Originally Posted by Residents Fan:
“No, Danes complains after his execution fails that he is being held for "wrongful imprisonment". But that still doesn't negate the fact that he is guilty of raping and murdering a child -nothing "wrongful" about his imprisonment. He's a dangerous criminal who shouldn't be let out of prison.
Why didn't the governor just commute Oswald's sentence to life imprisonment? Just because he cannot be executed doesn't mean this dangerous criminal should be released.
Yes,his death sentence was rendered inoperative by the Act of God, but not the fact Oswald committed heinous
criminal acts.”
Commuting is only for
before the death penalty is carried out.
To the letter of the law as it stood up to and immediately after the lethal injection being administered, the sentence had been carried out in full.
You can't just keep people in on a whim - the law would have to be changed, and they just hadn't got a grasp on that at that point. Lawyers would have had a field day.
This was all explained, and perfectly understandable.
To keep Oswald in after the sentence had been carried to it's conclusion would have been unlawful. They couldn't try him again for the same crime - as he'd had the death penalty already.
It's not nice having to turf out a murdering peadophile, but without following the laws of the land, anarchy would be a heartbeat away.
What you are talking about is a moral issue, not a legal issue, and definitely not a plot-hole. True, Oswald
shouldn't be allowed to walk free afterwards to possibly commit the acts again, but his senternce went full course, so he
has to be let out. It's the same for aggravated burglary - the purpetrator is let out after their sentence has completed. They might re-offend, but that's not the fault of the judicial system which has to stick to its law.