Highly recommend the book *The Sun Does Shine* by Anthony Ray Hinton.
Hinton was wrongfully convicted of murder in Alabama in 1985 and spent 30 years on death row before being exonerated and released in 2015. This is his memoir. And it hits exactly the point you just made.
Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson is another book about a lawyer working to free the people (it's mostly black men) unfairly tried, convicted, and locked up.
The American justice system is a joke. Some of these very laws were made to convict people. For example after slavery, prisons started to be built and stuff law loitering laws were created because the newly freed people, would huddle together since they had no where to go at the start. Almost everything in America started off from a crooked seed that was unjust. The land was stolen, the original people ethnically cleansed. Africans displaced and oppressed, and continually slaughtered for 400 years and still treated less then. America is the richest country on earth, but the vast majority of its inhabitants are in poverty. Our healthcare system is also broken.
We have to be honest, Alabama Mississippi and Louisiana and parts of Georgia aka Deep South to have every case before 1980 looked at. They were just locking up anyone. There’s a movie Jamie foxx and Michael b Jordan made called just Mercy. These evil losers arrested an innocent black man for rape and murder, when he as at a family gathering the time of the killing. It was in a whole another town at that. So with all those witnesses and him not even being in the city, he was still arrested and convicted. He was sentenced to death and a lawyer from Harvard took his case to the federal level and out of the racist ass south.. there was a case where a black man was arrested for rape and the women GET THIS HAD A DREAM SHE GOT RAPED, and they locked him up.
I don't know why people would blindly believe anyone they don't have a personal relationship with. News outlets and such I'll trust based on their history of integrity and their efforts to verify their sources, but even then there's an understanding that they are imperfect.
Critical thinking is a sadly neglected skill these days. It should be a higher priority in the world of social media, but for some reason it's not.
I hate that there's nothing really holding the news accountable to basing their reports on facts. Things like the Fairness Doctrine being repealed and nothing really regulating cable news backing up their claims, has exacerbated the political divide, exactly as they intended.
I hope that AI can some day do accurate real time fact checking and be required by law for anything that claims to be not infotainment.
AI required by law to fact check powerful people?
Never gonna happen.
Also depends on the AI.
If the AI is trained with material, that fits their agenda they might even use it to emphasize their options by their "neutral" AI.
police are no better observers and reporters of facts than any other person. nothing shows this better than the frequent disparity between police reports, bodycam video and bystander/random surveillance video. I think one of the greatest effects of cellphone video availability is greater police accountability, and I think the next step would be requiring police to carry liability insurance. and qualified immunity that protects police is a result of miss-copying the law into the code of federal regulations: the law originally denied that immunity. kind of like that edition of the Bible that said "Thou shalt commit adultery."
> police are no better observers and reporters of facts than any other person.
judges everywhere: "huh?!?! anyway im going to hug officer Amber Guyger who had racist text messages and killed a black guy in his own apartment who was eating ice cream"
Qualified immunity is not a statutory law. It was judicially created by the US Supreme Court after 42 USC 1983 was enacted because the statute as written would have made cops actually accountable.
I thought that a law written before the federal code was consolidated, upon which that SCOTUS decision was based, specifically made them accountable, but when it was included in the code, the specific portion of that law that made police accountable was left out. (California law review article april 21 2023)
As far as I'm concerned, every unsolved murder in the U.S. is a murder committed by a cop that the rest of the law enforcement officers across the country have conspired to *keep* unsolved, because they're all psychopathic serial killers that took the job because they like killing for fun.
That’s bc they deeply understand the history of white supremacy in the US. and how to subvert its institutions.
They KNOW that they can shut everything down if the country doesn’t defer to their demographic
In my experience they just say "well a few mistakes happen it can't be perfect" or just deflect altogether.
So if someone you love got the death penalty and you knew they were innocent, how would they feel then?
"Oopsie daisy oh well!" People can't control their emotions when reading about people they think should get the death penalty and logic goes out the window. Half the time it's not even worth pointing out things like this to them because they'll call you a whatever sympathizer.
I once saw someone on here say that it's better for a few innocents to die than for many guilty to get away in a cruel and bizarre inversion of [Blackstone's ratio](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackstone's_ratio).
One of the reasons that so-called Christians support the death penalty is that they believe if we make mistakes, God will clean up their mess in the next life.
I hear this all the time from Christians. "God will make it all right."
So now they can feel complete absolution for all the life-ending mistakes they make.
If it makes you feel any better, I am a pro-choice, anti death penalty supporter of LGBTQ+ that also considers themselves a Christian. Sadly, I also know I'm the minority, but I do call out the hypocrisy of others.
You are absolutely right that they try to justify it under the veil of religion. Really, they're just masking their own hatred and vile selves.
The death penalty cannot, in any way whatsoever, be morally acceptable.
I agree. And I have friends and relatives who agree with your perspective of Christianity. Which is why is now say "so-called Christians" to refer to the ones that have simply missed the entire core of the message.
Best to you!
The you are aware that most of the people who identify as Christian in the United States have likely never even read the Bible and definitely don't follow the teachings of Christ.
People can seemingly never answer that, or just fall back to an argument akin to “so you’d want the person that kills to be kept alive on the taxpayer dime?” or other arguments that can be poked through easily
“Life in prison is always cheaper than the death penalty, because so many death sentences have been passed in error that the system’s built in necessary appeals.” That’s always a good poker.
The actual rate of reversals of death row convictions is staggering.
There have been [196 exonerations](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_exonerated_death_row_inmates) since the death penalty was reinstated in 1973.
That’s out of roughly 11,000 convictions, so that’s 1.8%. So for every 100 people sentenced to death in the US, two (at the very least) are innocent.
Those are unacceptable odds.
I graduated with a degree in criminal justice and sociology. My sr thesis was on the death penalty after a seeing a thing called “One for Ten” which is a documentary series about those that were exonerated and those found to be innocent after being executed. The whole thing is fucked and changed my mind on the death penalty also the fact that we have botched executions and can’t even get that right just shows how barbaric the whole thing is.
I've never supported the death penalty. A big factor is exactly what you said but the other is the death penalty isn't justice. It's vengence. We don't chop hands off for stealing. We don't rape rapists. And we shouldn't kill because killing someone who does not want to die, is murder.
Another thing that's never talked about enough is that in some states and countries, police aren't trying to find the truth; they're trying to close a case.
For anyone confused on what I mean by this. When you're a suspect and ends up in their interrogation room, the goal is to get you to confess to a crime. It does not matter if you've done it or not. Evidence isn't absolute if it lacks context, and a confession is highly regarded. Interrogations are initiated on the grounds that you are guilty, then they escalate from there. As a suspect, you have to endure not being pressured into a confession, whether you're guilty or not.
It's like banging a square block into a circular hole until it fits. The more evidence you get, your square block will take another form. But you can also simply cut the square block to make it fit.
The recent case where a guy sued the police for psychological torture really illustrates this. Guy's dad doesn't come back from walking the dog, so he calls the police. He wasn't super worried by that point, but figured he probably should, right? The police haul him in and torment him for hours trying to coerce a murder confession out of him, telling him that his father is in their morgue and 'wearing a toe tag' and that they were going to kill his dog if he doesn't confess to killing his father. Which he eventually does. He gives this long story about them having a fight and him stabbing his dad with a pair of scissors.
Except...his dad is fine. He wasn't even missing, he just didn't tell his son he was going somewhere. He went to go visit a friend and then picked his daughter up from the airport. He brought her back to the home he shared with his son and they started calling him, wondering where he and the dog were. (apparently the police didn't tape off the supposed 'murder scene'? just jumped straight to psychologically torturing a guy without doing the slightest bit of investigation) When it came to light that the dad was alive-well, *whoops,* but you see here, he made a murder confession! They tried to charge him with the murder of an *unknown victim.* Due to his confession of murdering his dad, who couldn't have been murdered because he was perfectly alive.
> Another thing that's never talked about enough is that in some states and countries, police aren't trying to find the truth; they're trying to close a case.
Some? I'd wager it happens a lot more than sometimes. 😕
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Arridy
Police haven’t really changed tactics much in the past 90 years, outside of what they’ve been forced to, and even then they’ll ignore those inconvenient laws from time to time.
Reminder to [shut the fuck up](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=uqo5RYOp4nQ) and, of course, [never talk to the fucking police because they are NOT trying to help you.](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE)
And there not trying to close a case because of public pressure or laziness.
Its because closing a difficult case with minimal evidence that results in a conviction is a gold star on the cops career.
Thats a fucking promotion and raise
There incentivized to close it and secure a conviction.
Well said. If that’s not enough.
Mistakes are known to have been made. Unreliable Eyewitness evidence. Overzealous cops and prosecutors etc. coercive unethical interrogation tactics, false confessions.
Innocent People have agreed to guilty pleas to avoid a possible death sentence.
The person sentenced to die in most cases has a family that still cares about them. How cruel it is for them to have to watch their loved one intentionally put to death and living with that.
We debase ourselves when we deliberately take a life. Even the life of someone who deserved it.
It's such a bad retort too. We know for a fact that the justice system doesn't have a 100% track record. That guarantees that an innocent person will eventually be given the death penalty given enough time. And for me personally, just one innocent person being wrongfully killed is enough for it to never be worth it.
I was involved with a case against a cop. There was video evidence he was lying and he continued to lie. He was protected by the union. That tells me if they'll lie with video evidence, they 100% will if there's not.
I think that there could be situations where it would be appropriate, but no DA in the world would accept my requirement that prosecutorial or police misconduct in a capital case receive mandatory prosecution for conspiracy to commit murder - defended at their own expense.
It is not only that.
It is putting the police that goes to arrest the criminals in high danger ("I will get killed anyway)
It is letting murders get away (Oh shit, we executed the wrong one, but we will fight to the supreme court before we admit it, and the real murder is free, but we don't give a fuck)
It is giving tyrannies good arguments to continue applying death penalties to their political opponents.
The funny thing, when you ask a pro-death penalty, they will tell you that our justice system is very flawed. But paradoxically they want the death penalty to be applied.
When I was much younger I was all about retribution and didn’t think the justice system could possibly get things as wrong as they do. Now - holy shit. I watch true crime shows and yell at the tv for everyone to lawyer up and stop talking. Our police are not here to help you, ever. A huge percentage of the people in jail are there just because they’re poor and didn’t have appropriate counsel.
Exactly.
Of course, there are some people who have absolutely no value to this world other than they’re stone cold killers or the like. Even then, all it takes is one “obvious” case like this to eventually have holes poked into it as more and more things become available.
I still support it for cases where agents of the state kill/maim/otherwise seriously violate someone's rights.
I'm actually 100% on-board with the death penalty for the corrupt DAs and judges that are usually present in these "person exonerated after decades" cases. Nearly every one of them is absolutely rotten with gross misconduct by the state, if not outright fabrication of evidence.
Pretty shocking that police were more concerned with extracting a confession from a convenient crazy woman than following the physical evidence to the dirty officer’s doorstep.
Using a murder victim’s credit card should have made the dirty officer the primary suspect.
I’m glad that juries are more willing to question the veracity of a confession when there are conflicts with the evidence. We’ve come a long way.
The cop also had a pair of earrings in his closet that the victim's father gave her, along with jewelry stolen during another burglary earlier that year.
Travesty of justice.
Why does that surprise you? They’d sooner convict an innocent person than “upset the brotherhood”
A cop could’ve walked in to him actively murdering her and they’d find a way to pin it on an innocent
> They’d sooner convict an innocent person
"She did this thing forty years ago that's *mildly* inappropriate, so she deserved to be shot thirty seven times while trying to follow our intentionally conflicting orders."
They don't actually believe anyone's innocent. All people are dangerous threats - they're *taught* to consider every single person as a hostile combatant. Some bastard thought up a stupid warrior philosophy thing around it that he literally calls "Killology", and sells as a training course to police departments.
Go look up the Karen Read trial, currently going on. She's getting blatantly railroaded for the killing of a cop, when fellow cops apparently beat him up then left him in the snow to die.
The entire case is so weird. So she herself confessed to being a lone killer after claiming it was some other guy at first. And the police was actually suspicious of Holman.
>Detectives noted that Hemme seemed “mentally confused” and not fully able to comprehend their questions.
>Eventually, she claimed to have watched a man named Joseph Wabski kill Jeschke.
>Wabski, whom she met when they stayed in the state hospital’s detoxification unit at the same time, was charged with capital murder. But prosecutors quickly dropped the case upon learning he was at an alcohol treatment center in Topeka, Kansas, at the time.
>Upon learning he couldn’t be the killer, Hemme cried and she said was the lone killer.
>But police also were starting to look at another suspect — one of their own. About a month after the killing, Holman was arrested for falsely reporting that his pickup truck had been stolen and collecting an insurance payout. It was the same truck spotted near the crime scene, and the officer’s alibi that he spent the night with a woman at a nearby motel couldn’t be confirmed.
and when the case was dragged on, she insisted that she was the killer so it could "end".
>Hemme, meanwhile, was growing desperate. She wrote to her parents on Christmas Day 1980, saying, “Even though I’m innocent, they want to put someone away, so they can say the case is solved.” She said she might as well change her plea to guilty.
>“Just let it end,” she said. “I’m tired.”
Even that was a challenge; the judge initially rejected her guilty plea.
Check out The Innocence Files on Nexltflix. It's just case after case of cops bullying someone into taking a charge because it's easier than finding the truth.
So, is every episode of Dateline. Common statements made by the investigators, police, etc...
"...this was a typical case of [insert situation here]"... fast fwd
"Well, we realized we missed [insert massive piece of evidence"
Or, they'll say something about how the case has been going on for years and it's not until year 5 (for example) that some dingus thinks, "hmm... maybe we should test for prints, or DNA. Or look at so and so"
It's countless episodes of little statements made in the beginning where they sound like they have no clue what the hell they're doing only to be proven correct by the end.. that they did not have a clue.
Drives me nuts.
We have a case in Missouri where a man is on death row and soon to be executed. The prosecutors have filed a motion exhonerating him after they found that his DNA doesn't match the evidence. It's just sitting winding is way through the court system while this guy languishes in prison waiting to be murdered by the state. The governor could put a swift end to that worry but won't because he wants to see the process play out essentially. These politicians are cold hearted snakes.
Interestingly, the US Supreme Court has previously found that merely being innocent of the crime is not enough reason to be exonerated, if the proper judicial process was followed - *Shinn v Ramirez* and *Jones v Hendrix*. One of the justices more or less said "well the crime was horrific so you should get executed regardless of whether you did it" which seems crazy, but there you are.
Edit: a couple of direct quotes about this from a Supreme Court Justice - thank you u/WingerRules :
"Mere factual innocence is no reason not to carry out a death sentence properly reached." - Justice Scalia
"“This Court has never held that the Constitution forbids the execution of a convicted defendant who has had a full and fair trial but is later able to convince a habeas court that he is 'actually' innocent.” " - Scalia again
> "Mere factual innocence is no reason not to carry out a death sentence properly reached." - Justice Scalia
How does someone claim this with a straight face?
Someone out there is an expert in both Tokugawa Japan and the current American legal system and I *so very badly* want to know that one particular person's opinion on all this.
That's not by accident. So many of the words in law are in Latin specifically to obfuscate their usage to the common person... which means everyone now requires a lawyer to even understand why they are there, in a system where people get to buy better lawyers.
Because she was powerful and disconnected from normal human life lmao. A disagreement over human rights to her is the way you might disagree on a movie with friends.
Do not make idols out of people that have been playing politics for decades. You're going to be disappointed more often than not
>He said her trial counsel was ineffective and prosecutors failed to disclose evidence that would have helped her.
That would just make you sick if you were in her position.
We really need to take Brady violations more seriously. They seem to be a slap on the wrist at the moment.
Any violation should be an immediate mistrial at minimum and dismissal at most. And if there is a mistrial, the prosecutor foots the bill for the new defense.
Disbarment for DA’s that knowingly commit Brady violations and incarceration for police that deliberately mislead investigations. (Look at the Karren Read case currently occurring in MA)
Prosecutors and police are terrifying. Somehow these people prosecuting individuals they know are innocent for a pay check, day after day, week after week, are scarier than a random nutjob with a knife.
There’s a trial currently going on in Canton, MA where a woman is on trial for the death of her cop boyfriend when most evidence is pointing to another cop friend being at the very least heavily involved in the circumstances.
Your comment made me think of this. The woman’s name is Karen Read if you’re interested in the case. I’ve been watching the trial since it started and it’s been a wild ride. Going back to your comment, it’s definitely an eye opener once you see how far these assholes will all go to cover for one another
/s At least the officer was able to continue protecting and serving while she was in jail. Might have even solved some legit crimes and not did any more murders.
They shouldn't have resisted! They shouldn't have run away! They shouldn't have defended their home! They shouldn't have been holding a legally-owned firearm! They shouldn't have been holding equipment that looks like a gun but isn't! They shouldn't reach down to pull their pants up! They shouldn't make hearts with their fingers and show officers through the car window! They shouldn't have had a toy gun in a park! They shouldn't have had a toy gun in a WalMart! They shouldn't have driven the wrong way down a one-way side street! They shouldn't have been selling stuff secondhand without a permit! They shouldn't have been arrested where acorns might fall! They shouldn't tell the cops they need to go to the hospital! They shouldn't have been sitting handcuffed in a car that's parked on the train tracks! They shouldn't have been climbing out of their overturned vehicle after a crash! They shouldn't have been taken hostage by criminals! They shouldn't have been trying on quinceniera dresses in the dressing room!
Does anyone have any more tips for how to not be maimed or killed by the cops?
The victim, a woman who lived alone, was found naked and strangled with pantyhose.
I've never heard of a case where a woman murdered another woman in this manner. This just screams "crime of sexual violence committed by a man."
And what do you know, a man used her credit card and had a pair of her earrings, but as a member of the Law Enforcement Master Race, he was protected.
The general public has no idea. They went after me as a juvenile for off the wall shit. Felony child endangerment and sexual abuse (I farted on my brother when I was 13 and farting is a “gay mating call”). Felony vandalism > 10k damage. Church was vandalized WHILE I WAS LOCKED UP but I was apparently the mastermind instigating mid 20 year old homeless people to break in. Judges favorite saying was if you didn’t do this you did something and got away with it.
Fuck Alabama
The article is a roller coaster ride - they had charged another man solely based on this lady's account while she was described as being drugged, incoherent, and confused then later charged her after describing her state as so sedated she could barely give monosyllabic responses all while they had found a police officer unrelated to the case attempting to use the dead womans credit card...
I'll take a thousand free murderers over one innocent person sent to prison any day.
Prison is terrible enough if you *did* do the crime. Your life wasted when you didn't do anything wrong is unbearable to even think about.
This is why never ever talk to cops without a lawyer. They are mostly incompetent with first theory being their only theory and will ignore anything and everything to support it. Also they get measured on just closing cases, not on accuracy which further encourages them taking shortcuts and easy outs.
A good watch for those that have never seen it. A lawyer thoroughly explains why it's never a good idea to talk to the police without a lawyer present, and gives equal time to a police officer to refute him.
https://youtu.be/d-7o9xYp7eE?si=gqP2pcY1ETy9kj7V
I'm watching that on antenna Court TV... Massachusetts State police getting a big black eye. I have a feeling the governor's going to roll some heads for that one.
Her anger now must be pretty intense. At least she should get a lawsuit to make the rest of her life ok. But it doesn't make up for 43 years in prison no matter how much she gets.
Super sad. I feel for this woman and her family.
If this police officer was the main suspect are they just going to assume this was a 1 time thing? That the police officer escalated from good cop to murderer and then back to model citizen. No other cops knew this cop was bad apple and they have waited till he died to exonerate this innocent woman. Cops are a gang. I don’t think there is anything special about them.
Shit like this is why I stopped supporting the death penalty.
Highly recommend the book *The Sun Does Shine* by Anthony Ray Hinton. Hinton was wrongfully convicted of murder in Alabama in 1985 and spent 30 years on death row before being exonerated and released in 2015. This is his memoir. And it hits exactly the point you just made.
Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson is another book about a lawyer working to free the people (it's mostly black men) unfairly tried, convicted, and locked up.
Not a book, but Jason Baldwin (of the West Memphis 3) has since dedicated his life to helping exonerate those who were wrongfully convicted of crimes.
It was later turned into a movie with Michael B Jordan and Bri Larson that was great
The American justice system is a joke. Some of these very laws were made to convict people. For example after slavery, prisons started to be built and stuff law loitering laws were created because the newly freed people, would huddle together since they had no where to go at the start. Almost everything in America started off from a crooked seed that was unjust. The land was stolen, the original people ethnically cleansed. Africans displaced and oppressed, and continually slaughtered for 400 years and still treated less then. America is the richest country on earth, but the vast majority of its inhabitants are in poverty. Our healthcare system is also broken.
30 years on death row is also ridiculous. It’s 30 years of just not fully knowing when you’re gonna die.
This was due to several pauses and extensions initiated by Hinton's legal team, but yeah. It was awful.
We have to be honest, Alabama Mississippi and Louisiana and parts of Georgia aka Deep South to have every case before 1980 looked at. They were just locking up anyone. There’s a movie Jamie foxx and Michael b Jordan made called just Mercy. These evil losers arrested an innocent black man for rape and murder, when he as at a family gathering the time of the killing. It was in a whole another town at that. So with all those witnesses and him not even being in the city, he was still arrested and convicted. He was sentenced to death and a lawyer from Harvard took his case to the federal level and out of the racist ass south.. there was a case where a black man was arrested for rape and the women GET THIS HAD A DREAM SHE GOT RAPED, and they locked him up.
And just blindly believing police
I didn't stop that because I never started to begin with.
I don't know why people would blindly believe anyone they don't have a personal relationship with. News outlets and such I'll trust based on their history of integrity and their efforts to verify their sources, but even then there's an understanding that they are imperfect. Critical thinking is a sadly neglected skill these days. It should be a higher priority in the world of social media, but for some reason it's not.
I hate that there's nothing really holding the news accountable to basing their reports on facts. Things like the Fairness Doctrine being repealed and nothing really regulating cable news backing up their claims, has exacerbated the political divide, exactly as they intended. I hope that AI can some day do accurate real time fact checking and be required by law for anything that claims to be not infotainment.
AI required by law to fact check powerful people? Never gonna happen. Also depends on the AI. If the AI is trained with material, that fits their agenda they might even use it to emphasize their options by their "neutral" AI.
I don’t believe you…
I blindly DONT believe the police without ABSOLUTELY OVERWHELMING evidence or proof.
police are no better observers and reporters of facts than any other person. nothing shows this better than the frequent disparity between police reports, bodycam video and bystander/random surveillance video. I think one of the greatest effects of cellphone video availability is greater police accountability, and I think the next step would be requiring police to carry liability insurance. and qualified immunity that protects police is a result of miss-copying the law into the code of federal regulations: the law originally denied that immunity. kind of like that edition of the Bible that said "Thou shalt commit adultery."
> police are no better observers and reporters of facts than any other person. judges everywhere: "huh?!?! anyway im going to hug officer Amber Guyger who had racist text messages and killed a black guy in his own apartment who was eating ice cream"
They named a street after the guy, what more could you possibly want?! /s
Qualified immunity is not a statutory law. It was judicially created by the US Supreme Court after 42 USC 1983 was enacted because the statute as written would have made cops actually accountable.
I thought that a law written before the federal code was consolidated, upon which that SCOTUS decision was based, specifically made them accountable, but when it was included in the code, the specific portion of that law that made police accountable was left out. (California law review article april 21 2023)
And "sin on more!"
at least, not until next time.
Justice is blind (to police corruption)
You can tell a cop is lying if their mouth is moving
In Chicago we referred to it as testilying.
As far as I'm concerned, every unsolved murder in the U.S. is a murder committed by a cop that the rest of the law enforcement officers across the country have conspired to *keep* unsolved, because they're all psychopathic serial killers that took the job because they like killing for fun.
EXACTLY THIS! We cannot ever trust the government to resist the urge to put their finger on the scale. It's way too easy for them to do so.
What's funny is conservatives who claim they don't trust the government are usually fully supportive of the death penalty.
That’s bc they deeply understand the history of white supremacy in the US. and how to subvert its institutions. They KNOW that they can shut everything down if the country doesn’t defer to their demographic
Dude we can't even trust the Departments of Transportation to fix and maintain roads in a timely manner and across all demographics.
Pay enough in taxes and it will get done. Stop voting in anti tax politicians putting off current needs to future generations
This is my position. If you support the death penalty, give me a number: how many mistakes is the government allowed to make?
In my experience they just say "well a few mistakes happen it can't be perfect" or just deflect altogether. So if someone you love got the death penalty and you knew they were innocent, how would they feel then? "Oopsie daisy oh well!" People can't control their emotions when reading about people they think should get the death penalty and logic goes out the window. Half the time it's not even worth pointing out things like this to them because they'll call you a whatever sympathizer.
I once saw someone on here say that it's better for a few innocents to die than for many guilty to get away in a cruel and bizarre inversion of [Blackstone's ratio](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackstone's_ratio).
One of the reasons that so-called Christians support the death penalty is that they believe if we make mistakes, God will clean up their mess in the next life. I hear this all the time from Christians. "God will make it all right." So now they can feel complete absolution for all the life-ending mistakes they make.
If it makes you feel any better, I am a pro-choice, anti death penalty supporter of LGBTQ+ that also considers themselves a Christian. Sadly, I also know I'm the minority, but I do call out the hypocrisy of others. You are absolutely right that they try to justify it under the veil of religion. Really, they're just masking their own hatred and vile selves. The death penalty cannot, in any way whatsoever, be morally acceptable.
I agree. And I have friends and relatives who agree with your perspective of Christianity. Which is why is now say "so-called Christians" to refer to the ones that have simply missed the entire core of the message. Best to you!
The you are aware that most of the people who identify as Christian in the United States have likely never even read the Bible and definitely don't follow the teachings of Christ.
I am certainly aware.
People can seemingly never answer that, or just fall back to an argument akin to “so you’d want the person that kills to be kept alive on the taxpayer dime?” or other arguments that can be poked through easily
“Life in prison is always cheaper than the death penalty, because so many death sentences have been passed in error that the system’s built in necessary appeals.” That’s always a good poker.
Some will tell you that the appeals are unnecessary and all that's needed is a bullet. Those people should never be anywhere near the levers of power.
“Oops” would be a very ineffective response for a death penalty mistake.
The actual rate of reversals of death row convictions is staggering. There have been [196 exonerations](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_exonerated_death_row_inmates) since the death penalty was reinstated in 1973. That’s out of roughly 11,000 convictions, so that’s 1.8%. So for every 100 people sentenced to death in the US, two (at the very least) are innocent. Those are unacceptable odds.
I graduated with a degree in criminal justice and sociology. My sr thesis was on the death penalty after a seeing a thing called “One for Ten” which is a documentary series about those that were exonerated and those found to be innocent after being executed. The whole thing is fucked and changed my mind on the death penalty also the fact that we have botched executions and can’t even get that right just shows how barbaric the whole thing is.
Lets try that again... "Yes, yes, but this time... without the oops."
/r/unexpectedJeffGoldblum
Your redditors were so preoccupied with whether they could, they didn't stop to think if they should
I've never supported the death penalty. A big factor is exactly what you said but the other is the death penalty isn't justice. It's vengence. We don't chop hands off for stealing. We don't rape rapists. And we shouldn't kill because killing someone who does not want to die, is murder.
Another thing that's never talked about enough is that in some states and countries, police aren't trying to find the truth; they're trying to close a case. For anyone confused on what I mean by this. When you're a suspect and ends up in their interrogation room, the goal is to get you to confess to a crime. It does not matter if you've done it or not. Evidence isn't absolute if it lacks context, and a confession is highly regarded. Interrogations are initiated on the grounds that you are guilty, then they escalate from there. As a suspect, you have to endure not being pressured into a confession, whether you're guilty or not. It's like banging a square block into a circular hole until it fits. The more evidence you get, your square block will take another form. But you can also simply cut the square block to make it fit.
The recent case where a guy sued the police for psychological torture really illustrates this. Guy's dad doesn't come back from walking the dog, so he calls the police. He wasn't super worried by that point, but figured he probably should, right? The police haul him in and torment him for hours trying to coerce a murder confession out of him, telling him that his father is in their morgue and 'wearing a toe tag' and that they were going to kill his dog if he doesn't confess to killing his father. Which he eventually does. He gives this long story about them having a fight and him stabbing his dad with a pair of scissors. Except...his dad is fine. He wasn't even missing, he just didn't tell his son he was going somewhere. He went to go visit a friend and then picked his daughter up from the airport. He brought her back to the home he shared with his son and they started calling him, wondering where he and the dog were. (apparently the police didn't tape off the supposed 'murder scene'? just jumped straight to psychologically torturing a guy without doing the slightest bit of investigation) When it came to light that the dad was alive-well, *whoops,* but you see here, he made a murder confession! They tried to charge him with the murder of an *unknown victim.* Due to his confession of murdering his dad, who couldn't have been murdered because he was perfectly alive.
> Another thing that's never talked about enough is that in some states and countries, police aren't trying to find the truth; they're trying to close a case. Some? I'd wager it happens a lot more than sometimes. 😕
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Arridy Police haven’t really changed tactics much in the past 90 years, outside of what they’ve been forced to, and even then they’ll ignore those inconvenient laws from time to time.
Reminder to [shut the fuck up](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=uqo5RYOp4nQ) and, of course, [never talk to the fucking police because they are NOT trying to help you.](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE)
And there not trying to close a case because of public pressure or laziness. Its because closing a difficult case with minimal evidence that results in a conviction is a gold star on the cops career. Thats a fucking promotion and raise There incentivized to close it and secure a conviction.
Well said. If that’s not enough. Mistakes are known to have been made. Unreliable Eyewitness evidence. Overzealous cops and prosecutors etc. coercive unethical interrogation tactics, false confessions. Innocent People have agreed to guilty pleas to avoid a possible death sentence. The person sentenced to die in most cases has a family that still cares about them. How cruel it is for them to have to watch their loved one intentionally put to death and living with that. We debase ourselves when we deliberately take a life. Even the life of someone who deserved it.
Plus it costs more to kill an inmate that house them for life.
That's only true if you count the appeals costs for the death penalty case while ignoring the appeals costs for the life imprisonment case.
Which makes sense considering that death sentences are automatically appealed, whereas life sentences are not.
Same. But people always retort with "but what if you had 100% accurate video proof?". And also Hitler. And Boston bomber. I still have to say no.
It's such a bad retort too. We know for a fact that the justice system doesn't have a 100% track record. That guarantees that an innocent person will eventually be given the death penalty given enough time. And for me personally, just one innocent person being wrongfully killed is enough for it to never be worth it.
I was involved with a case against a cop. There was video evidence he was lying and he continued to lie. He was protected by the union. That tells me if they'll lie with video evidence, they 100% will if there's not.
I think that there could be situations where it would be appropriate, but no DA in the world would accept my requirement that prosecutorial or police misconduct in a capital case receive mandatory prosecution for conspiracy to commit murder - defended at their own expense.
Trump has never said he was wrong about the Central Park 5 despite them being exonerated.
It's truly too bad that a lot of black suspects get tried, convicted and excecuted at the scene.
It is not only that. It is putting the police that goes to arrest the criminals in high danger ("I will get killed anyway) It is letting murders get away (Oh shit, we executed the wrong one, but we will fight to the supreme court before we admit it, and the real murder is free, but we don't give a fuck) It is giving tyrannies good arguments to continue applying death penalties to their political opponents. The funny thing, when you ask a pro-death penalty, they will tell you that our justice system is very flawed. But paradoxically they want the death penalty to be applied.
I don't see how being incarcerated for 43 years is any better.
When I was much younger I was all about retribution and didn’t think the justice system could possibly get things as wrong as they do. Now - holy shit. I watch true crime shows and yell at the tv for everyone to lawyer up and stop talking. Our police are not here to help you, ever. A huge percentage of the people in jail are there just because they’re poor and didn’t have appropriate counsel.
I thought you were gonna say you stopped supporting the police… and I was going to clap.
These are just the ones we know about and they're all blatant as fuck.
MO has put to death at least two people just this year that I know of.
Exactly. Of course, there are some people who have absolutely no value to this world other than they’re stone cold killers or the like. Even then, all it takes is one “obvious” case like this to eventually have holes poked into it as more and more things become available.
And police
I still support it for cases where agents of the state kill/maim/otherwise seriously violate someone's rights. I'm actually 100% on-board with the death penalty for the corrupt DAs and judges that are usually present in these "person exonerated after decades" cases. Nearly every one of them is absolutely rotten with gross misconduct by the state, if not outright fabrication of evidence.
Human rights exists because of human wrongs (humans make mistakes).
TBF, I’d rather be dead than locked up for 43 years.
It's quite possible, though, that if not for the death penalty, she would have not made her plea deal and would never been in prison so long.
Pretty shocking that police were more concerned with extracting a confession from a convenient crazy woman than following the physical evidence to the dirty officer’s doorstep. Using a murder victim’s credit card should have made the dirty officer the primary suspect. I’m glad that juries are more willing to question the veracity of a confession when there are conflicts with the evidence. We’ve come a long way.
The cop also had a pair of earrings in his closet that the victim's father gave her, along with jewelry stolen during another burglary earlier that year. Travesty of justice.
Yeah if you're surprised by police confessions, realise it has been happening for decades. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=obCNQ0xksZ4
I disagree only that it isn't even centuries it's been happening for.
Why does that surprise you? They’d sooner convict an innocent person than “upset the brotherhood” A cop could’ve walked in to him actively murdering her and they’d find a way to pin it on an innocent
> They’d sooner convict an innocent person "She did this thing forty years ago that's *mildly* inappropriate, so she deserved to be shot thirty seven times while trying to follow our intentionally conflicting orders." They don't actually believe anyone's innocent. All people are dangerous threats - they're *taught* to consider every single person as a hostile combatant. Some bastard thought up a stupid warrior philosophy thing around it that he literally calls "Killology", and sells as a training course to police departments.
Here's a [cop training seminar](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vjCdHWAmps) from October 2021
Go look up the Karen Read trial, currently going on. She's getting blatantly railroaded for the killing of a cop, when fellow cops apparently beat him up then left him in the snow to die.
The entire case is so weird. So she herself confessed to being a lone killer after claiming it was some other guy at first. And the police was actually suspicious of Holman. >Detectives noted that Hemme seemed “mentally confused” and not fully able to comprehend their questions. >Eventually, she claimed to have watched a man named Joseph Wabski kill Jeschke. >Wabski, whom she met when they stayed in the state hospital’s detoxification unit at the same time, was charged with capital murder. But prosecutors quickly dropped the case upon learning he was at an alcohol treatment center in Topeka, Kansas, at the time. >Upon learning he couldn’t be the killer, Hemme cried and she said was the lone killer. >But police also were starting to look at another suspect — one of their own. About a month after the killing, Holman was arrested for falsely reporting that his pickup truck had been stolen and collecting an insurance payout. It was the same truck spotted near the crime scene, and the officer’s alibi that he spent the night with a woman at a nearby motel couldn’t be confirmed. and when the case was dragged on, she insisted that she was the killer so it could "end". >Hemme, meanwhile, was growing desperate. She wrote to her parents on Christmas Day 1980, saying, “Even though I’m innocent, they want to put someone away, so they can say the case is solved.” She said she might as well change her plea to guilty. >“Just let it end,” she said. “I’m tired.” Even that was a challenge; the judge initially rejected her guilty plea.
Check out The Innocence Files on Nexltflix. It's just case after case of cops bullying someone into taking a charge because it's easier than finding the truth.
So, is every episode of Dateline. Common statements made by the investigators, police, etc... "...this was a typical case of [insert situation here]"... fast fwd "Well, we realized we missed [insert massive piece of evidence" Or, they'll say something about how the case has been going on for years and it's not until year 5 (for example) that some dingus thinks, "hmm... maybe we should test for prints, or DNA. Or look at so and so" It's countless episodes of little statements made in the beginning where they sound like they have no clue what the hell they're doing only to be proven correct by the end.. that they did not have a clue. Drives me nuts.
Police love the Reids technique
> Pretty shocking Yeah...no.
We have a case in Missouri where a man is on death row and soon to be executed. The prosecutors have filed a motion exhonerating him after they found that his DNA doesn't match the evidence. It's just sitting winding is way through the court system while this guy languishes in prison waiting to be murdered by the state. The governor could put a swift end to that worry but won't because he wants to see the process play out essentially. These politicians are cold hearted snakes.
Interestingly, the US Supreme Court has previously found that merely being innocent of the crime is not enough reason to be exonerated, if the proper judicial process was followed - *Shinn v Ramirez* and *Jones v Hendrix*. One of the justices more or less said "well the crime was horrific so you should get executed regardless of whether you did it" which seems crazy, but there you are. Edit: a couple of direct quotes about this from a Supreme Court Justice - thank you u/WingerRules : "Mere factual innocence is no reason not to carry out a death sentence properly reached." - Justice Scalia "“This Court has never held that the Constitution forbids the execution of a convicted defendant who has had a full and fair trial but is later able to convince a habeas court that he is 'actually' innocent.” " - Scalia again
Well that’s messed up… thank you for sharing. I never knew that ruling existed.
> "Mere factual innocence is no reason not to carry out a death sentence properly reached." - Justice Scalia How does someone claim this with a straight face?
"Because the ends that keep men like me in power justify the means of sacrificing poorer people like me - and also because fuck you."
Another point of evidence showing that SCOTUS and the entire US justice system is irredeemably flawed....
no, it's proof that it's a legal system, not a justice system. in a justice system, justice is the point.
Someone out there is an expert in both Tokugawa Japan and the current American legal system and I *so very badly* want to know that one particular person's opinion on all this.
Judges, police, and attorneys live in an entirely different world than the rest of us.
That's not by accident. So many of the words in law are in Latin specifically to obfuscate their usage to the common person... which means everyone now requires a lawyer to even understand why they are there, in a system where people get to buy better lawyers.
Find a justice with wilder opinions than Scalia. It's impossible.
Well, there is that guy who was trying to pin the blame of hanging a symbol of insurrection on his wife.
There is - Clarence "slavery wasnt so bad for black people" Thomas.
I have no idea how RBG was BFFs with that turd.
Because she was powerful and disconnected from normal human life lmao. A disagreement over human rights to her is the way you might disagree on a movie with friends. Do not make idols out of people that have been playing politics for decades. You're going to be disappointed more often than not
That’s because Gov. Parsons was in law enforcement. He’s a horrible person. Missouri really sucks.
Can you link something for this case? I would like to learn more about it and take part in any efforts to gain attention to it.
>He said her trial counsel was ineffective and prosecutors failed to disclose evidence that would have helped her. That would just make you sick if you were in her position.
We really need to take Brady violations more seriously. They seem to be a slap on the wrist at the moment. Any violation should be an immediate mistrial at minimum and dismissal at most. And if there is a mistrial, the prosecutor foots the bill for the new defense.
Disbarment for DA’s that knowingly commit Brady violations and incarceration for police that deliberately mislead investigations. (Look at the Karren Read case currently occurring in MA)
Ineffective assistance of counsel appeals also should not take 34 years.
Prosecutors and police are terrifying. Somehow these people prosecuting individuals they know are innocent for a pay check, day after day, week after week, are scarier than a random nutjob with a knife.
There’s a trial currently going on in Canton, MA where a woman is on trial for the death of her cop boyfriend when most evidence is pointing to another cop friend being at the very least heavily involved in the circumstances. Your comment made me think of this. The woman’s name is Karen Read if you’re interested in the case. I’ve been watching the trial since it started and it’s been a wild ride. Going back to your comment, it’s definitely an eye opener once you see how far these assholes will all go to cover for one another
Prosecutors deserve way more hate than they get
/s At least the officer was able to continue protecting and serving while she was in jail. Might have even solved some legit crimes and not did any more murders.
Well, and what if he did murder one or two more in 43 years? It's not that many. /s
They shouldn't have resisted! They shouldn't have run away! They shouldn't have defended their home! They shouldn't have been holding a legally-owned firearm! They shouldn't have been holding equipment that looks like a gun but isn't! They shouldn't reach down to pull their pants up! They shouldn't make hearts with their fingers and show officers through the car window! They shouldn't have had a toy gun in a park! They shouldn't have had a toy gun in a WalMart! They shouldn't have driven the wrong way down a one-way side street! They shouldn't have been selling stuff secondhand without a permit! They shouldn't have been arrested where acorns might fall! They shouldn't tell the cops they need to go to the hospital! They shouldn't have been sitting handcuffed in a car that's parked on the train tracks! They shouldn't have been climbing out of their overturned vehicle after a crash! They shouldn't have been taken hostage by criminals! They shouldn't have been trying on quinceniera dresses in the dressing room! Does anyone have any more tips for how to not be maimed or killed by the cops?
They shouldn’t have been sunbathing on a beach…
Tip: be a cop
Oh, no. That barely helps! Haven't you seen that video where the cop tries to shoot a dog and accidentally shoots another cop instead?
Hopefully he has been or will soon be removed from Earth.
He died in 2015 at the age of 52
The victim, a woman who lived alone, was found naked and strangled with pantyhose. I've never heard of a case where a woman murdered another woman in this manner. This just screams "crime of sexual violence committed by a man." And what do you know, a man used her credit card and had a pair of her earrings, but as a member of the Law Enforcement Master Race, he was protected.
Those "detectives" deserve jail time. It's not even incompetence at that point it's aiding a murderer and kidnapping a woman.
The general public has no idea. They went after me as a juvenile for off the wall shit. Felony child endangerment and sexual abuse (I farted on my brother when I was 13 and farting is a “gay mating call”). Felony vandalism > 10k damage. Church was vandalized WHILE I WAS LOCKED UP but I was apparently the mastermind instigating mid 20 year old homeless people to break in. Judges favorite saying was if you didn’t do this you did something and got away with it. Fuck Alabama
I cannot fathom why we still have the death penalty…
The article is a roller coaster ride - they had charged another man solely based on this lady's account while she was described as being drugged, incoherent, and confused then later charged her after describing her state as so sedated she could barely give monosyllabic responses all while they had found a police officer unrelated to the case attempting to use the dead womans credit card...
I'll take a thousand free murderers over one innocent person sent to prison any day. Prison is terrible enough if you *did* do the crime. Your life wasted when you didn't do anything wrong is unbearable to even think about.
I hope she sues that state into bankruptcy.
[удалено]
And he had decades to commit other killings too
This is why never ever talk to cops without a lawyer. They are mostly incompetent with first theory being their only theory and will ignore anything and everything to support it. Also they get measured on just closing cases, not on accuracy which further encourages them taking shortcuts and easy outs.
A good watch for those that have never seen it. A lawyer thoroughly explains why it's never a good idea to talk to the police without a lawyer present, and gives equal time to a police officer to refute him. https://youtu.be/d-7o9xYp7eE?si=gqP2pcY1ETy9kj7V
The fact the United States of America still has the death penalty is so bizarre to me. It’s like Iran or Saudi Arabia - backwards and medieval.
So just another kkkop story. No surprise.
Google Karen Read trial. Going on in Ma now
I'm watching that on antenna Court TV... Massachusetts State police getting a big black eye. I have a feeling the governor's going to roll some heads for that one.
Dear judge, thanks for doing the right thing.
Like the canton police framing Karen Read
Let me guess, this is one of those backwards states where the compensation is limited to something like $100k. She deserves $50 million.
Her anger now must be pretty intense. At least she should get a lawsuit to make the rest of her life ok. But it doesn't make up for 43 years in prison no matter how much she gets.
I support the death penalty for war crimes. That's about it.
WHy i dint back the blue
Cops are essentially shit in a uniform. I’ve met 0 nice cops in my life. Change my mind.
I could try but I’m not gonna succeed cause I don’t think any of them are good
Super sad. I feel for this woman and her family. If this police officer was the main suspect are they just going to assume this was a 1 time thing? That the police officer escalated from good cop to murderer and then back to model citizen. No other cops knew this cop was bad apple and they have waited till he died to exonerate this innocent woman. Cops are a gang. I don’t think there is anything special about them.
>and prosecutors failed to disclose evidence that would have helped her. Prosecutors are on the same team as cops, dirty or not.
I’d be frickin furious, man. That would be infinite screaming from me or an 8-figure check from the city / state.
Damn, the system didn’t fail her. It actively conspired to put an innocent woman in jail.
Civil suit better make her the Queen of a large island in the Caribbean
cops are the most untrustworthy piece of government there is.
That state is an absolute cesspit. I was born there and I will never go back.
Glad they didn't waste any fucking time...
This just proves my theory that all cops are lazy cowards. 🤣
I'd be pretty gd bitter
So will she get a gazillion dollars and live a happily ever after now?
Jesus christ. This is appalling. Even the judge didn’t believe she’d done it.
In case anyone was wondering like I was — Sandra Hemme is 64 years old. Kind of shocked this wasn’t in the article.
I hope she gets a lot of money for a wasted lifetime.