A Texas man who said his death sentence was based on false and unscientific expert testimony was executed Thursday evening for killing a man during a robbery decades ago.

Brent Ray Brewer, 53, received a lethal injection at the state penitentiary in Huntsville for the April 1990 death of Robert Laminack. The inmate was pronounced dead at 6:39 p.m. local time, 15 minutes after the chemicals began flowing.

Prosecutors had said Laminack, 66, gave Brewer and his girlfriend a ride to a Salvation Army location in Amarillo when he was stabbed in the neck and robbed of $140.

Brewer’s execution came hours after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to step in over the inmate’s claims that prosecutors had relied on false and discredited expert testimony at his 2009 resentencing trial.

  • logicbomb@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    they clearly only intend to stop what they view as “actively killing an unborn child.”

    It doesn’t matter where they intend to stop.

    If I say, “one apple plus one apple is two apples,” and my stated justification is “1+1=2”. And then later, I say, “one orange plus one orange is three oranges,” you would be right to say, “Your justification 1+1=2 also works for oranges, so somewhere in your arguments you’re incorrect.” But here, you’re saying that I can respond, “I only intend to stop at apples,” and that this is “reasonably consistent.”

    This is some sort of cognitive dissonance sophistry that simply doesn’t work. It’s not reasonably consistent.

      • logicbomb@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        If I stated that all people deserve to be free, but I actually meant except for criminals, then that is something that I can be challenged about and I can revise my statement, and I could say, “All people except criminals deserve to be free.” But we’re not talking about that. We’re talking about people who believe in absolutes, but never defend the actual ramifications of those beliefs.