Texas man who said death sentence was based on discredited testimony is executed for 1990 killing

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Texas man who said death sentence was based on discredited testimony is executed for 1990 killing
pbs.org

A Texas man who said his death sentence was based on false and unscientific expert testimony was executed Thursday evening for killing a man during a robbery decades ago.

Brent Ray Brewer, 53, received a lethal injection at the state penitentiary in Huntsville for the April 1990 death of Robert Laminack. The inmate was pronounced dead at 6:39 p.m. local time, 15 minutes after the chemicals began flowing.

Prosecutors had said Laminack, 66, gave Brewer and his girlfriend a ride to a Salvation Army location in Amarillo when he was stabbed in the neck and robbed of $140.

Brewer’s execution came hours after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to step in over the inmate’s claims that prosecutors had relied on false and discredited expert testimony at his 2009 resentencing trial.

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That's the worst attempt at a gotcha I've ever seen.

Ya. It doesn't make sense at all. That's like saying anti abortion legislators are Pro choice because they are choosing to force you to have that rapist's baby.

I mean, the original comment was pretty shit too. That was kinda the point. Knowingly taking words out of context as a gotcha does absolutely nothing useful and only serves to annoy literally everyone involved. You're not clever

Maybe it wasn't a "gotcha"?

Okay, then what on Earth was your point?

That using political slogans outside their intended context and reading them literally is a bad idea.

Also that partisans will only notice when you do that for one side's slogan and not the other.

I'm pretty sure the context that "all life is precious" applies here. That's what pro-lifers claim. But apparently someone who may be innocent still deserves to be executed according to the people pro-lifers knowingly vote for.

Brewer has long expressed remorse for the killing and a desire to apologize to Laminack’s family.

“I will never be able to repay or replace the hurt (and) worry (and) pain I caused you. I come to you in true humility and honest heart and ask for your forgiveness,” Brewer wrote in a letter to Laminack’s family that was included in his clemency application to the parole board.

He did not dispute the guilty verdict. He is guilty. He admitted guilt. He has not claimed innocence. Quite the contrary, he explicitly claimed to have committed the murder.

He disputed the expert testimony of a witness at his sentencing hearing who claimed he would forever remain a danger.

Nobody is claiming he is innocent in the article that I read.

But you don't think that somebody can believe that life is precious but also that some people don't deserve to live?

Yes, people can believe all kinds of contradictory things. That doesn't make them any less hypocritical.

Do you think people should be free except when they have committed crimes?

Yes, but I don't label myself as "pro-freedom," so I'm not sure what relevance that has.

You really don't get that slogans are designed to be catchy rather than descriptive? Really? REALLY?

Like you never got annoyed about how people (mis)interpreted "defund the police"? Or "black lives matter"?

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