Odell Barnes: Texas Killing an Innocent Man?

Odell Barnes, the latest Texas prisoner scheduled to die in Huntsville, at 6pm CST, has serious claims to innocence, including some forensic tests that seem to indicate that crucial evidence, used to convict and sentence him to death, was planted by police, including dime-size spots of blood on Barnes's clothes. One of those spots of blood, after defense testing, subsequent to his conviction, showed to have 40 times the amount of citric acid as is normal for human blood, and indicative of blood taken from a yellow-topped vial.

His court-appointed and appeals attorneys refused to investigate, failing even to hire experts to analyze the forensic evidence.

Jacques Chirac and Lionel Jospin requested clemency for Barnes from Gov. Shrub just a few days ago; the French citizenry in general have been captivated by the inequities of Barnes's case and appalled by the shoddiness of Texas and US legal procedure regarding capital punishment, especially the vitiation of habeas corpus.

Update: Odell Barnes was executed by the State of Texas on 1 March 2000.