Hank Skinner Case Reflection

I found myself having a hard time forming an opinion with this case. There is no telling to what degree the facts are being distorted from either side. If this is truly just a gamble on Skinner's part in hope of enough confusion to give him a "not guilty" verdict, then it is a gross manipulation of the measures our justice system takes to try to ensure a fair trial. But on the other hand, if this man was not given a fair trial, execution would be a gross mistake of our justice system.


Ultimately, I think injustice was averted by the issuance of a stay of execution. It would have been a travesty for a man to be executed over such circumstantial evidence. The only hard evidence that both sides agreed on was that Skinner had one of the victim's blood on his shirt when the police found him. That alone is suspicious, yes, but is it enough to execute a man? Also, the site defending Skinner claims that most of the evidence was found without a warrant and the crime scene was trampled by numerous police officers and was not preserved. If this is true, we will never be able to know what truly happened that night because of the large possibility of the crime scene being tampered with or contaminated. A death sentence is not appropriate in this case, and would have been unjust because of the large amount of uncertainty in what little evidence has been presented.


The opposing web sites were so interesting to examine. They had the same font, color scheme, even pictures across the top banner. But their messages were polar opposites. One thing I had a hard time dealing with was the attack that the website in favor of convicting Skinner made on the defending website. I thought that was rather strange and made me feel like the website had more bias and was probably skewing the evidence. Though there is no proof of this, a personal attack on the opposing side just doesn't seem necessary if you are telling the truth to begin with. Also, the difference in the length was something that stuck out to me. Although it repeated itself multiple times, the website defending Skinner was far more lengthy in text than the other website. I suppose at first glance this might make somebody think that there is more evidence for this side of the argument, but as I mentioned, it ends up being repeated information. I also thought the pictures on both websites looked kind of ... sketchy for lack of better words. Why would pictures of the crime scene be posted on a website if the case is still not closed completely? I don't buy it. Which makes me think that these websites are less credible than I already thought. 


The media coverage seems in favor of calling off the execution of Skinner. I have to wonder if that is because of the circumstances of this case in particular, or because of a general distaste in capital punishment among the writers of the articles.