More context:
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)
He wasn’t executed by federal order, it was a state AG being a total murder-hungry dick head. Calling it “the US regime” is some tankie bullshit
The last thing I will say on this topic is that the US is divided on abortion rights. Only 14 states have total abortion bans since Roe vs Wade was overturned and I doubt anyone here would be foolish enough to claim that those states speak for the entire population of the US. Yet when it comes to the execution by the state of Missouri of a black man, suddenly, that lone state speaks for an entire population of 330 million people.
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.
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.
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?
they’re agreeing with you and taking it further, i’m pretty sure
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.
carceral slavery
legal prison slavery* (for those of you who don’t know that word)
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 - but more importantly you’ve always got a fresh batch of people moving into the valley.
Removed by mod
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?
They just said they do not trust it though.
“Not completely convinced of his innocence” even in the face of DNA evidence invalidates everything else they said. Like, you do not get to couch white moderate “oooooh, I don’t know” bullshit when the DNA already exonerated mans. Fuck outta here.
Removed by mod
hey dickhead, their pronouns are right in their username. don’t accuse non-men of “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.
Removed by mod
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.
Removed by mod
Lemmy is tree-structured. Can’t talk over nobody.
Nobody asked, Karen; move along. I don’t discourse with people John Brown would’ve vented.
I’m convinced he is innocent. If he was not they would have evidence instead of paid testimonies against him.
That’s fine with a sentence of a couple years. But for how hard we’ve seen it become to commute a sentence, we need to be 100% sure for the death penalty.
I basically said that it is not okay, maybe you should have read the second sentence as well. But even with a “sentence of a couple years”, guilt has to be profen, not innocence. If there is plausible doubt of guilt, there shouldn’t be a guilty sentence.
Yeah, sorry it’s just worded weirdly and I didn’t get that you were referencing the reasonable doubt standard.
Removed by mod
Is “almost” anywhere in your definition of conviction? If so, you lack conviction.
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?
Compared to China…
inb4 China bad
You are deflecting from the issue here. Legitimate violence, whatever you and I understand for “legitimate” is not the issue, since I guess we can recognize that violence is gradual. We are talking death penalty and it’s derivations in the US judicial system. There are a lot of states that won’t just systematically kill their citizens and citizens from other countries. A type of zealot entitlement is needed by their governments to keep doing it in cases like this.
I’m mostly just going to disengage because I think we’re really on the same side here and I’m just being a pedant on a thread about an innocent man being murdered, but I think you’re kinda missing the point too. Social murder happens literally everywhere constantly, even socialist countries.
Removed by mod
Do you think prisons are okay and killing isn’t?
If the prisons are focused on rehabilitation and reintegration instead of just keeping people locked up and treating them like they’re not human? Yes. Do I believe prisons in the US are like that? No.
Removed by mod
The cruelty truly is the point.
- Be an advanced, developed nation
- Maintain the death penalty
Pick one.
No.
Death > imprisonment
You can’t suffer while dead, and you certainly can’t be a prison pimped slave worker while dead. There’s also no way to profit from an execution so far as I can tell.
Some people need to be gotten rid of instead of being made to suffer on my dime. This is especially true depending on your views on free will. It’s triple true when you consider how much crime is just a result of unnatural financial pressures that none of us evolved to deal with.
That is frankly a disgusting point of view. Death and non-rehabilitory imprisonment are both wrong but not because it “costs money”.
This is clearly from an incredibly privileged person, because if you understood how minoritized people are treated by the legal system you wouldn’t be arguing for more executions.
Removed by mod
I’d rather be dead
hey cool, then you can request the judge for the death penalty instead of life (people have done that before). But you don’t get to make that decision for other people. And to do it over your tax money? (which by the way, is a fraction that your employer steals from the value you produce for them every day)? it’s a misanthropic and myopic selfish callousness; whether or not you have struggled it is a sign of insularity to ascribe your experiences to others and how it “should be”, and to do it in such a transactional way is even more disturbing.
I’d like to know how much you can cope with…
unclench your jaw and breathe friend, this is unreasonable
I can see that you haven’t been through pain and helplessness at the whim of government, and that’s how you think death is worse. Looks like you also believe they give us options and rights the way they tell you in school.
You completely ignored the most important part to continue harping on your personal qualms.
hey cool, then you can request the judge for the death penalty instead of life (people have done that before). But you don’t get to make that decision for other people.
That is a perfectly reasonable compromise. I too feel that life imprisonment is worse than death, but most people being wrongfully executed do not. You can acknowledge the superior solution then continue on your personal experience.
I can see that you haven’t been through pain and helplessness at the whim of government, and that’s how you think death is worse.
Not to diminish your experience, but Marcellus Williams went through far, far more than you have. He disagreed. So since you haven’t been through pain and helplessness at the whim of government as he had, is your opinion worth nothing next to his?
Of course not. Everyone can have an opinion on the death sentence. I’m sorry for what happened to you, but it doesn’t automatically make you right.
I directly addressed that first point, so I’m gonna leave that one alone. You also think it’s like they tell you in school and news.
There are fates worse than death, you’re right. But I think you would be one of the few who would prefer it to prison as it currently exists. But I think a sub point you have made is that prison is tantamount to torture, and I in some ways agree with that, which is why I say that non-rehabilitory prisons are unethical. It’s also the model in the entire US.
Trapping people is evil.
And the huge list of people executed by the state despite it being reasonably likely they’re actually innocent is… cheaper (it’s not), and therefore acceptable?
Absolutely not. I’ve been bullied into a false conviction myself. The reason why is that they absolutely do not give a single fuck about the people they’re ruining. Even the slightest bit of interest in being right from the court system and police would be a massive improvement for everyone. If suggest training if the problem was stupidity, but it’s malice. They know what the fuck they’re doing.
Which is why you… support the death penalty? Am I misunderstanding something here?
I’m just putting it above imprisonment. I think that if you believe someone needs punished so badly, you should have the conviction to kill them because otherwise you’re just making things worse for everyone. The issue at hand is that nobody has conviction anymore. What they have is blind rage and not enough time or resources to figure out where to put that because we’re all kept busy by the people farming us and controlling the story. Things like petty theft wouldn’t matter if our economic value weren’t skimmed by employers so ridiculously.
Capital punishment is a state level policy. The USA has almost 400 million people and has never been a monolith of culture, thought, beliefs, or values. Missouri is a shit state with shit policies.
- The US federal government has the authority to, at any time, outlaw state-sanctioned murder across the country
eithervia Supreme Court rulingor via constitutional amendmentand tell states to kick rocks. It chooses not to do this.I don’t care that an amendment is “hard”;if it’s possible to do but it fails to do this, then it’s the federal government’s fault. The votes ofabout 355 legislators and the signature of Joe Biden5 SCOTUS justices could end this today; it’s the stroke of a pen, and they simply don’t do it. - This case went before the SCOTUS requesting an emergency block, where it was voted against 6–3. The SCOTUS had the power to trivially prevent this and decided not to.
- The majority of US states (27) as well as the federal government have state-sanctioned murder on the books as a legal criminal punishment. 12 states and the federal government have carried it out in the last 10 years.
- This is incidental to your overall point, but the current US population is ~337 million; “almost” 400 million is doing so much lifting there.
Edit: I accidentally became so sleep-deprived that I forgot a constitutional amendment has a separate proposal and ratification process. The SCOTUS method would 100% work, though, and it hasn’t yet been banned at the federal level which is a simple majority of Congress and a presidential signature, so they do overall endorse it.
You think the federal government can, with enough votes, create a Constitutional amendment? Back to government class with you:
https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artV-1/ALDE_00000507/
Ah, yep, I was too sleep-deprived to remember that proposal and ratification are separate processes. Still objectively represents a failure of the United States that they can’t push this through. And of course that Congress could actually at any time ban it at the federal level with just a majority vote and haven’t done so. Or that the SCOTUS could actually ban it unilaterally. Or that even just a successfully proposed constitutional amendment would represent taking a stand against it, but they haven’t even done that.
Roe v. Wade worked, until it didn’t. Legalizing something via SCOTUS has lately proven to be as permanent as the political views of a majority of the justices on that bench.
The only correct way to fix this problem is via a Constitutional amendment, and that’s never going to happen because Republicans have rage boners for state-sponsored killing, or in this case, murder.
The votes of about 355 legislators and the signature of Joe Biden could end this today; it’s the stroke of a pen, and they simply don’t do it.
And 269 of those legislators are Republicans, most of which are uncaring sociopathic individuals who were voted in by a party of spiteful, hateful, racist voters.
The best way to change that situation is to vote. Don’t removed about it. Vote.
This case went before the SCOTUS requesting an emergency block, where it was voted against 6–3. The SCOTUS had the power to trivially prevent this and decided not to.
Wow… 6-3, I wonder where I’ve heard that split before? Oh, right, it’s the same SCOTUS split that has been going on ever since Trump put three immoral and corruptible judges unto the Supreme Court, voted in by Republicans in the Senate, who were in turn, voted in by Republicans.
The best way to change that situation is to vote. Don’t removed about it. Vote.
The majority of US states (27) as well as the federal government have state-sanctioned murder on the books as a legal criminal punishment. 12 states and the federal government have carried it out in the last 10 years.
And most of those states are red states… you know, the states filled to the brim with Republicans.
Are you starting to see a pattern here?
And 269 of those legislators are Republicans
I 100% agree with you that they’re vermin. My point is that they nonetheless are members of the federal government which could otherwise ban this.
Don’t removed about it. Vote.
I’m quite content to do both actually, thank you very much.
I wonder where I’ve heard that split before?
Yes, and I’ve mentioned that split elsewhere in this thread; doesn’t mean that these traitorous fucks don’t have control over the entire US through essentially unchecked authority and that that is – say it with me – inherently the fault of the United States.
Most of those states are red states.
Nobody’s disputing that. See the first portion of this response.
I think you think what I’m saying is some kind of weird both-sidesism (it’s not; the world would be a markedly better place if every Republican were replaced by a Democrat counterpart), but the fact is that a ban on capital punishment can’t happen because the US is backward enough to have too many of these Republicans representing it.
Why will voting change it? Democrats had majorities before and didn’t do squat
It’s not about voting for Obama that one time in 2008, and crying that he didn’t single-handedly fix all of your problems with his powers as a king.
Well don’t worry, I haven’t voted since
And this is why you fail, and you fail the rest of us.
- The US federal government has the authority to, at any time, outlaw state-sanctioned murder across the country
Is the death penalty illegal at the federal level?
No, it is not, and it was carried out under Trump.
For the record, the super majority of pro-life Christian, patriotic judges in SCOTUS voted against stopping this on a 6-3 ruling.
Removed by mod
This kind of thing makes me go into denial. I hate my country, but this absolutely cannot be real. It’s horrible clickbait, or propaganda supporting my existing beliefs about how inhumane it is here.
I struggle to imagine someone administering a needle for an innocent man to die, rather than quitting on the spot. I struggle to imagine someone certifying paperwork to appove this to happen. But I am entirely incapable of imagining the number of human cogs that would need to be similarly compliant for this to be followed through to completion. I am not interested in trying to imagine. This story is fiction because admitting otherwise will break what’s left of my sanity.
You can show me horrors and get me to admit and speak of them as reality, but you can’t get me to believe them.
A stunning number of people in the links of that chain could’ve stopped it, and none of them cared to risk their employment over it.
I’ve seen it said that if you live in the US, you can ask yourself a question: “If you lived in Nazi Germany, what would you have done to oppose that state?”
The answer: You’re doing it right now. Nazi Germany’s leaders explicitly stated that its model of colonialism and expansionism in eastern europe, eugenics practices, and its racial state, were all based on the US model, which nearly successfully carried out everything Nazi Germany failed to do: eviction and genocide of its indigenous inhabitants, stealing a continent, and erecting a white-supremacist state on top of it.
The Innocence project is real and they do incredible work. They rarely take cases that don’t have new DNA evidence due to the difficulty in overturning a conviction. They could probably use your financial support.
–The site which we don’t speak of had a mainstream news article to this story monday night explaining that the state was already refusing to grant a stay of execution even with prosecuting attornies new doubts.
Arendt is one of the more overrated authors in America short of the founders, but she has a point about how, when you are removed from the brutal nature of the violence, you can just sort of shuffle it into your day-to-day activities. Sure, you can certify the paperwork, it’s just letters on a screen. Hell, you can even administer the needle, as it’s not your job to concern yourself with his innocence or guilt, it’s your job to use this specific set of injections to kill him in a visually benign way. Separating arbiters from brutalizing and brutalizers from arbitration makes the flagrant injustice much more palatable to both parties.
Separating arbiters from brutalizing and brutalizers from arbitration makes the flagrant injustice much more palatable to both parties.
Fantastic one-line explanation, I don’t think I’ve thought about this before but now that you’ve said it it feels like something obvious that I really should have understood already.
it happens fairly often here. the u.s. is the most evil entity in the known universe
I’ve come to realize that a significant portion of people just think other people should die and that’s fair and they’re OK with being the ones to do it.
I saw an Instagram reel the other day of someone in the military describing the best way to decide who to kill and who not to as you storm a civilian building, plus the latest Behind the Bastards about Yarvin’s affect on JD Vance and their belief that violence / killing and enforced poverty / slavery is not only a necessary but desirable method of governmental change - not as a reaction to oppression but as administrative.
I’ve come to realize that a significant portion of people just think other people should die and that’s fair and they’re OK with being the ones to do it.
It has always been this way. Particularly because there are people and groups who actively materially benefit from the enforced poverty/slavery and oppression of other people and groups within the social organization of our societies. The enforced poverty/slavery will never stop without sufficient and sufficiently organized, centralized, disciplined violence to overcome those who actively benefit from the enforced poverty/slavery by means of the same; and then maintaining that authority over the exploiters until their interest and strength are no more.
It’s the same reason why there’s never been a “peaceful bloodless decolonization.” Why would the colonizer ever willingly permit that? They would be, from a standpoint of their own material interest as a societal class, complete morons to do so and make such a willing choice. Which is why (and this is historically borne out) they must be not given a choice by an organized militant anti-colonial resistance. This is also why the “authoritarianism” criticism of the doctrine and practice of revolutionary groups like Castro’s revolutionaries or Lenin’s Bolsheviks is laughable; the liberal peanut gallery can only have that criticism because they succeeded and survived to be criticized; having overcome the oppressors who, in the event of the revolutionaries’ failure (historically borne out in how every failed revolution played out including the previous ones in those countries); would show the truth of themselves as 1000x more vicious, having honed that capability for 100x longer.
Look up any countries’ “Red Terror” in history, then look up their corresponding “White Terror.” You will see [wiki:NSFW images if you click on them]. Or read about any decolonization struggle. Like in Algeria, where every uprising that killed 10 Frenchmen resulted in a colonial reprisal with hundreds of butchered Algerians.
We live in a material reality with material interests which are enforced by people who will use your pacifism as a means to exploit you easier, and kill you easier if you even are seen as inconvenient or ‘in the way’ of those interests, let alone if you resist and struggle against them. And that argument has been happening since Marx and Engels’ time in the framework of materialism; and was exactly the realm of rationale behind the policy of terror with the Jacobins before that in the French Revolution; from which many later revolutionaries took lessons and learned from the mistakes and refined within their contemporary material conditions and circumstances.
someone in the military describing the best way to decide who to kill
Read a book by a Navy SEAL who was in Afghanistan. He said if they were wearing black Reeboks they were fighters, shoot to kill on sight.
I’m betting he was right! But Jesus, using that as a hard criteria to execute someone?!
Jesus fuck, they actually did it?
of course. and they will continue until we stop them with force.
The crimes of this guilty land will never be washed away. Period.
We should absolutely spill 'em, yes; but we should also never allow the world to forget what was allowed to transpire here.
his heart was undoubtedly in the right place, but jb was fatally optimistic. the u.s. was damned the second the very first human being was brought here in chains. redemption has never been an option.
there is only revenge.
The US government is horrible to people living within it and outside of it
This is not justice
Misleading title, this was a Missouri State case, not a federal one.
That being said, there are way too many innocent people getting killed for crimes they did not commit.
The only purpose of the death penalty is revenge. It has no place in a modern society.
Both the death penalty, and a system of slave labor camps, are allowed at the federal level:
- The US currently operates a system of slave labor camps, including at least 54 prison farms involved in agricultural slave labor. Outside of agricultural slavery, Federal Prison Industries operates a multi-billion dollar industry with ~ 52 prison factories , where prisoners produce furniture, clothing, circuit boards, products for the military, computer aided design services, call center support for private companies. 1, 2, 3
But officer, I didn’t punch him! My fist did!
I did not hit her I did Naaaaaht! Ohimark!
How is this a misleading title? On the one hand, yes, the fed can carry out state-sanctioned murder too (and it’s something Trump resumed), but 1) it’s absolutely the case that the “death penalty” should and could be banned nation-wide but isn’t, and 2) this went before the SCOTUS for an emergency block, but it was voted 6–3 not to block (I’m guessing you know that all of the six were the treasonous fuckwits nominated by Republicans and all three were sensible jurists nominated by Democrats).
What happened here is absolutely still the fault of the federal government. Of course I still agree with the rest of your comment. I just mean to say that even if you somehow totally divorce a US state from the US itself, it’s still the US’ fault.
Freedom!! He is free of the prison industrial complex and had to pay withhold life…
