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Notorious prisoner of work camp in the history of modern warfare. It was a confederate prison for Union Soldiers in the southwest of georgia. We will talk about hanging henry wirz. Wirz was executed for his role for perpetuating, according to the federal government, mistreatment and murder at that camp. He was one of the first individuals in the modern era to be tried for war crimes. Henry wirzs trial in the fall of 1865 set the precedent for more recent war crimes trials, the nuremberg trials of nazi perpetrators after world war ii, the allied prosecutors preparing for those prosecutions in nuremberg actually studied the particularly,d his defense, so they could prepare for what they anticipated, the not see defense would be. They also called if the wirz defense, basically saying, i was only following orders. That was the typical defense. They used his trial to prepare for that in 1945. This is a really important moment, not only ....
Testified on behalf of the convicted bombing suspect. rehema ellis is following that portion of this trial and joins us with what the sister had to say. how moving was it for this jury to hear from this icon of the anti-death penalty movement? reporter: it s really difficult to say and maybe impossible to say how moving her testimony was to know to the jury. we will know once they deliberate but it was interesting to hear from her. she s the only person able to tell us on the witness stand what the demeanor has been like since he was arrested for these crimes. one of the things he said when she was asked to talk about him, she met him four different times and said i looked at his face and thought, oh, my god, he s so young and had disagreements good her catholic faith and his faith as muslim but always respectful. when she asked him to talk about his crimes he said emphatically ....
Of race. that s a question of almost vigilante justice and it s disturbing. but the key moral issue i think that is really changed everything now. is innocence. and that s why this registry is of significance, because people now know and believe that there have been more, there are more innocent people convicted of every kind of crime and certainly capital punishment than anybody ever thought was true. liliana? within the anti-death penalty movement, of which i m a part, in the wake of the troy davis execution, which was so shocking, there were many of us that couldn t believe he would be executed, given how many times he had faced execution and the last-minute stays and because the proof of his innocence seemed so compelling and the wake of that and the cameroned to willingham s revelations and the carlos de luna case. and what are the limits of the strategy and how do you go ....