on our team. this is the weekly. stories now a six day fury shakes the muslim world as protesters across the globe against america following the release of a controversial film made to mark islam. and diplomats rushed to the flames and solve its ties with the muslim world experts point to america's mideast policy is being responsible for the unrest. plus europe. protests once again people want the belt tightening measures to end after

a million people in spanish catalonia for independence. and also u.s. sanctions against iran are failing to curb. its heavy consumer nations are once again exempt from the missions. out of the news stories for you in half an hour from now in the meantime the story of thomas miller he's an american who has spent thirty years on death row and faced execution ten times before the supreme court struck down his death sentence. the unofficial motto here is that we don't joke around in texas. this story happened to you but did you see that. we was for. you know some of the things that we see on t.v. or this person we don't suppose we execute him and we say you believe the system works like it is the american dream. all of these inmates know that death row is an

impossible place to escape from. throughout the years thomas miller's hopes of his case being revisited have faded away seasons past he has seen many of his companions depart for the execution room little to hold on to jury in his weight just letters and a few visits by close friends or family who have also had to prepare for the execution. the situation won't happen again but he asked me i'll go has your been confronted to an executor i know that my friends who have been executives on always wanted to protect people they love from the trauma of looking at them die. a few lawyers have tried to attack the texan system. jim marcus is one of them are and he made a one of a kind discovery. in his office of the law faculty of austin thomas miller

case takes up a lot of space in the defense of jim marcus entered this case almost by chance in one thousand nine hundred four back then he was working for an organization of volunteer lawyers defending inmates with no means of their own row one there are five by the time the case was over the file itself filled to fall filing cabinets it was a huge file. because over the overtime we just collected. a lot of evidence mostly documenting the racism and counting. for months jim marcus studied all the files from the one nine hundred eighty six case and them stumbled upon something. that dallas county had a manual that instructed prosecutors to discriminate against potential jurors on the basis of race religion gender who were wearing

what jim marcus discovered was staggering a discrimination handbook written at the end of the sixties and used by judges to systematically exclude black members of the jury. basically it's based on stereotype it's based on prejudices it says that. you know people who are from any minority group are going to empathize with the accused expresses a general distrust of women. and pretty clearly you know don't take jewish from. not only jews but also fat people those who don't wear ties were considered i'm t. conformists and were said to make bad jurors. they're looking for white hunters. to be the jurors. it is clearly stated that white hunters are always good jurors for the state these prosecutors in thomas' case said

they were not following us but if you look at their notes it'll say black male no tie for no tie his beard no tie no ties wearing jeans. so you can see that with the with the notes show is that they were exactly following this. the initials b m r for a black male he's a black man and has a beard that's one who is left out. if it is for latino female here is a hispanic lady who did not make it through selection. these are a few of many handwritten annotations corresponding to potential jury members presenting themselves to the court or the defendant. to recount but to try. was the hatred that was going to. do a process. in the bigotry the.

discrimination that was coming openly going on with the that's the system. that thomas miller's trial ten out of the eleven black jurors were left out we met one of them. believe fields agreed to meet us at an airport lobby. twenty two years after the miller trial he seems almost surprised by our questions to live in a society that is full of discrimination you have to have a thick skin and so therefore i don't let things bother me that way you know i don't take it personally it's just institutional have you been asked to be a good juror oh yes but i go up to the courts own as they call it a panel this and i'm always rejected so you know it's continuous.

savage face this is we can sure say i guess i don't know but the thing is that yes i have been called to jury duty many times since then and i've never been selected to be part of a jury either my name is carol this and i only testimonies of the ignored jurors overlapped. a movie made ten years ago by some young lawyers confirms this and also reassure sherry that her father was a. victim of a truncated trial so. i would ask him. how did they feel and what were they feeling at that time when they could not. sit on the jury because they were black and i was very wrong but feel i could have been a fair jury because. feel that i could. listen to the evidence. i think even when i die races will still be going for. similar to

what happened in the miller case more than ninety percent of black jurors have been left out from trials over the past forty years in dallas since. this is the whole were led by this man judge bill hill. how can one explain that such ways were left on punished. perhaps because the death penalty is a source of contention in the u.s. . we have officials here who are right wing politicians who do not value human life and who use the death penalty to promote their political careers promote their or their life and their lifestyle all our politicians are elected course our governor our state representatives our senators . our judges criminal court judges are district attorneys they're all elected and

they like to say they think it's good to be appear to be tough on crime in the toughest on crime they think they can be used to have the death penalty and to support the death penalty. is the death penalty used as a means to profit bill hill now retired did not wish to comment on this. we really focused on two issues both having to do with the fairness of his trial one was the racism the other one was that you know thomas was shot by the police when he was arrested with a with a bullet round of ammunition that explodes on impact so a bullet entered his abdomen and then exploded and shredded you know parts of his organs and so forth. and he was in intensive care for a long time they basically moved him from the hospital the jail and tried him and at the time of his trial he had lost you know fifty pounds he was you know out of

it he was on medication he was not competent to be tried. very poor health and incapable of attending a trial this confirms a document that we got ahold of. famous dr ari key wrote the following. mr thomas miller was not able to defend himself even if he could be present at the audience. any man presenting such depression pain and wounds wouldn't be able to endure such a stressful event even more so if the trial was a life or death decision. in two thousand and one thomas miller had been on death row for already fourteen years when his lawyer jim marcus finished his counter investigation which detailed the discrimination and irregular. artes of the trial. file was sent to the appeals court of texas.

i thought we had so much evidence there is no way that we can. and then we. was executed for late february twenty first two thousand and two. you know it was a sense of relief you know it's like all our bureaus exhausted we have a very left with some of the supreme court and you know live in north africa was like. this is like you know. in the beginning of two thousand and two this was the last chance the u.s. supreme court in washington is the highest in the land it is the only one capable of revoking a stiff made decision each year the supreme court receives around one thousand mans from death row inmates and only two or three are accepted for thomas miller's defense a true race against death started so i was about it was less than

a week before the execution and the supreme court. announced that it would hear the case that was a huge relief. convinced that there was discrimination during the trial the supreme court demanded that the death sentence be reexamined but the techs in court did not see eye to eye with this decision and refused to admit that miller had been a victim of racist practice he was to be executed. takes in just as supported by a strong conservative public opinion and by very active victim associations refuses reexamination of the case. i believe as we practice criminal justice in texas we do a better job of it than any other state in america. one we execute our convicted capital murder we have the highest execution rate in america we're not afraid to do

it we do it well we tolerate a lot in texas you can be anything you want in this state but be prepared to pay the consequences of your actions. and i think that the rest of the country should take note of all of that so in that respect i believe texas is the most progressive state in america. how can such confidence be understood when suspicions of judiciary errors increased in texas. and universities and for those who defend human rights the miller case has become a symbol. one of the main leaders of the abolitionist movement and teaches history at dallas university. not surprised by the ruthlessness of the techs in the forty's. and why do you think they want to kill the minorities so badly because the state is

a hateful racist state that. wants to kill poor and poor people and people of color this is a hate state this is the region the south is still hateful the american criminal justice system is discriminatory this is a normal part of the american criminal justice system and this state is among the worst of the worst the high profile nature of his case. which has embarrassed correct fully this state on multiple occasions to show the how wrong and terrible the state was in its prosecution of him the state will do all that it can it will make the extra effort to prove that the end result would be ok we couldn't kill him but we'll make sure he never gets out using it were it would die in jail i don't think thomas miller ill is ever going to see the light of day as

a free man i hope that he would confronted with texan stubbornness and refusal to recognize any mistake in the miller case the supreme court decided in june two thousand and five to reverse the decision in its report. denotes the selection of the jurors by race and concluded that there is no doubt that the use of temple can texas allows judges to discriminate. with six votes against three judges of the supreme court ordered a new trial. jurors first cases during the sixty's seventy's and eighty's this manually the miller case goes all over the media for ever before how the state of texas been asked to revoke the death sentence was. yet to be the matter. and when i went i still went down there because the lead in told me that he had something to tell me. so i went down he always molly and he tell

me that his case had been heard at the supreme court and that they made a decision that they're going to retry his case that they will actually hear it at the supreme court and at that point it was like my heart had stopped. he has an opportunity to actually get off the. texan justice hadn't said its last words threat of execution returned. by the supreme court decision dallas county general attorney bill hill struck back . he refused to deny miller's guilt and warned that we will request the death penalty of the new trial.

police want to rescind body and convict him prosecutors want to win for some reason the truth goes out the window nobody gives a damn about the truth they want to win. defense attorneys prosecutors they want to win. in order to win as the year two thousand and seven came to an end justice proposed a deal to thomas miller attorneys refer to it as an agreement but miller's friends and family saw it as a trap even the trial would take place again and he might end up sentenced to death or he could plead guilty and the sentence would be changed to life imprisonment in order not to die thomas miller had to accept to stop claiming the innocence which he had been defending for twenty years for his friends the choice was clear better to plead guilty then to be sentenced to death again thomas miller still wants to defend his innocence but richard the detective found the words to deter him from it if you want to represent yourself i told you. that i would stay with. i would help

you and i will do that but. be assured that there's only one thing that's going to happen. you're going to go to trial you're going to be found guilty and you're going to be sentenced to death again that's going to happen you're going to die but you're going to save his life thomas miller finally decided to give up defending his innocence despite all the unanswered questions despite all the efforts that were made to counter investigate and despite the real doubt about whether or not he is guilty thomas miller signed. on march nineteenth two thousand and eight he signed this document in which he pleads guilty and sees his sentence changed to life imprisonment. he left death row forever and was transferred to this detention center where we met him nineteen years after our first encounter.

with a good. we. don't talk to us his team's attorneys to talk to us about two weeks off and on different terms that we had a form of attorney and everything right. people to really have a sincere love appreciation for us so he would be. and was want most to. tonight go back to try ok when did you realize that this thread is. going to. when they said we had a license. the judge said do we have a license and he shook our hands he wishes good luck. the

rest of life. do something to begin to. is just pressure. off mentally and psychologically almost like physically. a million tons of pressure just began to just disappear gradually you know leaving was. a blessing but in the same time you know. it's because. for thomas miller and for all the inmates discriminated over the past few decades in texas hopes by the face of one man. craig watkins is the new attorney general of dallas county he follows the much feared bill hill and he is the first black man to take on this job in texas. the trial

which he witnessed on september nineteenth two thousand and eight was a landmark one man walking forward between all his lawyers had spent twenty five years in prison for rape which he had always tonight finally authorized by the attorney general d.n.a. tests proved his innocence and the judge then had to decide if he were to be freed or not. see. the person said. just. are.

my. former. evil east. thank you thank you thank you thank you audience applauded thanks tony general what kinds personally congratulated johnny lindsay and wished him good luck he also told him how to term and he is to continue the fight against wrongful accusations. that. johnny lindsay is the nineteenth man to be freed in only a few months and more than three hundred files have yet to be examined. mr watkins place it's a very very it's a great day but you. know it's not for me a place great day for commerce justice system. and i hope that we can carry on this issue. you think it's easy to be in the frickin american to do this work well you know i don't know if it's been here. but from where i come from i didn't have

a choice i had to do. many innocents in prison obviously yes well you know that. were how they exclude certain in that group or from the jury because there were race. in texas years ago. and early ninety's mid ninety's we decided to change how we. actually have people shouldn't juries but i think i want a long way to make sure that our juries are diverse but we need to go even further because prosecutors. and this is just a small moment in time and so at the end of the day i understand and hopefully when i'm done. it will have become just a system a legal system that asks for forgiveness and gives freedom back to those who were wrongfully accused. such is the image that holds on to she dreams of freedom for

her father. since his sentence has been changed to life imprisonment she can visit him every week she does not shy away from her one goal to get my dad. that's it what it's like ready. there's no stopping point. there's no stopping point at all. to be truthful based upon the law in the state of texas people definitely don't normally get out of prison you know just from the rest of life in prison ok. so if we get out you know it would be a blessing and we'd like to be able to show that. a person who come from what you call the lowest of lows you know been on def you know or actually some of the come

from that actually making a positive contribution to humanity so we're hoping that that would cause people to stop and look maybe execution is not maybe something best we can do besides kill people in order to prove it can have people as well. you know to some degree or another we're just hoping that we can be positive estimate. life can be a system of example for humanity in general you know. that the idea. that. you take a step and good girls of girls are because for the market for us to occur yes i think like thomas miller was thirty four when he was sentenced is now sixty one. days. in theory it is possible to imagine

a conditional release for good behavior and after more than twenty here spent jailed. but. in reality is fate is still in the hands of the texan to disagree system. fit. nation free acronym taishan free transport charges free arrangement

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