Death Penalty Mistake
New evidence from a Texas capital punishment case demonstrates the death penalty was unjustly applied. It is the first such case ever against the death penalty.
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The last man to be executed during George W Bush’s term as governor of Texas was sentenced to death on the basis of a single piece of evidence—one human hair—which did not actually belong to him, DNA tests have shown. Claude Howard Jones was convicted in 1990 of murdering an off-licence owner and was put to death by lethal injection 10 years later. He suffered the ultimate penalty because jurors were informed that a strand of his hair had been found on the floor close to the victim’s body. That now turns out to be untrue: laboratory analysis of the crucial item of evidence has revealed that it actually came from the head of the store’s owner, Allen Hilzendager.
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