I came to believe that there were two kinds of people on death row. ... You had guys who were true sociopaths. A lot of them fell into that category. And then you had guys who’d gotten themselves into a bad situation—running with a rough crowd, abusing alcohol, doing drugs. Maybe they robbed a store to get money for drugs and something went wrong and they shot the clerk. They’d had a choice to make, and they’d made the wrong one, but they hadn’t set out with the intention of killing someone.The story also included this brief aside about the agency's shift away from transparency in the last decade: "TDCJ itself was changing. Under the leadership of a new executive director, Brad Livingston, who was appointed in 2005, the agency had grown more skittish about media attention, and Michelle’s attempts to grant access to journalists or be proactive about press coverage were increasingly discouraged."
The agency's leadership became even more insular and averse to transparency after Lyons left. Where previously one could call and ask for a document and frequently the Public Information Office would just email it to you, today everything must be done via open records requests, takes forever, and often one comes away feeling like information was withheld. (One could say the same thing for Texas DPS under Col. Steve McCraw, btw.)
No real conclusions to draw or policies to recommend from Colloff's story and it won't change anyone's mind about the death penalty one way or the other. But it was a good read.
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7 comments:
A great profile. It's interesting that Lyons didn't reflect on a third category - they guys who didn't do the crime. We know she encountered at least 12. One wonders about how much cognitive dissonance one can take in such a position.
Most, if not all, of them had a thick rap sheet. Many people spent years and years trying to get them to drop their violent and criminal behavior. They would not listen to anybody.
Anon 1:39 ~ and most of those people were unboubtedly saying over and over again "don't do that", "you can't do that" etc.
Perhaps the opposite approach should be adopted, where people say "you CAN do this" and "why not try that" instead - building people up, rather than putting them down all the time?
Who in the hell would want to do that?
I used to be a strong supporter of the death penalty. However, even though I do believe that there are certain crimes that I feel where death is a justifiable punishment I no longer have enough faith in the justice system that only the actual guilty are who are convicted.
Many of those who did have long rap sheets also spent time in juvenile facilities, where they were shown they could make positive choices, could do positive things and taught in a positive way. There's just something lacking in their pathology/psychology that keeps them in the same patterns for life. And most people never think about the victims & their families.
Juvenile facilities aka TYC or the Juvenile Justice system was nicknamed "kiddie prison" for a reason. There was/is nothing being taught there but how to perfect a life of crime. Corruption continues to run rampid .... So sad because these same youth offenders are being pushed in a program and being set up to fail
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