Ministry of Defence says it is in contact with lawyers of victims’ relatives and is preparing to make amends where required The British government is to pay compensation to families of those killed or wounded on Bloody Sunday, the Ministry of Defence announced on Thursday. More than a year after David Cameron apologised to the victims and described the 1972 Derry shootings as “unjustified and unjustifiable”, the Ministry of Defence has said it is in contact with the lawyers of victims’ relatives and is preparing to make amends where required. “We acknowledge the pain felt by these families for nearly 40 years, and that members of the armed forces acted wrongly. For that, the government is deeply sorry,” said an MoD spokesman. “We are in contact with the families’ solicitors and where there is a legal liability to pay compensation we will do so.” Thirteen unarmed civilians died in the Bloody Sunday shootings, when paratroopers opened fire during a civil rights protest in the Bogside area of Derry in January 1972. A 14th man died of his wounds several months later. An initial inquiry absolved the soldiers and the government of much of the blame, and in 1974 the MoD made a series of mostly small payments without accepting any responsibility. But last year’s Saville inquiry , which was 12 years in the making, came to the unequivocal conclusion that the killings had been unjustified. “We found no instances where it appeared to us that soldiers either were or might have been justified in firing,” it said. “Despite the contrary evidence given by soldiers, we have concluded that none of them fired in response to attacks or threatened attacks by nail or petrol bombers. No one threw or threatened to throw a nail or petrol bomb at the soldiers on Bloody Sunday.” According to the BBC, the move to pay compensation comes after lawyers for most of the families wrote to the prime minister asking what steps he would take to “fully compensate” them for “the loss of their loved ones, the wounding of others, and the shameful allegations which besmirched their good name for many years.” It is not yet clear who exactly will be compensated, and by how much, as many of those directly affected by the shootings have since died, and it is not known whether more distant relatives will make claims. Bloody Sunday Northern Ireland Ministry of Defence Military Ireland Lizzy Davies guardian.co.uk
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How to account for the failure of public outcry to stay Davis’s execution? In short, people in Georgia support the death penalty On Wednesday, Troy Davis became the 33rd person executed in the United States in 2011 (and there are nine remaining executions scheduled for this year that have not been stayed, as of publication time ). But with with the exception of Humberto Leal , nearly all those other men went to their deaths with little public outcry. Not so Davis, whose execution had been stayed twice previously and whose conviction even sent back to the state court for review by the US supreme court. But a state judge ruled the conviction valid, a third stay was denied and a state body in Georgia denied clemency this week – despite a vast outcry in the US and from abroad. Beyond all standard legal options, Davis’s supporters – including Amnesty International – began a public, viral campaign to encourage the local prosecutor and local judge to withdraw the execution order. Though Davis was convicted in a court of law, seven eyewitnesses have since recanted or contradicted their testimony , with some saying they were pressured by the police; jurors in the case say they wouldn’t vote to convict him if he had been tried today. But it was all for naught: it usually takes extraordinary circumstances and new evidence that decisively rules out the person convicted – as the 17 former death row inmates exonerated by DNA know too well – to convince almost anyone of a convicted criminal’s innocence. And sometimes, even then, prosecutors, judges and politicians still choose to find such evidence less than compelling. The US legal system offers defendants the presumption of innocence before conviction. Post-conviction, though, the legal presumption is that the 12 citizen jurors made the correct decision and that the defense lawyers and prosecutors did their jobs honestly and to the best of their abilities – a reasonable theory, but unable to account for the 273 people exonerated (some posthumously) thanks to the efforts of the Innocence Project . What justice campaigners and death penalty abolitionists don’t fully appreciate, perhaps, is the extent to which executions are a state matter, decided by state courts and judiciaries, with juries reflecting attitudes that pertain to that state. While 60 people sit on federal death row (and the federal government has only executed three people – all during the second Bush adminstration – since the supreme court decided it was legal in 1976), the vast majority of the nearly 3,300 people currently on death row in America were convicted in state and local courtrooms. And studies show that the people who make up the juries in those states overwhelmingly support the death penalty. That is, of course, a key feature of the American legal system: as with its political system, those powers not explicitly held by the federal government are left to the states – including the power to determine and prosecute most crimes. So, in the 34 states that have the death penalty , crimes that might net only life imprisonment in another state carry the risk of death. In California, which has death penalty statutes on the books and the greatest number of prisoners with death sentences, but which has only executed 13 people since 1976, those convicted of heinous crimes might face the ultimate sentence but are generally secure in the knowledge that they’ll likely never face the ultimate punishment. While the death penalty enjoys broad support in public polls, those same polls reveal that, like its application, support for the punishment varies regionally, with residents in liberal, coastal states less inclined to use it or support it than their southern or midwestern counterparts. While the calls for Troy Davis’s reprieve poured into Georgia from all over the country, and the world, the likelihood is that a minority of those callers spoke with a Georgia accent – a fact that, for a local prosecutor, a local judge and a state-selected board, probably mattered more than the most famous named person who picked up the phone today. All politics, it’s said, is local … and so is most crime and punishment in the United States, for better or, for many today, for worse. Troy Davis Capital punishment State of Georgia United States Amnesty International US supreme court Megan Carpentier guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …How to account for the failure of public outcry to stay Davis’s execution? In short, people in Georgia support the death penalty On Wednesday, Troy Davis became the 33rd person executed in the United States in 2011 (and there are nine remaining executions scheduled for this year that have not been stayed, as of publication time ). But with with the exception of Humberto Leal , nearly all those other men went to their deaths with little public outcry. Not so Davis, whose execution had been stayed twice previously and whose conviction even sent back to the state court for review by the US supreme court. But a state judge ruled the conviction valid, a third stay was denied and a state body in Georgia denied clemency this week – despite a vast outcry in the US and from abroad. Beyond all standard legal options, Davis’s supporters – including Amnesty International – began a public, viral campaign to encourage the local prosecutor and local judge to withdraw the execution order. Though Davis was convicted in a court of law, seven eyewitnesses have since recanted or contradicted their testimony , with some saying they were pressured by the police; jurors in the case say they wouldn’t vote to convict him if he had been tried today. But it was all for naught: it usually takes extraordinary circumstances and new evidence that decisively rules out the person convicted – as the 17 former death row inmates exonerated by DNA know too well – to convince almost anyone of a convicted criminal’s innocence. And sometimes, even then, prosecutors, judges and politicians still choose to find such evidence less than compelling. The US legal system offers defendants the presumption of innocence before conviction. Post-conviction, though, the legal presumption is that the 12 citizen jurors made the correct decision and that the defense lawyers and prosecutors did their jobs honestly and to the best of their abilities – a reasonable theory, but unable to account for the 273 people exonerated (some posthumously) thanks to the efforts of the Innocence Project . What justice campaigners and death penalty abolitionists don’t fully appreciate, perhaps, is the extent to which executions are a state matter, decided by state courts and judiciaries, with juries reflecting attitudes that pertain to that state. While 60 people sit on federal death row (and the federal government has only executed three people – all during the second Bush adminstration – since the supreme court decided it was legal in 1976), the vast majority of the nearly 3,300 people currently on death row in America were convicted in state and local courtrooms. And studies show that the people who make up the juries in those states overwhelmingly support the death penalty. That is, of course, a key feature of the American legal system: as with its political system, those powers not explicitly held by the federal government are left to the states – including the power to determine and prosecute most crimes. So, in the 34 states that have the death penalty , crimes that might net only life imprisonment in another state carry the risk of death. In California, which has death penalty statutes on the books and the greatest number of prisoners with death sentences, but which has only executed 13 people since 1976, those convicted of heinous crimes might face the ultimate sentence but are generally secure in the knowledge that they’ll likely never face the ultimate punishment. While the death penalty enjoys broad support in public polls, those same polls reveal that, like its application, support for the punishment varies regionally, with residents in liberal, coastal states less inclined to use it or support it than their southern or midwestern counterparts. While the calls for Troy Davis’s reprieve poured into Georgia from all over the country, and the world, the likelihood is that a minority of those callers spoke with a Georgia accent – a fact that, for a local prosecutor, a local judge and a state-selected board, probably mattered more than the most famous named person who picked up the phone today. All politics, it’s said, is local … and so is most crime and punishment in the United States, for better or, for many today, for worse. Troy Davis Capital punishment State of Georgia United States Amnesty International US supreme court Megan Carpentier guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …The Troy Davis case isn’t the only big capital punishment story making headlines tonight. Texas authorities executed Lawrence Russell Brewer for his role in the brutal death of James Byrd Jr. in 1998, reports AP . Brewer and two other white men chained Byrd, a 49-year-old black man, to the back…
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£12.7bn computer scheme to create patient record system is to be scrapped after years of delays An ambitious multibillion pound programme to create a computerised patient record system across the entire NHS is being scrapped, ministers have decided. The £12.7bn National Programme for IT is being ended after years of delays, technical difficulties, contractual disputes and rising costs. Health secretary Andrew Lansley, Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude and NHS chief executive Sir David Nicholson have decided it is better to discontinue the programme rather than put even more money into it. The axe may be wielded , with ministers likely to criticise the last Labour government for initiating the project but doing too little to ensure it delivered its objectives. An announcement has been expected for months after the National Audit Office cast serious doubt on the wisdom of ploughing further money into the scheme and David Cameron told MPs in May that he was considering that advice. Whitehall sources confirmed the decision had been made because of coalition cost-cutting and the ongoing problems. “It was meant to be a very helpful thing for NHS staff and patients but instead has become this amazingly top-heavy, hideously expensive programme. The problem is, it didn’t deliver”, said a Department of Health source. “It was too ambitious, the technology kept changing, and loads and loads of money has been put into it. It’s wasted a lot of money that should have been spent on nurses and improving patient care, and not on big international IT companies.” The move comes after ministers received fresh advice from the Cabinet Office’s major projects authority, which assesses the value for money of major public spending schemes. It concluded “there can be no confidence that the programme has delivered or can be delivered as originally conceived”, recommending ministers “dismember the programme and reconstitute it under new management and organisation arrangements”. Its highly critical verdict said: “The project has not delivered in line with the original intent as targets on dates, functionality, usage and levels of benefit have been delayed and reduced. It is not possible to identify a documented business case for the whole of the programme. Unless the work is refocused, it is hard to see how the perception can ever be shifted from the faults of the past and allowed to progress effectively to support the delivery of effective healthcare.” Health minister Simon Burns, who is responsible for the NHS, said recently: “The nationally imposed system is neither necessary nor appropriate to deliver this. We will allow hospitals to use and develop the IT they already have and add to their environment either by integrating systems purchased through the existing national contracts or elsewhere.” Providers of NHS care such as hospitals and GP surgeries will now be told to strike IT deals locally and regionally to get the best programmes they can afford. It is still unclear how much money the government has agreed to pay contractors in recent negotiations over cancellation fees for scrapping the project. Lansley told the the Daily Mail: “Labour’s IT programme let down the NHS and wasted taxpayers’ money by imposing a top-down IT system on the local NHS, which didn’t fit their needs. “We will be moving to an innovative new system driven by local decision-making. This is the only way to make sure we get value for money from IT systems that better meet the needs of a modernised NHS.” Serious doubts about the project’s future were confirmed this year when the cross-party House of Commons public accounts committee said it was “unworkable” and that, despite huge investment, had failed to deliver. NHS Health policy Denis Campbell guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Troy Davis execution goes ahead despite serious doubts about his guilt
September 21, 2011 No Comment
Condemned man proclaimed innocence in last words to victim’s family before lethal injection in Georgia prison Moments before he was put to death, Troy Davis lifted his head from the gurney to which he was strapped and looked the family of Mark MacPhail, the police officer for whose murder he was convicted, directly in the eyes. “I want to talk to the MacPhail family,” he said. “I was not responsible for what happened that night. I did not have a gun. I was not the one who took the life of your father, son, brother.” He then appealed to his own family and friends to “keep the faith”, said to the medical personnel who were about to kill him “may God have mercy on your souls”, and laid his head down again. He was administered with a triple lethal injection of pentobarbital, pancuronium bromide and potassium chloride, and at 11.08pm he was pronounced dead. The debate about what happened in Georgia’s Diagnostic and Classification Prison in Jackson late on Wednesday night will continue long after the gurney has been put away. In the final gruesome hours of waiting, the American judicial system at its very highest echelons was involved – including the US supreme court, which issued the decisive final ruling. The decision to press ahead with the death sentence despite serious doubts over Davis’s guilt drew accusations that this was the system at its most grotesque. It was Davis’s fourth execution date, and it was dragged out, for more than four hours, to what must have been tortuous effect for the prisoner and his family. Davis, 42, became the 52nd man to be executed in Georgia since the same supreme court reinstated the death penalty in 1973. His lawyers and thousands of supporters around the world were convinced that an innocent man had been sent to his death. As news of his death filtered out of the maximum security prison, his family was still huddled in an area of the prison grounds, surrounded by well-wishers. His sister, Martina Correia, had earlier vowed to continue the fight to end all capital punishment in America and said her brother’s story would be a galvanising force for others. “His message to young people is – you can lie down or you can stand up and fight,” she said. After the execution, Davis’s lawyers lamented what one described as a “legal lynching”. Thomas Ruffin said that the execution was “racially bigoted”. “In the state of Georgia 48.4% of people on death row this morning were black males, and in Georgia they make up no more than 15% of the population.” Ruffin said that seven of the nine witnesses at Davis’s 1991 trial had since recanted. They included a man who said under oath that he had seen MacPhail being killed, and that it was not Davis who shot him but another man called Sylvester Cole. Another witness said under oath that she had heard Coles confess three times to killing MacPhail and using Davis as the fall guy. But throughout Wednesday last-ditch legal manoeuvres by Davis’s defence team failed one by one as both state and federal judges ruled against them. First, a request for Davis to undergo a lie-detector test was rejected. A Georgia judge refused an appeal, then the state supreme court followed suit. In the end his only hope was the US supreme court, and for a moment at 7pm, just as the execution was due to take place, it seemed that the justices had ordered a stay. But the delay was only temporary and at around 10.15pm the court ruled that the execution should go ahead. The decision was welcomed by the MacPhail family. “He [Davis] had all the chances in the world,” the officer’s mother, Anneliese MacPhail, told the Associated Press. “It has got to come to an end.” But a second lawyer for Davis, Jason Ewart, said that as he died he took with him “his quest for justice. In the midst of all the newspaper headlines and vigils you can sometimes lose sight of the man who was on death row. Troy Davis was a family man, and his family mourns tonight.” John Lewis, a local radio reporter who was present at the execution, said that while the prisoner was being killed MacPhail family members sat in the front row looking intently at him. As they left the room after he was pronounced dead, some of them smiled. “So at least someone got some satisfaction out of this,” Lewis said. Troy Davis Capital punishment United States Ed Pilkington guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …An exasperated couple in Italy has turned to the law to try to get their 41-year-old son to leave home, reports the AFP . The son “has a good job but still lives at home,” says dad. “He demands that his clothes be washed and ironed and his meals prepared. He…
Continue reading …Troy Davis made a last-hour appeal to the US Supreme Court today, his last hope of avoiding execution for a murder he says he didn’t commit. Davis was scheduled to die at 7pm EDT in Georgia, and prison officials have given no word on a potential delay because of the…
Continue reading …A new Pentagon report has some rough stats, mostly from the Afghan war: The number of troops who have had amputations rose from 86 in 2009 to 187 last year. The pace continues this year, with 147 so far. The number of troops who lost two or three limbs rose…
Continue reading …In a rebuke to GOP leaders, the House today rejected a measure providing $3.7 billion for disaster relief as part of a bill to keep the government running through mid-November. The surprise 230-195 defeat came at the hands of Democrats and Tea Party Republicans. Democrats were opposed because the…
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