More context:
https://innocenceproject.org/cases/marcellus-williams/
Call me radical, but I don't think any government should be killing people.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
The US government is horrible to people living within it and outside of it
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.
"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.
Bro said "I think that there is 100% plausible reason to doubt that he is guilty," you don't get to just pretend like they wrote "I still think he did it." Maybe practice listening to people. Typical toxic masculinity.
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.
Reading about it
Looks like they did more than you. There is indeed quite a bit of evidence that suggests he was guilty, which you'd realize if you weren't just discounting all of it as surely sprouting from white supremacy. But our justice system works on the presumption of innocence, or at least it's meant to. That it failed to, that our justice system is structurally flawed, that's what's racist -- not the real possibility he might have been guilty. Lol, literally nothing in this world has a zero percent chance, and if you think it does, you're honestly blinded by your fucked up pseudo-ideology.
Learn what structural racism means, and until then don't call yourself a leftist.
Anyway I g2g have a life. Peace out.
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.
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"
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?
carceral slavery
legal prison slavery* (for those of you who don't know that word)
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.
ok so technically, this wouldn't be the US regime, this wouldn't even be a regime at all judging by modern contemporary definitions.
The dude was executed under state law. In the united states.
Can we stop referring to the US like this? I get that we have problems but jesus christ it feels loaded calling us a "regime" we're not all that oppressive, and we're not all that anti-democratic. Calling it a regime probably makes it more of a regime than it is by itself.
we could've had a productive discussion on the problems with capital punishment, but nope. here we are, not even talking about it at all (aside from the comment threads)
not all that oppressive
not all that anti-democratic
under a post about an innocent person being executed despite mountains of exonerative evidence
you are not a serious person
not all that oppressive
so far the worst thing that's happened is an abortion ban, which is highly unpopular. As far as oppression goes, that's pretty good, not great obviously, but it's not killing people for protesting levels of oppression either so.
not all that anti-democratic
we literally live in a country with a democratic republic system, and multiple levels of government with independence. The worst thing to happen in the last 10 years was trump trying to over throw democracy, which i will remind you, didn't work. Some people might point to kamala harris being on the ticket but that's stupid, you can't expect a primary party vote this close to locking in politicians, kamala was also the VP of the previous admin, so it's not that different, and she also has her name on the super PAC funding as well. There just aren't many options there. And even then, that doesn't prevent you from voting, somehow. You can still vote for kill stein if you like supporting russian agents i guess. Or trump, if you hate democracy i guess. Or just some other dude.
under a post about an innocent person being executed despite mountains of exonerative evidence
i was complaining about the title and the wording of the title?
brother your name is "fidel cashflow"
i don't want to hear it from you lmao.
this wouldn’t even be a regime at all judging by modern contemporary definitions.
I'd like to see the definition you're talking about. The dictionary definitions definitely fit. Sometimes the definition doesn't even have negative connotations. You're just offended because someone used a word reserved for enemies of the US to describe the US.
ok so technically, regime is just a sort of generic term more often than not used to talk about a "government leadership" for ex. "stalins regime" or a "dictators regime" beyond that it's use is usually specifically with reference to how the government operates.
An "anti rights regime" for ex. The problem that i have, is that not only does this, just not really apply, because we're talking about a specific state, exercising independent rights over capital punishment, arguably illegally and immorally, considering the evidence we have doesn't demonstrate him to be the murderer in this case.
The title frames it as if the "US" "regime" whatever that means, idk if it's implying the president, the federal government, or the federal government and the state government, or that specific state government, there are so many levels of government in the US it's really not appropriate to call it a "regime" you could call the trump admin or biden admin specifically a regime i guess. Though i'm not really sure what the point of that would be.
The title reads as if the "US government" (an entity, which is not an appropriate description) solely and single handedly murdered a guy who was not actually a criminal (which to be fair, did happen) and then it says "another" like it happens extremely regularly or something. Which while it happens more often than not, there aren't that many to begin with? There have only been 18 so far as of this year. Even in the last like 50 years, only 200 people have been "exonerated" for their crimes. (only about 1600 people executed in that time as well) Most of those have been black, a majority even, the next highest is white and Hispanic, which make sense. So that seems to follow the populous of the jails at least from what i would expect. It looks like there have been about 20 "very likely innocent" people that have been executed in the same period.
https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/ most of my info has been from here and memory, don't take it as gospel.
Like with all due respect, i just think this is an incredibly irresponsible and flagrant way to phrase the title specifically. Data doesn't support it, the sheer numbers don't support it either. Like the actual number is 0.000004% percent of the US population have been sentenced to death, and executed in the US since 1976. The VAST majority of that coming from the south.
Again, i don't support capital punishment, i think it should be illegal, although i think if we're going to keep it legal we should make them public, that way people actually have to deal with the consequences of the law. But It's so miniscule to other problems like healthcare access, and obesity, that i really don't think it warrants the title that implies the government is literally executing people on a whim as it pleases with no regard for anything at all.
TL;DR the title is extremely generous and i think rather inflammatory for something that simply doesn't warrant it given the stats and figures, as well as the political structure of the government, and the clear public sentiment on the problem at hand.
just think this is an incredibly irresponsible and flagrant way to phrase the title specifically. Data doesn’t support it, the sheer numbers don’t support it either. Like the actual number is 0.000004% percent of the US population have been sentenced to death, and executed in the US since 1976.
You've completely lost the plot, mate. Nobody is saying that a significant percent of the population is being executed.
How many people have been executed on Putin's orders? A hundred? So that's only like 0.00007% of the Russian population. no big deal then.
The VAST majority of that coming from the south.
because we’re talking about a specific state, exercising independent rights over capital punishment,
Independent rights granted by the supreme court. AKA the federal government. The 9 robed, tenured individuals are part of the regime. You're just uncritically accepting the federalist society's position here.
Did you know there was once a moratorium on all executions in the US? But you seem to think of it as a natural law that Missouri has the right to execute whoever they please.
The title reads as if the “US government” (an entity, which is not an appropriate description) solely and single handedly murdered a guy
You're inferring way too much here. Nobody said or implied that the US federal government was solely responsible for this execution. When a headline reads that the Russian regime assassinated a political dissident, do you take the time to point out the federated nature of the Russian government? Would it matter that the evidence points more to an official act of the Dagestan government instead of a direct order from the Kremlin?
Obviously this isn't a perfect analogy. But the "US government" (the entity, which is an appropriate description) has given the greenlight for these executions. The supreme court has approved these punishments, and the executive and legislative branches have done nothing to prevent it.
You’ve completely lost the plot, mate. Nobody is saying that a significant percent of the population is being executed.
that's weird, because the title seems to imply otherwise. I would think it would be worded differently otherwise.
How many people have been executed on Putin’s orders? A hundred? So that’s only like 0.00007% of the Russian population. no big deal then.
probably hundreds. And since we should make this roughly equivalent we should probably consider more broad deaths, picking an extremely broad one like, russian soldiers that have died that number is roughly 300,000 Which if you do the math for, is about 0.02% people killed under the orders of putin specifically.
Putin has also been around for a long time, prior to this he was a KGB member, so he probably has a handful of executions tied to his name there as well. The number is bound to be quite a few.
I wonder why.
that's a possible influence, but the south is also more republican/conservative than the north, and conservatives tend to like capital punishment a lot more than the democrats. That may in it of itself be due to racism, or subconscious/subtle racism, but that's a different story. Things are more often than not, very gray. Rather than black and white.
Independent rights granted by the supreme court. AKA the federal government. The 9 robed, tenured individuals are part of the regime. You’re just uncritically accepting the federalist society’s position here.
how else would a state have independent rights??? Illegally??? Yeah no shit it's imbued upon the state by the federal government, that's the whole fucking basis of the US government structure. It wasn't created by god, it was created by the founders.
yes i'm uncritically accepting it, that's literally how the government works, do you want me to pretend that reality isn't real? "hmm yes i think the government does not work the way it has been stated to work"
Did you know there was once a moratorium on all executions in the US? But you seem to think of it as a natural law that Missouri has the right to execute whoever they please.
"Although the justices did not rule that the death penalty was unconstitutional, the Furman decision invalidated the death sentences of nearly 700 people. The decision mandated a degree of consistency in the application of the death penalty." Technically not a moratorium, but in essence was one as states had to rewrite laws to be consistent with this ruling, which they did.
Since you don't seem to understand how the US government works, will provide an explanation here. The federal government is the ultimate authority on things, if it rules on something, it's the law that sticks. However this also requires enforcement (as seen with weed) if the federal government doesn't rule on something in it's entirety, the remaining discretion is left up to the states who only have to comply with what is explicitly stated in the federal law.
for example if the federal government said that you can't "execute people without reason" every state that were to execute someone, would have to provide a reason, unless they want to break the law. But if they have a reason, it will comply, whether that reason or not is left up to the courts, and eventually the supreme court if it gets elevated that high, however generally the law is well written enough that this does not regularly happen, as well as states deliberating on it themselves and complying as they understand to be legal.
You’re inferring way too much here. Nobody said or implied that the US federal government was solely responsible for this execution.
i probably am, but in my defense, that title is shit and should've been written much better. For example something like "A US state has ruled to execute an innocent man" would've been fine. Unfortunately that's not what it says, and it's not very specific.
When a headline reads that the Russian regime assassinated a political dissident, do you take the time to point out the federated nature of the Russian government?
Generally not, but generally when russia shoots down a plane with anti air missiles, it's probably not a federated authority engaging in that. A federated authority may execute someone, but that's unlikely to make world news. It's also worth noting that the governmental structure of russia, is different from the US, and is abused quite a bit more. So it's not a super accurate comparison either.
Would it matter that the evidence points more to an official act of the Dagestan government instead of a direct order from the Kremlin?
if the implication is that the kremlin would've done it, when the kremlin didn't do it, then yes that would matter, because that would be factually inaccurate.
Obviously this isn’t a perfect analogy. But the “US government” (the entity, which is an appropriate description) has given the greenlight for these executions. The supreme court has approved these punishments, and the executive and legislative branches have done nothing to prevent it.
the US government hasn't to my knowledge given the authority for that specific execution though. The US government has given authority for capital punishment sure. But then we should be talking about that. To my knowledge, the federal government doesn't oversee every single execution case that ever happens within the US, they might have overseen this specific one, but i don't know much about it. And even if it did go to the federal supreme court, that would've likely been over a specific issue, as with the last objection they tried to make in his favor, arguing that they should've forgone the execution because it was done incorrectly, rather than absolving him of his guilt, as they claimed didn't happen prior to executing him.
Even in this case i still think it would be inaccurate to say that the federal US government had "greenlit" this execution, when it merely ruled on one specific technicality in a many many years long legal battle surrounding the legality of this case. If you wanted to argue that the Missouri government is corrupt and "regime" like i think that would be a lot more accurate in this case.
Here to expand upon why i think this is an inaccurate telling. Let's say someone asks you for a knife, to open a box or something. You give them a knife, and then you forget that they have it, and by the time you remember, they've used that knife to stab someone else. Are you now legally responsible for that stabbing? The answer is no.
Perhaps you might be if they literally told you "give me that knife, i'm going to stab someone with it" but even then it wouldn't be guaranteed. You would essentially have to be an accomplice to the stabbing in order to be charged.
It's not a productive discussion that's needed though. The death penalty has been going on for four centuries in the US. That's an awful lot of time for an awful lot of productive discussions, and yet innocent people are still being put to death by the machinery of the state. At this point we're just tired of it.
For the innocent victims of the death penalty, I imagine it feels like a regime. Like an inscrutable, bureaucratic behemoth, unable to change course even in the face of logic. It's inhumane, it's unreasonable. It's a regime - an immovable set of arbitrary rules where no single individual has to take responsibility, and no individual human being's decision can save you, even if you're innocent. It's a regime.well yeah the productive discussion is "stop doing the death penalty, it's stupid"
For the innocent victims of the death penalty, I imagine it feels like a regime.
well i mean yeah, that would be the second definition of regime, even doing shit like renewing your license feels like dealing with a regime. Dealing with any government is technically "regime" like if you think about it for long enough.
Self-removed comment given that the comment from DemocratPostingSucks@lemm.ee was moderated out.
