1,001 Facts That Will Scare the S#*t Out of You: The Ultimate Bathroom Reader (63 page)

Russ Kick, Disinformation Book of Lists: Subversive Facts and Hidden Information in Rapid-fire Format (The Disinformation Company, 2004).

466

FACT :
When Allen Lee Davis was executed in Florida in 1999 for the beating death of a pregnant woman and her two young daughters,
blood spewed from his mouth
and he suffered burns to his head, leg, and groin. This marked the debut of the state’s new electric chair, built specifically to accommodate a man Davis’ size (350 lbs.).
Hopefully it had wheels.

Russ Kick, Disinformation Book of Lists: Subversive Facts and Hidden Information in Rapid-fire Format (The Disinformation Company, 2004).

467

FACT :
Misidentified eyewitness testimony was a factor in
77 percent of DNA exoneration cases
, making it the leading cause of wrongful convictions in the United States. In 40 percent of cases, cross-racial identification was a factor. Studies show that people are less likely to recognize faces of a different race, making race a factor in wrongful convictions.
“Can you point to the honky who did this to you?”

“Facts on Post-Conviction DNA Exonerations,” Innocence Project,
www.innocenceproject.org
.

468

FACT :
Approximately 25 percent of wrongful convictions are made
because of incriminating statements and false confessions
. In more than a third of these, defendants were developmentally disabled and under the age of eighteen.
Remember, kids: if you must make an incriminating statement, just be sure it incriminates someone else.

“Facts on Post-Conviction DNA Exonerations,” Innocence Project,
www.innocenceproject.org
.

469

FACT :
Taser stun guns are not safe
according to Amnesty International. The group reports that more than 330 Americans have died as a result of Taser attacks.
Unlike their victims, officers are rarely charged in the accidental deaths.

Shocking, I know.

“Tasers—Potentially Lethal and Easy to Abuse,” Amnesty International, December 16 2008,
www.amnesty.org
.

470

FACT :
15 percent of cases that were later overturned by DNA evidence
relied on informants or “snitches.”
Most snitch testimony is considered unreliable, since it is often offered in return for dropped charges and other deals.
Snitches are so roundly despised that rats, canaries, stool pigeons, and weasels have all filed suit to have their names dissociated from them.

“Facts on Post-Conviction DNA Exonerations,” Innocence Project,
www.innocenceproject.org
.

471

FACT :
According to Amnesty International, security forces in southern Thai provinces
engage in systematic torture and abuse
during regional conflicts. Prisoners are beaten, burned, buried in the ground up to their necks, given electric shocks, and nearly suffocated with plastic bags, leading to several deaths.
Human rights abuses in southeast Asia?

Nuh uh!

“Thai Security Forces Systematically Torture in Southern Counter-Insurgency,” Amnesty International, January 13, 2009,
www.amnesty.org
.

472

FACT :
A police officer in Orange County, Florida
shocked an eleven-year-old child with a learning disability
with a Taser when she punched him in the face in March 2008. The Orange County, Florida school called the police after the child became agitated and assaulted staff.
They just need a lower setting on that thing, one for kids, animals, midgets, and the elderly.

“Tasers—Potentially Lethal and Easy to Abuse,” Amnesty International, December 16 2008,
www.amnesty.org
.

473

FACT :
In 1953,
CIA director Allen Dulles ordered secret experiments
to test the effects of biological and chemical agents on humans. Uninformed subjects were given drugs like LSD and heroin, and at least two subjects died as a result, while many others suffered health consequences.
If you think that’s torture, visit the Washington, D.C.-area airport named after Dulles. You’ll beg for drugs—or death.

George J. Annas and Michael A. Grodin, The Nazi Doctors and the Nuremberg Code: Human Rights in Human Experimentation (Oxford University Press, 1995).