A Texas man who unsuccessfully challenged the safety of the state’s lethal injection drugs and raised questions about evidence used to persuade a jury to sentence him to death for killing an elderly woman decades ago was executed late Tuesday.

Jedidiah Murphy, 48, was pronounced dead after an injection at the state penitentiary in Huntsville for the October 2000 fatal shooting of 80-year-old Bertie Lee Cunningham of the Dallas suburb of Garland. Cunningham was killed during a carjacking.

“To the family of the victim, I sincerely apologize for all of it,” Murphy said while strapped to a gurney in the Texas death chamber and after a Christian pastor, his right hand on Murphy’s chest, prayed for the victim’s family, Murphy’s family and friends and the inmate.

“I hope this helps, if possible, give you closure,” Murphy said.

  • LastYearsPumpkin@feddit.ch
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    1 year ago

    Oops, I guess that wasn’t the child molester, it was the person trying to help the kid and got incorrectly accused. Guess we should clean up the wood chipper again for the next one.

      • LastYearsPumpkin@feddit.ch
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        1 year ago

        Oh, you’re right, we should only execute people when we’re double secret sure with a pinky swear.

        • starman2112@sh.itjust.works
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          1 year ago

          Like that one guy that several firefighters testified had to have set the fire that killed his family. Guilty beyond any shadow of a doubt, that fire wouldn’t have spread the way it did without accelerant.

          FUCKING OOPS.

        • lightnsfw@reddthat.com
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          1 year ago

          When a child has been sexually assaulted and they scrape the dudes DNA out of her you can be pretty goddamned sure he did it.

          • Evie @lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Why just ‘her’? You know little boys can be raped too… by both females and males… what about them?

            And not every victim comes forward right away for many reasons, what about them?

            What if they can’t actually identify the attacker because they were inebriated for various reasons and a person is incorrectly accused, has no DNA tying them to the attack and the victim can’t really say it was them?

            Too many variables to indefinitely say kill all offenders of children when too many mistakes have been made before

            • lightnsfw@reddthat.com
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              1 year ago

              Why just ‘her’? You know little boys can be raped too… by both females and males… what about them?

              Because it’s just an example and I thought using “them” instead would make the sentence sound weird.

              My point is we can kill the ones we know for sure did it. We can stop at imprisoning the rest.

              • Evie @lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                But the problem with that is too much room for human error and biases, that’s the reason why we don’t already emoloy your idea which is not a new proposed idea.

                Capital punishment has always been popular throughout our history, we are just far more evolved now to understand why capital punishment with impunity can go wrong…

                Your idea also puts a ton of faith in the public/elected officials and governments not being corrupt and not using their power for personal gains… we know that is not a reality we can relay on and more often than not, people of power WILL abuse it… your proposal has so many ways to be abused…