"The stay for the Texas execution was issued two days after the court
did not stop Texas from executing another inmate, Michael Richard,
leading to some confusion about its intentions.
Lawyers in the case on Tuesday said their appeal had been turned down
because of an unusual series of procedural problems.
Professor Dow said the computers crashed at the Texas Defender Service
in Houston while lawyers were rewriting his appeal to take advantage of
the high court�s unexpected interest in lethal injection.
Because of the resulting delay, the lawyers missed by 20 minutes the 5
p.m. filing deadline at the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals in Austin,
where the appeal had to go first before moving to the Supreme Court.
The Texas court refused their pleas to remain open for the extra
minutes. Because the lawyers missed that crucial step, Professor Dow
said, the Supreme Court had to turn down the appeal, and Mr. Richard was
executed. "
I have to assume they were using Emacs+Slime. My only question is why
they considered a software failure unusual. And why a reboot takes
twenty minutes. Sure, Windows can take twenty minutes to /shut down/....
:)
kenny
--
http://www.theoryyalgebra.com/
"We are what we pretend to be." -Kurt Vonnegut
Ken Tilton escribi�:
> "The stay for the Texas execution was issued two days after the court
> did not stop Texas from executing another inmate, Michael Richard,
> leading to some confusion about its intentions.
>
> Lawyers in the case on Tuesday said their appeal had been turned down
> because of an unusual series of procedural problems.
>
> Professor Dow said the computers crashed at the Texas Defender Service
> in Houston while lawyers were rewriting his appeal to take advantage of
> the high court�s unexpected interest in lethal injection.
>
> Because of the resulting delay, the lawyers missed by 20 minutes the 5
> p.m. filing deadline at the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals in Austin,
> where the appeal had to go first before moving to the Supreme Court.
>
> The Texas court refused their pleas to remain open for the extra
> minutes. Because the lawyers missed that crucial step, Professor Dow
> said, the Supreme Court had to turn down the appeal, and Mr. Richard was
> executed. "
>
> I have to assume they were using Emacs+Slime. My only question is why
> they considered a software failure unusual. And why a reboot takes
> twenty minutes. Sure, Windows can take twenty minutes to /shut down/....
>
> :)
>
> kenny
>
I am puzzled: Being the life of a man at stake, the court didn't want to
wait another twenty minutes?
Being the life of a man at stake, the lawyers couldn't get another
computer to write the appeal on? A classic typewriter? By hand?
Oh, the humanity!
Leandro
On Sat, 29 Sep 2007 09:41:08 -0300, Leandro Rios <··················@gmail.com>
tried to confuse everyone with this message:
>
>I am puzzled: Being the life of a man at stake, the court didn't want to
> wait another twenty minutes?
>Being the life of a man at stake, the lawyers couldn't get another
>computer to write the appeal on? A classic typewriter? By hand?
>
Maybe he was a really bad guy and no one really cared enough?
--
|Don't believe this - you're not worthless ,gr---------.ru
|It's us against millions and we can't take them all... | ue il |
|But we can take them on! | @ma |
| (A Wilhelm Scream - The Rip) |______________|
Timofei Shatrov wrote:
> On Sat, 29 Sep 2007 09:41:08 -0300, Leandro Rios <··················@gmail.com>
> tried to confuse everyone with this message:
>
>
>>I am puzzled: Being the life of a man at stake, the court didn't want to
>> wait another twenty minutes?
Probably one factor was that they had already waited twenty years and
the only thing at dispute was the /method/ of execution, not the guilt
or sentence. So...
>>Being the life of a man at stake, the lawyers couldn't get another
>>computer to write the appeal on? A classic typewriter? By hand?
>>
>
>
> Maybe he was a really bad guy and no one really cared enough?
>
In Texas there is certainly that, but I wager it was more that he had
strung things out for twenty years by leveraging the system's rules and
as one wag noted turnabout is fair play.
kenny
--
http://www.theoryyalgebra.com/
"We are what we pretend to be." -Kurt Vonnegut
Ken Tilton <···········@optonline.net> writes:
> Professor Dow said the computers crashed at the Texas Defender Service
> in Houston while lawyers were rewriting his appeal to take advantage
> of the high court’s unexpected interest in lethal injection.
>
> Because of the resulting delay, the lawyers missed by 20 minutes the 5
> p.m. filing deadline at the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals in Austin,
> where the appeal had to go first before moving to the Supreme Court.
>
> The Texas court refused their pleas to remain open for the extra
> minutes. Because the lawyers missed that crucial step, Professor Dow
> said, the Supreme Court had to turn down the appeal, and Mr. Richard
> was executed. "
Holy crap. I guess this is the kind of scenario that corporate
lawyers think about when they're writing the boilerplate for
shrink-wrap licenses.