More context:
Call me radical, but I don’t think any government should be killing people.
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There are a lot of governments in the world that agree with you. Not the US government, not at all.
show me a state in the entire world that doesn’t exist because it has captured a monopoly over legitimate violence. The best the subjects of a state can hope for is that state violence is only ever implicit, but if there was no threat of being put to death or seriously harmed for individuals that threaten the continued existence of a state, that state would cease to be.However, it is true that America is particularly brutal with regards to executing civilians. Something that stands out is that, compared to other countries that regularly execute their citizens, there’s a pretty obvious skew in terms of who’s getting the death penalty. Compared to China, for example, the US hasn’t executed anyone for white collar crime in a long time (hopefully someone can find a reference to the last time it happened, I’m not sure where to check) but appears to be killing Black and Muslim folks awfully often. Really makes you think, right?
Compared to China…
inb4 China bad
You are deflecting from the issue here. Legitimate violence, whatever you and I understand for “legitimate” is not the issue, since I guess we can recognize that violence is gradual. We are talking death penalty and it’s derivations in the US judicial system. There are a lot of states that won’t just systematically kill their citizens and citizens from other countries. A type of zealot entitlement is needed by their governments to keep doing it in cases like this.
I’m mostly just going to disengage because I think we’re really on the same side here and I’m just being a pedant on a thread about an innocent man being murdered, but I think you’re kinda missing the point too. Social murder happens literally everywhere constantly, even socialist countries.
well yeah, war is a human constant, there is no fixed way to dispute arbitrary claims such as “land rights” and “dibs” on ownership of things outside of war. I mean sure there’s legal agreements, but if you don’t agree, it’s null and void, now nothing matters anymore. I guess you could simply play rock paper scissors for dibs but i don’t imagine that’s going to be very popular.
This is even a constant within evolutionary biology and the animal kingdom at large. Modern predators are only so deadly because it was advantageous to reproduction.
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Do you think prisons are okay and killing isn’t?
If the prisons are focused on rehabilitation and reintegration instead of just keeping people locked up and treating them like they’re not human? Yes. Do I believe prisons in the US are like that? No.
Genuine question. What do you think should happen with people that have committed violent crimes? If they have no interest in voluntary rehabilitation, imprisonment with the goal of rehabilitation seems to be a better alternative to just letting them roam freely and do as they please. And it seems a lot better than the death penalty. Specifically for reasons like what we’re seeing here. You can release someone from prison if evidence comes later that casts doubt on their guilt. It doesn’t prevent the harm that has already been caused, but it gives them an opportunity to take back their life. You can’t un-execute somebody.
Life is short. Why does anyone have to live after it’s over?
Reading about it I am not completly convinced that he is innocent, but I think that there is 100% plausible reason to doubt that he is guilty. This should defintly be enough to stop an execution.
Edit: Maybe read the whole statement before getting a rage fit? I said he shouldn’t have been killed. I am also not moderate and (according to US standards) I am apparently not white as a muslim turkish person.
Reading about it I am not completly convinced that he is innocent
After the reams and reams of verifiable miscarriages of justice against Black people, after 160 years of carceral slavery being the law of the land, after 50+ years of the school-to-prison pipeline disproportionately affecting Black people, you still trust the settler’s ‘court of law’???
That’d be laughable if it wasn’t so damn typical.
I think there’s an interesting phenomenon where even white normies understand how demonically racist the American institutions are. Ideologically committed racists don’t, but everyone else sees at least part of it. However, because this only gives you a negative assertion (don’t trust what the courts say) and the isn’t really a normative, absolute system we can trust in the absence of any reliable rulings from the hegemonic institutions, we’re just left with a wide space of viable interpretations of reality, which lets people get off the hook for assuming reality must be close-ish to what said racist institutions uphold. That closeness between imagined reality and the reality white supremacy wishes to impose is what allows for people who aren’t ideologically committed racists to passively accept the brutalization and murder of marginalized people. “Oh, I can’t support those cruel acts, but the sad reality is they probably didn’t happen for no reason either” is the refrain of the embarrassed white moderate.
“Oh, I can’t support those cruel acts, but the sad reality is they probably didn’t happen for no reason either” is the refrain of the embarrassed white moderate.
I’m ashamed to admit that specifically with regard to police brutality, I was in the “they must have had a reason” camp (without looking any further into it) for many more years than I had any excuse to be. Rodney King put a crack in that, but I was still pretty young then, and surrounded by my own privilege. It was many years later before I realized that sort of shit and worse was happening constantly.
I was in the “they must have had a reason” camp (without looking any further into it) for many more years than I had any excuse to be.
At least you understand why it’s fucked up that you were, unlike a couple other settlers and their waterbearing emigré lapdogs in this thread.
Thanks, but the unfortunate problem I see among many of my white peers is that’s a deep valley. You don’t get to the other side of “they must have had a reason” without exposing yourself to multiple instances where they clearly had no such reason.
And it’s not exactly something you can force on people. A couple people I know have started paying a bit more attention when cop videos float across their tiktok feed based on comments I’ve made, and they are coming around too, but folks need to want to see to the other side of that valley, and it’s a very comfortable valley to live in - and more importantly you’ve always got a fresh batch of people moving into the valley.
They just said they do not trust it though.
“Not completely convinced of his innocence” even in the face of DNA evidence invalidates everything else they said. Like, you do not get to couch white moderate “oooooh, I don’t know” bullshit when the DNA already exonerated mans. Fuck outta here.
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Reading about it I am not completly convinced that he is innocent
This implies there is a non-zero chance he was guilty. In reality, there is a zero percent chance he was guilty. Even implying there is a small chance he was guilty is white supremacy.
Typical toxic masculinity.
Typical liberal grasping at straws when your bigoted worldview is challenged.
English doesn’t have a word for how much I despise condescending, know-nothing dogs like them. Whether settler or minstrel, there is not a word, slur, or malediction in this language to properly encompass the contempt I feel for them.
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Nope. They opened with white moderate bullshit. I don’t give the first fuck what they have to say after that; I do not humor white moderates, non-whites who bear their mentalities, or those who disregard the evidence that 100% exonerates a Black man to still fix their face to “mmmmmmh…”; especially not when it’s in defense of murderous carceral slave-masters.
Typical Karen-assed settler tryna talk over actual abolitionists.
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Lemmy is tree-structured. Can’t talk over nobody.
Nobody asked, Karen; move along. I don’t discourse with people John Brown would’ve vented.
hey dickhead, their pronouns are right in their username. don’t accuse non-men of “toxic masculinity”
carceral slavery
legal prison slavery* (for those of you who don’t know that word)
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No. You opened with white moderate, frankly blatantly-supremacist bullshit in service of the “legal” system, you can fuck right off, peckerwood. It’s super-cute how you settlers keep ignoring my ‘no’ to try and make me accept supremacist thought, btw. Even more shameful that you’re apparently not even white and doing that; do you realize whose shoes you lick?
Every single possible person from the screw on his prison row all the way up to the FAMILY OF THE VICTIMS were out here saying “well I don’t think he did it”, the DNA said he didn’t do it, and waterbearers like you will still sit there, fixing your face the whole time to play the “well, he was no angel” card why on Allah’s green creation would any self-respecting Black person continue listening to your fuckery after an opener like “wellllllll I am not completly convinced that he is innocent, buuuuuuuuuuut…”???
You. Cape. For. Dead. Black folk. Get the fuck out of my inbox. Get the fuck out of it twice for not even fuckin being from here and thinking you have a right to opine on innocent dead Black men, or run defense for the crackers who murdered them. Piece of shit.
that comment is the opinion of like, the average person? Why is it problematic, did they edit out a huge chunk between this post and now or something?
It doesn’t matter if he did it or not, honestly. If the state can’t be 10000% certain the person they are about to murder is guilty of a heinous crime then it shouldn’t be possible to fucking murder them.
This isnt about innocence. This is about the state denying this Black Muslim man due process and constitutional protections.
And on that note, its impossible to prove guilt in these cases, which is why the death penalty needs to be abolished. Are you comfortable with the idea of bring executed for a crime because you were in the wrong place at the wrong time? Because I’m sure fucking not.
Maybe you should have read my whole statement before writing this wall of text?
I’m agreeing with your conclusion but not with your reasoning.
You reason that since it looks like he might be innocent, he shouldn’t have been executed. Extrapolating from this yields that you also believe that if you felt he was definitely guilty, he should have been executed.
I’m saying that because this uncertainty exists at all as a concept the death penalty should be abolished. Its impossible to prove someone’s guilt 100% in these cases, therefore the death penalty is immoral. Not just in this case but in every case.
I am just arguing about his case within the local law. Not about the sanity of the local within moral boundaries. So we two are having two different arguments here.
I’m convinced he is innocent. If he was not they would have evidence instead of paid testimonies against him.
That’s fine with a sentence of a couple years. But for how hard we’ve seen it become to commute a sentence, we need to be 100% sure for the death penalty.
I basically said that it is not okay, maybe you should have read the second sentence as well. But even with a “sentence of a couple years”, guilt has to be profen, not innocence. If there is plausible doubt of guilt, there shouldn’t be a guilty sentence.
Yeah, sorry it’s just worded weirdly and I didn’t get that you were referencing the reasonable doubt standard.
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Is “almost” anywhere in your definition of conviction? If so, you lack conviction.
The cruelty truly is the point.
Marcellus Williams was charged with the murder of Felicia Gayle. Prosecutors based evidence mainly on alleged confessions Williams had made, including one alleged by a jailhouse snitch.
In August 2001, Williams was sentenced to death. On appeal, he raised several issues, including claims of errors in evidentiary rulings, jury instructions, and victim impact testimony. He also challenged the use of his prior criminal history and alleged improper prosecutorial comments during closing arguments.
The death sentence was controversial, as DNA evidence had been claimed to prove his innocence, and the family of Gayle repeatedly stating they did not want Williams executed.
Despite pleas from the public and the family of Gayle stating they were opposed to the execution, on September 24, 2024, 55-year-old Williams was executed by lethal injection at 6 p.m. CT.
So, even the family of the victim was against it. An innocent man died while the real criminal is out there.
Shit like this is why we cannot be trusted with death penalty. The day we execute an innocent person, we all get blood on our hands.
This kind of thing makes me go into denial. I hate my country, but this absolutely cannot be real. It’s horrible clickbait, or propaganda supporting my existing beliefs about how inhumane it is here.
I struggle to imagine someone administering a needle for an innocent man to die, rather than quitting on the spot. I struggle to imagine someone certifying paperwork to appove this to happen. But I am entirely incapable of imagining the number of human cogs that would need to be similarly compliant for this to be followed through to completion. I am not interested in trying to imagine. This story is fiction because admitting otherwise will break what’s left of my sanity.
You can show me horrors and get me to admit and speak of them as reality, but you can’t get me to believe them.
A stunning number of people in the links of that chain could’ve stopped it, and none of them cared to risk their employment over it.
I’ve seen it said that if you live in the US, you can ask yourself a question: “If you lived in Nazi Germany, what would you have done to oppose that state?”
The answer: You’re doing it right now. Nazi Germany’s leaders explicitly stated that its model of colonialism and expansionism in eastern europe, eugenics practices, and its racial state, were all based on the US model, which nearly successfully carried out everything Nazi Germany failed to do: eviction and genocide of its indigenous inhabitants, stealing a continent, and erecting a white-supremacist state on top of it.
The Innocence project is real and they do incredible work. They rarely take cases that don’t have new DNA evidence due to the difficulty in overturning a conviction. They could probably use your financial support.
–The site which we don’t speak of had a mainstream news article to this story monday night explaining that the state was already refusing to grant a stay of execution even with prosecuting attornies new doubts.
Arendt is one of the more overrated authors in America short of the founders, but she has a point about how, when you are removed from the brutal nature of the violence, you can just sort of shuffle it into your day-to-day activities. Sure, you can certify the paperwork, it’s just letters on a screen. Hell, you can even administer the needle, as it’s not your job to concern yourself with his innocence or guilt, it’s your job to use this specific set of injections to kill him in a visually benign way. Separating arbiters from brutalizing and brutalizers from arbitration makes the flagrant injustice much more palatable to both parties.
Separating arbiters from brutalizing and brutalizers from arbitration makes the flagrant injustice much more palatable to both parties.
Fantastic one-line explanation, I don’t think I’ve thought about this before but now that you’ve said it it feels like something obvious that I really should have understood already.
it happens fairly often here. the u.s. is the most evil entity in the known universe
I’ve come to realize that a significant portion of people just think other people should die and that’s fair and they’re OK with being the ones to do it.
I saw an Instagram reel the other day of someone in the military describing the best way to decide who to kill and who not to as you storm a civilian building, plus the latest Behind the Bastards about Yarvin’s affect on JD Vance and their belief that violence / killing and enforced poverty / slavery is not only a necessary but desirable method of governmental change - not as a reaction to oppression but as administrative.
someone in the military describing the best way to decide who to kill
Read a book by a Navy SEAL who was in Afghanistan. He said if they were wearing black Reeboks they were fighters, shoot to kill on sight.
I’m betting he was right! But Jesus, using that as a hard criteria to execute someone?!
I’ve come to realize that a significant portion of people just think other people should die and that’s fair and they’re OK with being the ones to do it.
It has always been this way. Particularly because there are people and groups who actively materially benefit from the enforced poverty/slavery and oppression of other people and groups within the social organization of our societies. The enforced poverty/slavery will never stop without sufficient and sufficiently organized, centralized, disciplined violence to overcome those who actively benefit from the enforced poverty/slavery by means of the same; and then maintaining that authority over the exploiters until their interest and strength are no more.
It’s the same reason why there’s never been a “peaceful bloodless decolonization.” Why would the colonizer ever willingly permit that? They would be, from a standpoint of their own material interest as a societal class, complete morons to do so and make such a willing choice. Which is why (and this is historically borne out) they must be not given a choice by an organized militant anti-colonial resistance. This is also why the “authoritarianism” criticism of the doctrine and practice of revolutionary groups like Castro’s revolutionaries or Lenin’s Bolsheviks is laughable; the liberal peanut gallery can only have that criticism because they succeeded and survived to be criticized; having overcome the oppressors who, in the event of the revolutionaries’ failure (historically borne out in how every failed revolution played out including the previous ones in those countries); would show the truth of themselves as 1000x more vicious, having honed that capability for 100x longer.
Look up any countries’ “Red Terror” in history, then look up their corresponding “White Terror.” You will see [wiki:NSFW images if you click on them]. Or read about any decolonization struggle. Like in Algeria, where every uprising that killed 10 Frenchmen resulted in a colonial reprisal with hundreds of butchered Algerians.
We live in a material reality with material interests which are enforced by people who will use your pacifism as a means to exploit you easier, and kill you easier if you even are seen as inconvenient or ‘in the way’ of those interests, let alone if you resist and struggle against them. And that argument has been happening since Marx and Engels’ time in the framework of materialism; and was exactly the realm of rationale behind the policy of terror with the Jacobins before that in the French Revolution; from which many later revolutionaries took lessons and learned from the mistakes and refined within their contemporary material conditions and circumstances.
Jesus fuck, they actually did it?
of course. and they will continue until we stop them with force.
The crimes of this guilty land will never be washed away. Period.
We should absolutely spill 'em, yes; but we should also never allow the world to forget what was allowed to transpire here.
his heart was undoubtedly in the right place, but jb was fatally optimistic. the u.s. was damned the second the very first human being was brought here in chains. redemption has never been an option.
there is only revenge.
For the record, the super majority of pro-life Christian, patriotic judges in SCOTUS voted against stopping this on a 6-3 ruling.
Southern Christian.
Pro-life, but love guns and executing people while hating access to Healthcare for the poor.
Southern Christian love is the darkest kind of hate.
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The US government is horrible to people living within it and outside of it
This is not justice
Freedom!! He is free of the prison industrial complex and had to pay withhold life…
Misleading title, this was a Missouri State case, not a federal one.
That being said, there are way too many innocent people getting killed for crimes they did not commit.
The only purpose of the death penalty is revenge. It has no place in a modern society.
Both the death penalty, and a system of slave labor camps, are allowed at the federal level:
- The US currently operates a system of slave labor camps, including at least 54 prison farms involved in agricultural slave labor. Outside of agricultural slavery, Federal Prison Industries operates a multi-billion dollar industry with ~ 52 prison factories , where prisoners produce furniture, clothing, circuit boards, products for the military, computer aided design services, call center support for private companies. 1, 2, 3
How is this a misleading title? On the one hand, yes, the fed can carry out state-sanctioned murder too (and it’s something Trump resumed), but 1) it’s absolutely the case that the “death penalty” should and could be banned nation-wide but isn’t, and 2) this went before the SCOTUS for an emergency block, but it was voted 6–3 not to block (I’m guessing you know that all of the six were the treasonous fuckwits nominated by Republicans and all three were sensible jurists nominated by Democrats).
What happened here is absolutely still the fault of the federal government. Of course I still agree with the rest of your comment. I just mean to say that even if you somehow totally divorce a US state from the US itself, it’s still the US’ fault.
But officer, I didn’t punch him! My fist did!
I did not hit her I did Naaaaaht! Ohimark!
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So the Missouri regime.
Remind me of a one-off line from a kids show, involving Tom Sawyer; “I ain’t going back, it’s Missouri in there!”
The last thing I will say on this topic is that the US is divided on abortion rights. Only 14 states have total abortion bans since Roe vs Wade was overturned and I doubt anyone here would be foolish enough to claim that those states speak for the entire population of the US. Yet when it comes to the execution by the state of Missouri of a black man, suddenly, that lone state speaks for an entire population of 330 million people.
suddenly, that lone state speaks for an entire population of 330 million people.
When someone calls a government a “regime” they’re usually implying that the government doesn’t accurately reflect the will of the people.
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Just casually blaming a victim of lynching for being lynched. I bet you’re the type that peddled the George Floyd overdose conspiracy too. 🙄
I’m only posting some context from Wikipedia, I didn’t make a comment in either direction
Wikipedia is not a source. Literally anyone can edit it to say anything at any time.
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That’s not evidence beyond a reasonable doubt. It’s suspicion at best.
Missouri speaks for the entire US now?
The US can be judged by the actions of any single state. It’s all the same country 🙄
Like a book can be judged by its cover cause its all the same book?
Like a book can be judged by one of it’s 50 chapters.
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Do you need someone to explain how stupid this is, or have you calmed down since you reacted?
The fact that the US federal government has the power to outlaw this but doesn’t, that this specific execution was brought before the Supreme Court and they voted against blocking it 6–3, and the fact that the majority of US states (27) and the federal government have this on the books speak for the US now, yes.
Taken to an absurd extreme, let’s imagine that the US federal government and 27 of its states explicitly had statutes on the books stating “you can legally rape puppies”, and you stepping in and saying “Well that doesn’t speak for the entire US! Stop trying to make it sound like everyone condones puppy rape just because Missouri allows it!” Would you say that then? Because I feel like any rational person would be asking “Why does the US allow this to happen?” If not, why would you say it here? The US is simply backwards in this regard.
Puppy rape? Is that supposed to be an argument?
Would you come to the US’ defense in the same way that you are right now over state-sanctioned murder in the situation I outlined? It’s a very simple yes/no question that you’re tiptoeing around for seemingly no reason.
In saying that one state doesn’t speak for the entire country, YES. That was said in my first comment, maybe you should reread it.
Damn, last I checked, 27 plus the federal government was more than 1. Maybe the federal government expressed as an integer actually comes out to negative 26 and makes your ridiculous defense make any sense.
I didn’t mention numbers but you mentioned puppy rape. Stop drinking so early, it’ll rot your liver.
I didn’t mention numbers
One state
I think you got lost on the way to /c/preschool where they teach you what numbers are.
Sure, we’ll pretend that this hasn’t been happening here for hundreds of years across all 50 states.
SCOTUS does
Actually SCOTUS speaks for Trump since he was the POS that installed them.
The people are responsible for who they elect and the actions they take. So millions of people in the US are to blame for this even if they aren’t a majority thanks to how elections work in the US since Clinton won the popular vote.
Clinton was well over 30 years ago. Please join us in the present.
I was talking about 2016.
Still, almost 10 years ago.
SCOTUS appointments are for life. The 70 million or so who voted for him will be responsible even after their death of many of them.
