More context:

https://innocenceproject.org/cases/marcellus-williams/

  • Christian@lemmy.ml
    ·
    2 months ago

    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.

    • Dessalines@lemmy.ml
      hexagon
      ·
      2 months ago

      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.

    • GarbageShoot [he/him]
      ·
      2 months ago

      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.

      • Christian@lemmy.ml
        ·
        2 months ago

        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.

    • Kuori [she/her]
      ·
      2 months ago

      it happens fairly often here. the u.s. is the most evil entity in the known universe

    • NauticalNoodle@lemmy.ml
      ·
      edit-2
      2 months ago

      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.