Eight Belles, James Woodward

¡Hola! It's Tom Guarriello. If you're like me, the first Saturday in May is always an exciting day because it's the day when we run the Kentucky Derby here in the United States. And this past Saturday was no different, except it was very different. The winner of the race, which I called, by the way, predicted and bet on, thanks to my son-in-law being in Vegas— way to go, Jeremy— um, was Big Brown, a terrific horse who started at the 20 post, the 20 post, way out in the middle of nowhere, and won the race handily. There was a filly in the race, uh, and there aren't usually fillies in the race, or if there are, they're usually not of much consequence. Fillies don't run very well against colts. They're, they're not as strong, they're not as fast, they're not as big. But occasionally you do get a filly who's competitive. And this year there was a filly in the race named Eight Bells. And Eight Bells ran a really good race, and in fact she finished second. And then something happened that is still a mystery because nobody can figure out why, but Eight Bells went after passing the finish line, rode out, as they say, a little bit, and then just suddenly collapsed on the track. Um, the ambulance was dispatched, and it turned out that she had broken both front ankles and had to be euthanized on the track. And you know, anytime you see an animal having to be put down— thoroughbred racehorses maybe most dramatically because of their majestic size and speed and presence. And you know, they're amazing animals. So Eight Bells was euthanized, and predictably and appropriately, there's horror at the sight of this animal having to be euthanized. And it brings back all of the discussion about whether or not thoroughbred racing is humane or inhumane, and whether the conditions under which the horses are trained and run are too stressful for young animals, and that's all very appropriate. Now, what really got me, however, was the juxtaposition of the outcry over the Eight Bells, um, tragedy and what I saw last night on the CBS News broadcast 60 Minutes, If you didn't see that, I'll put a link to it over here so you can take a look at the story that I'm gonna tell you about. And the story focused on the Dallas County prosecutor whose name was Wade, as in Roe v. Wade. And his history, he's now deceased, his history of prosecutions, and the number of men, men, Black almost universally, some white men, but almost universally, who turned out to have been innocent as proven by DNA evidence many, many years later. And the story focused on a gentleman named James Woodard. James Woodard had been in Texas prisons for 28 years. 28 years. No, I'm sorry, 27 years. He was 28 when he went into prison. He's 55 now. 27 years for a crime he did not commit, a rape he did not commit. DNA evidence cleared him, um, and he walked out of prison a free man. A free man after 28 years in prison. Now, that's a horror story. And now what we're finding is that there are lots of these horror stories taking place in Texas. There were 5 gentlemen, I think 5, maybe 6 gentlemen who were interviewed on the 60 Minutes piece. But what's most disturbing to me is that Texas also leads the nation in executions.. And so we have to ask ourselves, how many innocent people, mostly men, mostly Black, have been executed in Texas as the result of unfair trial practices? What Wade did was to withhold evidence that he held, which proved without the DNA evidence that Woodard was not guilty. So we have a situation where the kind of emotional outcry that we see following the Eight Bells situation and the kind of emotional outcry that we see following the James Woodard situation is just not appropriate. They're just not proportionate. We don't see the kind of horror. We don't see the kind of absolute anger that we have a system that not only will withhold evidence about innocent people, but will send innocent people to their death. As a result of a system that's just flawed in this way. Now, I have to say that the death penalty makes very little sense to me from any perspective, and we're the only civilized country in the world that continues to use the death penalty as its ultimate punishment. For the most severe crimes. I really believe that the kind of situation that we see here with James Woodard is the kind of situation that has to take us, really take us back to first principles about justice, about the meaning of punishment, and most of all about the irreversibility of something, the death penalty, when we're now finding so many people who in fact have been wrongly convicted of crimes, some of them capital crimes. So, um, that really struck me over the past couple of days, and I just wanted to talk to you guys about it. So take care, and I'll see you again soon. Bye-bye.