vineri, 22 ianuarie 2010

Top 15 Cases of Penis Removal



Despite the fact that I am breaking my Top 10 rule, I will present you an interesting top I found on Listverse.com.


15

Songphong Nammwan
Thailand
Feeding-The-Ducks 562X661
“Angry Thai Women Lead the World in Penis Slashings” reads the headline of one internet report of a phenomenon known colloquially as “feeding the ducks”. A more sedate source, Australia’s ABC Radio, explained the situation as follows: “Thai men and women are increasingly at odds over an ages old custom of Thai men keeping a second wife … Twenty years ago, the crime of penicide came to public attention in Thailand with the report of an angry wife cutting off the penis of her philandering husband and feeding it to her ducks. It’s an act that has now become widespread among Thai women seeking revenge against their unfaithful partners.” They interviewed 42-year-old policeman Songphong Nammwan, whose wife had cut off his penis and thrown it into a sewer. Feeding the ducks is popular because it removes the possibility of reattachment.



14
Kim Tran’s boyfriend
USA
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On 19 February 2005, 35-year-old Kim Tran, of Anchorage, Alaska, cut off the penis of her 44-year-old boyfriend, who was married to her aunt. They had argued over his refusal to leave her aunt, then engaged in sexual relations, during which she tied his hands to a window handle above their bed and severed his penis with a knife, then flushed it down the toilet, where it stuck. She drove him to the hospital, then returned home to clean up. Police attended and, learning of the flushing, called water utility workers, who retrieved the penis. It was rushed to the hospital and successfully reattached. She was charged with assault and tampering with evidence. I could not find any news about her trial or sentence.


13
Name unknown
China
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In early 2005, a 44-year-old Chinese man suffered a “penile defect as a result of an unfortunate traumatic accident”. He was left with a stump one centimeter long and could not urinate in a standing position or have intercourse. “His quality of life was affected severely.” On 20 September 2005 a team of doctors at Guangzhou General Hospital, led by Dr Weilie Hu, successfully transplanted a penis “donated” by the parents of a brain-dead 22-year-old man. After 10 days he was able to urinate smoothly in a standing position, but his capability for sexual intercourse was never tested, because four days later, “because of a severe psychological problem of the recipient and his wife, the transplanted penis was cut off”.


12
Nelu Radonescu
Romania
Blog-Surgeon
In October 2004, Nelu Radonescu underwent routine surgery for a testicular malformation in Bucharest, Romania. In the middle of the operation, Dr Naum Ciomu, a urologist and lecturer in anatomy, lost his temper after he accidentally cut the man’s urinary channel. He “overreacted”, slicedoff the patient’s penis, placed it on the operating table, chopped it into small pieces and stormed out of the operating theatre. During his trial for grievous bodily harm he told the court that it was a temporary loss of judgement due to personal problems. He was found guilty, given a one-year jail sentence (suspended on certain conditions), suspended from practicing medicine for three years and ordered to pay EUR125,000 in damages. The patient’s penis was reconstructed (presumably by another surgeon) using tissue from his arm.


11
Bernd Jürgen Brandes
Germany
Cannibalism-1
On 9 March 2001, Armin Meiwes severed the penis of Bernd Brandes in Rotenburg, Germany, then killed him. The two met through a website called The Cannibal Cafe after Meiwes advertised for “a well-built 18 to 30-year-old to be slaughtered and then consumed”. Brandes went to Meiwes’ home, where he encouraged Meiwes to bite his (Brandes’s) penis off. Meiwes was unable to, so used a knife to remove it. Brandes tried to eat some of his own penis raw, but could not because it was too “chewy”. Meiwes sautéed the penis but burned it. He chopped it up into chunks and fed it to his dog. Meiwes then read a Star Trek book for three hours while Brandes was bleeding to death in the bath. Meiwes gave him alcohol, pain killers and sleeping pills. Finally, he kissed him once and killed him by stabbing him in the throat.
Meiwes then stored body parts in his freezer and ate up to 20 kg of Brandes’ flesh over the next 10 months. He was arrested in December 2002, after a tip-off by a college student who had seen new advertisements for victims and details of the killing on the Internet. Investigators searched Meiwes’ home and found the body parts and a videotape of the proceedings. (The tape has has been viewed by journalists but never made public.) Meiwes was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to eight and a half years in prison. Prosecutors appealed, and he was retried, convicted of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment. While in prison, he has become a vegetarian.


10
Name unknown
China
Wuzhou-City-Guangxi-5
In 1994, the Chinese newspaper Guangxi Daily reported that a man from Henan province was fined 3,000 yuan after his wife gave birth to her third child (a son, after two daughters), in violation of China’s “one child” laws. The father supposedly made a joke about the high cost of finally having a male heir, saying: “A 3,000 yuan fine just for this little penis! We should just cut it off.” This prompted the two daughters tocut off the infant boy’s penis with a paring knife and leave him to bleed to death while their father was away tending the fields. Upon his return, the father flew into a rage and clubbed the two girls to death with a shovel, then committed suicide by drinking insecticide. His wife “went into hysterics upon seeing the calamity, running naked through the streets screaming the names of her dead husband and children”.


9
John Wayne Bobbitt
USA
Bobbittcock
On 23 June 1993, Lorena Bobbitt cut off the penis of her husband, John, in their apartment in Manassas, Virginia. They had had a volatile relationship, and Lorena testified that John sexually, physically and emotionally abused her. On the night in question, he arrived home highly intoxicated and (according to her testimony) raped her. Afterwards, she went to the kitchen, where she saw a carving knife, and “memories of past domestic abuses raced through her head”. Grabbing the knife, she entered the bedroom andcut off more than half of John’s penis. She left the apartment with the penis, drove a short distance and threw it into a field. Realizing the severity of the incident, she stopped and called 911. The penis was located, packed in ice and brought to the hospital where John was being treated. It was successfully reattached.
Lorena was found not guilty due to insanity causing an irresistible impulse to sexually wound her husband. As a result, she could not be held liable for her actions. Under state law, she underwent a 45-day evaluation period at a mental hospital, after which she was released. She foundedLorena’s Red Wagon, which helps to prevent domestic violence through family-oriented activities. John’s subsequent activities included pornographic films and a time as a minister of a Universal Life Church in Las Vegas. He was arrested seven times for offenses ranging from assault to grand larceny. The Bobbitts divorced in 1995 and met for the first time since on a TV program in May 2009. On the show, John apologized toLorena for the way he treated her during their marriage, and Lorena claimed that John still loved her because he has continued to send her Valentine’s Day cards and flowers.


8
Name unknown
USA
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At some time before February 1977, a mentally-disturbed 21-year-old American man who was obsessed with guilt feelings about his sexual desires amputated his penis with a straight razor. He walked to his local hospital with the severed part. The bleeding was controlled and the penis was placed on ice, and he was transferred to Massachusetts General Hospital. After psychiatric consultation, he was operated on by a combined plastic surgery and urology team led by Drs Hugh Young II, John Daly, Benjamin Cohen and James May, resulting in the first documented case of a completely successful penis replantation, restoring full function.

7
Bruce / “Brenda” / David Reimer
Canada
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Bruce Reimer was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba in 1965. At the age of 6 months, he was diagnosed with phimosis (an unretractable foreskin), and referred for a circumcision. On 27 April 1966, an inexperienced doctor performed the operation using the unconventional method of electro-cauterization. The procedure went drastically wrong, and Bruce’s penis was burned beyond surgical repair. Dr John Money, a psychologist at Baltimore’s Johns Hopkins Medical Center, believed that Bruce would be more likely to achieve successful, functional sexual maturation as a girl than as a boy and recommended a sex reassignment. At the age of 22 months, Bruce’s testes were surgically removed. He was renamed Brenda, and afterwards raised as a girl. Money continued treatment and assessment, and for several years reported on the case, describing apparently successful female gender development, and using this case to support his theories of gender identity and reassignment.
Contrary to Money’s positive reports, Reimer never identified as female. He was ostracized and bullied, and in his mid-teens became suicidally depressed. In 1980, his parents told him the truth, and he decided to identify as male, calling himself David. He underwent surgical re-reassignment, and later married a woman and became stepfather to her children. His case came to international attention in 1997 through the efforts of academic sexologist Milton Diamond and author John Colapinto, who wrote a book As Nature Made Him: The Boy Who Was Raised as a Girl. Revenues from the book gave David financial security but his problems continued. As well as his difficult relationship with his parents, he had to deal with the death of his brother, unemployment and separation from his wife. On 5 May 2004 he committed suicide by gunshot. Money died in 2006.


6
Kichizo Ishida
Japan
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On 18 May 1936, Kichizo Ishida was erotically asphyxiated by his girlfriend Sada Abe in a teahouse in Ogu, Japan. She then severed his penis and testicles. Abe had been a prostitute for most of her adult life. One of her clients suggested that she could become financially independent by opening a small restaurant and recommended that she start as an apprentice in such a business. On 1 February 1936 she began to work at a restaurant owned by Ishida, a married man and a known womanizer. Ishida soon began making advances towards Abe and by mid-April they were lovers. They had several marathon love-making sessions in teahouses (the contemporary equivalent of a love hotel). When Ishida returned to his wife, Abe became agitated and began drinking excessively.
They met again and during their love-making discovered that strangling each other during orgasm increased their pleasure. Early one morning, as Ishida was asleep, Abe wrapped her obi sash around his neck and strangled him to death. After lying with his body for a few hours, she severed his genitalia with a kitchen knife, wrapped them in a magazine cover and kept them until being arrested three days later. She was tried and convicted of second degree murder and sentenced to six years in prison. Ishida’s penis and testicles were moved to Tokyo University Medical School’s pathology museum. They were put on public display not long after the end of World War II but have since disappeared. After her release from prison Abe alternately courted and shunned publicity before disappearing from public view in 1970 and presumably dying at some time after that.


5
Einar Mogens Wegener / Lili Elbe
Denmark/France/Germany
Einar Lili Sml
In 1930-1 Einar Mogens Wegener, a successful artist, became the first identified recipient of male to female sex reassignment surgery. Probably intersexual, he identified as male for most of his life, but had a feminine body and facial features, and when in public as a man was often taken for a young woman in trousers masquerading as a man. He married a fellow painter, Gerda Gottlieb. Posing as a (female) model for Gerda, he discovered a propensity towards female dress, and Gerda’s paintings of him (as a woman) gained some acclaim. He began to identify as female and present publicly as a woman, renaming himself “Lili Elbe”.
In 1930 she went to Germany for surgery, which was only in an experimental state at the time. Five operations were carried out over two years. The first surgery, removal of the testicles, was made under the supervision of sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld in Berlin. The rest were carried out by Dr Warnekros at the Dresden Municipal Women’s Clinic. The second operation was to remove the penis, and to transplant ovaries, which were taken from a 26-year-old woman. These were soon removed in the third and fourth operations, due to rejection and other serious complications. The fifth operation was to transplant a uterus and was intended to allow Elbe, then nearing the age of 50, to become a mother, but complications set in and she died three months later.


4
Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin
Russia
Rasputin1-1
On 16 December 1916 OS (29 December NS) Grigori Rasputin was killed by a group of noblemen who feared his influence over Tsarina Alexandra. Details of the killing are confused and still subject to debate, but a generally accepted version is that the conspirators lured Rasputin to the house of one of them, where they poisoned him, shot him, beat him, cut off his penis, tied him up and threw him into an icy river. The official cause of death was drowning. According to some accounts, the penis has since been in the keeping of a maid who discovered it at the murder site, a group of female Russian expatriates living in Paris, Rasputin’s daughter Marie, an antiques dealer and an auction house, who ascertained that it was, in fact, a sea cucumber. According to another account, it has recently been acquired by a museum of erotica in St Petersburg.


3
William Chester Minor
USA/England
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In 1902, William Chester Minor, an American surgeon and amateur lexicographer, cut off his penis (which he regarded as the cause of his impure thoughts) in his cell in the Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum, Berkshire, England. He had been born into a strict missionary family in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) and trained as a surgeon at Yale. He served as a doctor in the Union Army during the American Civil War, where his experiences (which included branding deserters) exacerbated his already fragile state of mind. He developed a condition which was later diagnosed as schizophrenia. He was allowed to resign from the army and moved to London, where, in a state of paranoid delusion, shot and killed an innocent man who just happened to be walking behind him.
He was found not guilty of murder by reason of insanity and confined in Broadmoor. As a gentleman with a private income, he was allowed special privileges, and built up an extensive personal library. He learned of the project to publish the Oxford English Dictionary, and turned his mind to find and cite illustrative quotations for rare words. He become a major contributor to the project and developed a friendship with Dr James Murray, the editor of the dictionary. Minor’s and Murray’s lives, the dictionary project and the self-severing are reported in an excellent and meticulously researched book, The Surgeon of Crowthorne (UK) / The Professor and the Madman (USA) by Simon Winchester.


2
Napoleon Bonaparte
France
Napoleon2
Fact 1: On 5 May 1821, Napoleon Bonaparte died on St Helena. Fact 2: Since 1916, something claimed to be his penis has been bought and sold by collectors. It was last reliably known to be in the possession of an American urologist in 1987. The day after Napoleon’s death, his doctor performed an autopsy, witnessed by 17 people, including seven English doctors, a priest and Napoleon’s manservant. Various body parts were removed. Napoleon’s penis was described as “small”, but no eyewitness mentioned that it was removed. In 1852, the manservant claimed that he and the priest removed parts of Napoleon’s body during the autopsy, but didn’t specify which. (But surely a priest and a manservant removing body parts during an autopsy would have been noticed!) The priest, who administered the last rites and conducted the funeral, was given (or otherwise came into possession of) various “personal effects”. How “personal”?
The priest’s collection of Napoleonic effects remained in his family until 1916, when it was sold to an English bookselling firm. In 1924, they sold it to a collector from Philadelphia. In 1927 it was displayed at the Museum of French Art in New York. It was described officially as a “mummified tendon” and unofficially as “one inch long and resembling a grape”. The collection was bought and sold several more times before the whatever was purchased by Dr John Lattimer, professor of urology at Columbia University and an impeccably credentialled and experienced medical man who must be presumed to be able to recognize a penis when he saw one. He acknowledged having it in 1987.  He died in 2007 and apparently his family still has it. 


1
Osiris
Egypt
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Osiris was the Egyptian god of the afterlife and the underworld. Isis was his sister/wife, and goddess of motherhood and magic. Their brother Set, god of chaos, was jealous of him, and plotted to kill him. One form of the myth tells that Set trapped Osiris in a wooden sarcophagus and threw it into the Nile. It floated down the Nile to the coast of Byblos (modern-day Lebanon), where Isis found it. She brought the body back to Egypt and buried it. Set found the body, cut it into fourteen parts and scattered them across Egypt. Isis found and put together thirteen parts, but was unable to find the penis, which had been eaten by a fish. Instead, she fashioned a phallus out of gold and sang a song around Osiris until he came back to life. They conceived Horus, the god of the sky and vengeance.
(surse: Listverse)


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joi, 21 ianuarie 2010

10 Convicts Presumed Innocent After Execution



10
Carlos De Luna
Executed in 1989
Carlosdeluna Bookingphoto
In February 1983, Wanda Lopez, was stabbed to death during her night shift at the gas station where she worked. After a brief manhunt, police found De Luna hiding under a pick-up truck. Recently released from prison, he was violating his parole by drinking in public. De Luna immediately told police that he was innocent and he offered the name of the person who he saw at the gas station. Police ignored the fact that he did not have a drop of blood on him even though the crime scene was covered in blood. De Luna was arrested too soon after the crime to clean himself up. The single eyewitness to the crime, Kevin Baker, confirmed to police that De Luna was the murderer after police told him he was the right guy.
At trial De Luna named Carlos Hernandez as the man he saw inside the gas station, across the street from the bar where De Luna had been drinking. Hernandez and DeLuna were strikingly similar in appearance but, unlike DeLuna, Hernandez had a long history of knife attacks similar to the convenience store killing and repeatedly told friends and relatives that he had committed the murder. Friends confirmed that he was romantically linked to Lopez as well. De Luna’s lawyers knew of Hernandez’s criminal past but never thoroughly investigated his previous crimes. On December 7, 1989, Texas executed 27-year old Carlos De Luna.

9
Larry Griffin
Executed in 1995
Larry Griffin
On June 26, 1980 in St. Louis, Missouri, 19-year-old Quintin Moss was killed in a drive-by shooting while allegedly dealing drugs on a street corner. The conviction was based largely on the testimony from Robert Fitzgerald, a white career criminal, who was at the scene at the time of the murder. He testified that he saw three black men in the car when shots were fired and that Griffin shot the victim through the window of the car with his right hand. This was Griffin’s attorney’s first murder trial and he did not challenge the testimony even though Griffin was left-handed. He also failed to bring forth an alibi witness who was with Griffin at the time of the murder.
Griffin’s fingerprints were not found on the car or the weapon – all evidence against him was circumstantial. There is evidence that suggests Fitzgerald was promised a reduce sentence in exchange for his testimony. The prosecution also failed to address that there were two other witnesses who confirmed that Griffin did not commit the murder and they were able to name the three men who did.Appeals courts upheld his conviction and death sentence. Griffin was executed by lethal injection on June 21, 1995. Griffin maintained his innocence right up to his execution. In 2005, a professor University of Michigan Law School reopened the case. His investigation concluded that Griffin was innocent.

8
Ruben Cantu
Executed in 1993
Ruben Cantu
On the night of November 8, 1984, Ruben Cantu and his friend David Garza, broke into a vacant San Antonio house under construction and robbed two men at gunpoint. The two victims, Pedro Gomez and Juan Moreno, had been workmen sleeping on floor mattresses at aconstruction site, guarding against burglary. As they tried to take their cash, they were interrupted by Gomez’s attempt to retrieve a pistol hidden under his mattress. The boys shot both men killing Gomez instantly. Thinking they had killed both men, the two teens then fled the scene.
The police showed Moreno photos of suspects, which included Cantu’s picture, and he was unable to identify his attacker. On the basis of no physical evidence, no confession, and only Moreno’s subsequently recanted testimony, a jury convicted Ruben Cantu of first-decree murder. Juan Moreno now says that he had felt pressure from the police to finger Cantu. DavidGarza , Cantu’s codefendant, has since admitted involvement in the burglary, assault and murder. He says he did go inside the house with another boy, did participate in the robbery, and saw the murder take place, but that his accomplice was not Ruben Cantu.On August 24, 1993, Ruben Cantu at the age of 26, was executed by lethal injection. His final request was for a piece of bubble gum, which was denied.

7
David Spence
Executed 1997
Dspence
In 1982, David Spence was accused of the rape and murder of two 17-year-old girls and one 18-year-old boy in Waco, Texas. He received the death penalty in two trials for the murders. Muneer Deeb, a convenience store owner, hired Spence to do the murders and he was also charged and sentenced to death. He received a new trial in 1993 and was later acquitted.
The prosecution built its case against Spence around bite marks that a state expert said matched Spence’s teeth and jailhouse snitches. Two of the six jailhouse witnesses who testified at trial later recanted, saying they were given cigarettes, television and alcohol privileges, and conjugal visits for their testimonies. Spence’s post-conviction lawyers had a blind panel study in which five experts said the bite marks could not be matched to Spence’s. Even the original homicide investigator on the case said he had serious doubts about Spence’s guilt and a former Waco police detective involved in the case said he did not think Spence committed the crime. David Spence was executed by lethal injection on April 14, 1997.

6
Jesse Tafero
executed in 1990
Jesse-Tafero
On the morning of February 20, 1976, Highway Patrol officer, Phillip Black, and Donald Irwin, approached a car parked at a rest stop for a routine check. Tafero, his partner Sonia “Sunny” Jacobs, and Walter Rhodes were found asleep inside. Black saw a gun lying on the floor inside the car so he woke the occupants and had them come out of the car. According to Rhodes, Tafero then shot both Black and Irwin with the gun, which was illegally registered to Jacobs, led the others into the police car and fled the scene. All three were arrested after being caught in a roadblock. The gun was found in Tafero’s waistband.
At their trial, Rhodes testified that Tafero and Jacobs were solely responsible for the murders. Tafero and Jacobs were convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death while Rhodes was sentenced to 3 life sentences. Rhodes was eventually released in 1994 following parole for good behavior. Because the jury had recommended a life sentence for Jacobs, the court commuted Jacobs’ sentence to life in prison, but not Tafero’s. She was later released after agreeing to a plea bargain. Prior to his release, Rhodes confessed several times to lying about his involvement in the shooting. Even Sunny Jacobs claimed that Rhodes, not Tafero, carried out the shooting as well. Rhodes was the only person on which traces of gunpowder were found. Tafero was executed by electric chair on May 4, 1990. The chair malfunctioned causing the process to take over 13 minutes.
5
Ellis Wayne Felker
Executed in 1996
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Ellis Wayne Felker was a suspect in the 1981 disappearance of a Georgia woman, Evelyn Joy Ludlum who was working her way through college as a cocktail waitress. He was put under police surveillance for 2 weeks, during which time Ludlum’s body was found in a creek, raped, stabbed and murdered. An autopsy performed by an untrained technician found that the body had been dead for five days. This information was later changed after realizing this would eliminate Felker as a suspect. Independent autopsies found that the body had been dead no more than three days.
In 1996, Felker’s attorneys discovered boxes of evidence that had been unlawfully withheld by the prosecution including DNA evidence and a written confession by another suspect. Even the presiding judge in one of Felker’s trials stated that his right to a fair trial had been severely compromised. Despite all this mounting evidence and doubts of his guilt, the Georgia Supreme Court denied Felker a new trial nor gave the defense more time to sort through the mounds of evidence to argue for exoneration. Felker was executed by electrocution November 15, 1996 at the age of 48. In 2000, a Georgia judge ruled that DNA testing would be performed in the first-ever attempt by a court to exonerate an executed person in the United States. The results were ruled as inconclusive.

4
Leo Jones
Executed 1998
Jones
On May 23, 1981 in Jacksonville, FL, police officer Thomas Szafranski killed when shots were fired at his police cruiser when he was stopped at an intersection. Within minutes, police officers busted into Leo Jones’ apartment where they found Jones and his cousin, Bobby Hammonds. Police took both men in for questioning and then charged Jones, who they claimed had confessed. Hammonds gave a statement, saying he saw Jones leave the apartment with a rifle and return after he heard some gunshots.In 1997, a retired police officer, Cleveland Smith, came forward and said the officer that arrested Jones had bragged that he beat Jones after his arrest. Smith, who described the officer as an “enforcer”, testified that he once watched him get a confession from a suspect through torture. Smith claimed that he waited so long to come forward with this evidence because he wanted to secure his pension.
More than a dozen people had implicated another man as the killer, saying they either saw him carrying a rifle as he ran from the crime scene or heard him brag he had shot the officer. Even Florida Supreme Court Justice Leander Shaw wrote that Jones’ case had become “a horse of a different color”. Newly discovered evidence, Shaw wrote, “casts serious doubt on Jones’ guilt.” Shaw and one other judge voted to grant Jones a new trial. However, a five-judge majority ruled against him. Jones was executed by electric chair on March 24, 1998.

3
Cameron Todd Willingham
Executed in 2004
Willingham
In 1991, a fire occurred at Cameron Todd Willingham’s home in Texas killing his three young daughters. Willingham escaped the fire with minor injuries and his then-wife was not home at the time. Prosecutors charged Willingham with starting the fire in an attempt to cover up his abuse of his girls. This is despite the wife’s testimony that he had never abused the children and, in fact, “spoiled them rotten.” While laboratory tests verified that an accelerant was used only near the front porch, the prosecutors alleged that the fluid was deliberately poured near the front porch, children’s bedroom, and in the hallway to start the fire and impede rescue attempts. Gerald Hurst, who has a PhD in chemistry, reputed claims that the extreme heat of the fire meant that an accelerant was used. The Board of Pardons and Paroles received Hurst’s argument but still denied Willingham clemency.
Willingham was deemed an “extremely severe sociopath” by a psychiatrist using only Willingham’s Iron Maiden and Led Zeppelin posters as indications of his fascination with violence and death. Witness testimony during the fire was contradictory and inconclusive. During his trial in August 1992, Willingham was offered a life term in exchange for a guilty plea, which he turned down insisting he was innocent. Willingham was executed by lethal injection on February 17, 2004. In June 2009 the State of Texas ordered an unprecedented re-examination of the case and may issue a ruling on it at a later date.

2
Joseph O’Dell
Executed 1997
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In 1985, Helen Schartner was raped and murdered by strangulation outside a nightclub in Virginia Beach. At the time of the murder, O’Dell was already on parole for kidnapping and robbery convictions in Florida. O’Dell chose to represent himself during the trial and he was convicted of the murder in based solely on blood evidence and the testimony of a jailhouse “snitch.” There was nothing else linking O’Dell to the crime.
For much of the decade that followed, O’Dell’s unsuccessful appeals went to the Virginia Supreme Court, Federal District Court, and the Supreme Court, where Justice Harry Blackmun found “serious questions as to whether O’Dell committed the crime.” O’Dell’s lawyers also had an affidavit claiming that another inmate executed in 1993, David Mark Pruett, had confessed to the crime. O’Dell asked the state to conduct DNA tests on other pieces of evidence to demonstrate his innocence but was refused. An International campaign to save his life had supporters like Mother Teresa and Pope John Paul II. Both the governor of Virginia and the U.S. Supreme Court rejected last-minute pleas to spare his life and O’Dell was executed by lethal injection on July 23, 1997. In 2000, the last of the DNA evidence in the O’Dell case stored in the circuit court of Virginia Beach was burned without any further testing.

1
Lionel Herrera
Executed in 1993
Leonel Herrera
On September 29, 1981, Texas Department of Public Safety Officer, David Rucker, was shot and killed along a stretch of highway near the Rio Grande Valley. Around the same time, police officer Enrique Carrisalez pulled over a speeding vehicle driving away from the road where Rucker’s body was found. The driver exchanged words with Carrisalez before pulling out his gun and killing the police officer. Lionel Herrera was arrested a few days later and charged with both Rucker’s and Carrisalez’s murders. Before he died, Carrisalez also identified Herrera as the person who shot him from a single photograph shown to him in the hospital (not a photo array). In January 1982, Herrera was tried and found guilty of the capital murder of Carrisalez, for which he was sentenced to death. Later that year, Herrera pleaded guilty to the murder of Rucker.
Herrera filed a petition for writ of habeas corpus in federal court, claiming that new evidence demonstrated he was actually innocent of the murder of Carrisalez. Herrera included four affidavits from an attorney who had represented Herrera’s brother, Raul Herrera, Sr, and three others claiming that Raul Herrera, who was murdered in 1984, had told them that he had killed Rucker and Carrisalez. This lead to the Supreme Court case Herrera v. Collins where the Court ruled that new evidence demonstrating innocence did not violate the Constitution’s 8th Amendment and Herrera’s death sentence with upheld. Herrera was executed by lethal injection four months after the ruling. In his final statement he said: “I am innocent, innocent, innocent. . . . I am an innocent man, and something very wrong is taking place tonight.”

 (surse: Listverse)

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