A federal appeals court has tossed an Amarillo woman’s death sentence after it found that local prosecutors had failed to reveal that their primary trial witness was a paid informant.
With a 2-1 decision, the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals last week sent Brittany Marlowe Holberg’s 1998 murder conviction back down to the trial court to decide how to proceed.
Holberg has been on death row for 27 years. In securing her conviction in 1998, Randall County prosecutors heavily relied on testimony from a jail inmate who was working as a confidential informant for the City of Amarillo police. That informant recanted her testimony in 2011, but neither a Texas Court of Criminal Appeals or a federal district court found that prosecutors had violated Holberg’s constitutional right to a fair trial.
Well, but what if they plea guilty to raping and murdering a hundred kids?
10 year max?
Pleading guilty is not really an indicator of actual guilt in the American legal system.
Yeah I was gonna say, “define plead guilty”
So regardless, 10 year max?
Woah, that straw man came outta fuckin nowhere.
It isn’t that far from what some people have done. Perhaps reassessment every 5-10y but there are people in jail who do not and cannot fit in a civil society. Serial killers, child rapists, etc these people exist, you want to stick them in a mental institute instead fine but allowing them back into society isn’t wise.
I am fully aware and believe there are people who can no longer exist/function in society today, and they absolutely should be reassesed with massive amounts of therapy and everything to try and reintegrate them, but not released after some arbitrary deadline.
I was simply pointing out a straw man when I saw it.
Its not straw.
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In the US, I think they do consecutive sentencing. So that’d be 10 years times 100 or 200 crimes
I think their point is 10 years max for every charge. Which, depending on the crime, could guarantee a lot of repeat offenders.
Good luck fixing some of them in 10 years…
Well, the prison system never really tries to fix anyone :(
In some countries it does.
Long sentences are useful when they don’t try to fix prisoners. Because if you can’t fix them, you can at least keep them out of society.
Yes
Sounds like a pretty good way to get people to say “I’m willing to risk a relatively small chunk of my life to kill someone forever.” I’m guessing you’ve never had anyone you know murdered for nothing?