Reparations for Police Torture - International Viewpoint - online socialist magazine internationalviewpoint.org - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from internationalviewpoint.org Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Anthony Porter, an
Illinois death-row exoneree whose case sparked a chain of events that ultimately led the state to abolish the death penalty, has died. He was 66 years old.
In 1983, Porter was convicted and sentenced to death of the murder of two teenagers in a southside Chicago park. No physical evidence linked him to the murders, but after more than 17 hours of coercive interrogation, another man, William Taylor, told police that he had seen Porter commit the murders.
Porter came within 50 hours of execution in September 1998, when the Illinois Supreme Court, concerned that Porter was mentally incompetent because of his low IQ, issued a stay and ordered a hearing on his mental capacity. While that hearing was pending, journalism students at Northwestern University began investigating his case and found that Taylor, who was in the park’s swimming pool at the time of the murders, could not have seen the killings. Taylor recanted his testimony and signed an affidavit saying t
Ex-Inmate Whose Case Spurred End Of Illinois Death Penalty Dies wmay.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from wmay.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
A dark preview of the right-wing Supreme Court s sweeping agenda U.S. Supreme Court, 2021
In 1976, the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty after a four-year moratorium in
Gregg v. Georgia. Rather than taking the opportunity to rule once and for all that capital punishment constitutes cruel and unusual punishment violating the Eighth Amendment, the Court instead ruled the death penalty serves two social purposes, deterrence and retribution, and comports with the core of the Eighth Amendment.
To satisfy issues raised four years earlier in
Furman v. Georgia, which imposed the moratorium, the court in
Gregg required an appellate review process to ensure objectivity in imposing the death penalty and for the sentencer to take the defendant s character into consideration. Almost 50 years later the death penalty remains constitutional, but as more and more states stop imposing capital punishment, opposition is higher than ever.