Man executed after Karens lie about his involvement

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Ledell Lee’s last words before being executed in 2017 were, “I’m an innocent man”.
Four years later that statement has taken on eerie meaning as new DNA evidence has been discovered in the murder he was convicted of carrying out.
Lee, who was 51 when he died, was given the death penalty in Arkansas for the 1993 murder of Debra Reese, and now lawyers for his family say someone else’s DNA was found on the murder weapon.
Lee’s family commissioned testing of the wooden club used in the murder, and say results last month found traces of an unknown man.
US non-profit legal organisation The Innocence Project earlier said there was “no physical evidence directly (connecting) Lee to Reese’s murder.”
Lee was convicted of Reese’s murder in 1995, after the then 26-year-old woman was found dead in her Arkansas home after being strangled and beaten with a wooden club.
Neighbours reported seeing Lee in the area which was used as the smoking gun evidence in his trial.
He was executed on April 20, 2017.
https://www.news.com.au/world/south-ame ... 54d83fcd78

Well perhaps we should not have the death penalty, then horror stories like that could be avoided.

Agreed.

yep, that would be a start

This is one of the reasons why I am against capital punishment and this is why UK outlawed it in 1965.

They did try to bring it back in the 1980's so a journalist traveled to Mississippi and did a documentary on Edward Johnson, 14 Days in May. He was set to be executed on may 20th and he was put to death and he was found to be innocent because a witness came forward saying she was with him at the time of the rape happened and she went to testify but was told to go home and mind her own business. So this was proof to the UK gov that capital punishment does not work.

I also think police procedures need to be checked. The poor diude was prosecuted and executed because the neighbours saw a black man walking in a white neighborhood. There was literally no other evidence he was associated with the murder. Wrong place, wrong time, wrong neighborhood.

The new DNA test ... "found moderate support that blood on Lee's left shoe could have belonged to Reese".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ledell_Le ... NA_testing
https://www.thv11.com/article/news/crim ... 099d7ed00f

The article doesn't mention why he had blood on his shoe that day and that it's consistent with the victim.

"could have" is reasonable doubt to not execute somebody.

A jury determines both guilt and punishment.

Once he was determined to be guilty of using a tire thumper to bludgeon a woman 36 times, execution was a no brainer.

What I wonder ... wouldn't there have been blood splatter all over him?