed to failure that it and the death penalty must be abandoned altogether’ (Godfrey v. Georgia, 1980). I may not live to see that day, but I have faith that eventually it will arrive.”
