Pro Life and execution for the masses, mistresses, paid abortions, non-disclosure agreements and presidential libraries for the rich.
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In before @SBYM
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I am not an absolutist on this issue. As I noted, it is very hard for me to really feel much at Bourgeois’s situation. Bernard’s, though, is more troubling to me for a range of reasons. A state that executes criminals should face a very high bar to do so.
First, there is the noted peripheral role he played - it is not clear that he understood himself to be doing anything more than illegally disposing of the bodies.
Second, waving aside due process rights because they would not have mattered anyway is intensely problematic, but an order of magnitude more so for a death sentence case.
Third, there is the fundamental racial inequity. For his particular crime, it is very unlikely he would have seen a death sentence in the US but for the fact that he is black. There is just no way around that very basic point.
Lastly, there is Sweeting’s simple point that this is a parade now, seemingly undertaken for political reasons. The cause of justice has been left behind.
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Nor me absolutist. Bernard, it was found, had lit the car, in which the female was not yet dead. She died of smoke inhalation next to her dead husband. The defence in that case should have focused more on the moral agency of the other murderer who, it seems factually, led and controlled the incident.
I am not sure there is a racial inequality here; but @Sweeting point was the first thing that struck my mind when these were announced. There surely is an aspect of this to each of these stories, but this does not overwhelm the needs in the cases of Montgomery and Bourgois.
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To kind of bring this back to Trump.
Him carrying on with these executions, perhaps even pushing them along. Is that his sick mind at work in his effort to burn the house down before he’s kicked out or were these always scheduled to happen at this time and the election got in the way?
Sorry, I don’t understand the process other than executions are sidelined during a presidential transition.
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It could be anything, bloody mindedness by Trump, hubris or even opportunism from his lower secretaries. Someone must have placed the choice on his desk, right?
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Does he have to sign off on each one? I honestly don’t know.
Gees what a horrible thought. Having your life literally in the hands of Trump.
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They were not scheduled at this time, clearly must have been waved forward. I suspect the reasoning is red meat to fire up his base.
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Fuck…
No other words sorry
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Which gets to the equity issue. Black kid represented at a capital trial by a public defender, found guilty, and the more competent lawyers representing him at appeal were unable to get the evidence that was withheld from the jury arriving at the original verdict actually considered. Multiple jurors have objected to his sentence when they were presented with that evidence.
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Oh I see that explains it. So you’re saying this is where the racial discrimination comes into it? Does the US not have a Bill of Rights, to a fair trial, I am sure it does. It could have been challenged this way.
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This is where funding for public defenders has been challenged as a civil rights violation, because the vast majority of departments have a level of funding that requires their defenders to take on a case load that precludes their clients getting a competent defense.
It’s less that the trial is not fair, but that the defendants are not given their right to adequate representation.
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It is not just there. You need only look at sentencing data. The probability of a murderer getting a death sentence is 17x higher if the victim is white than if the victim is black. The probability of a murderer getting a death sentence is 6x higher if the murderer is black than if the murderer is white.
You can basically make a 2x2 matrix
Victim
Black White
Murderer Black Coin toss Death Penalty
White 25 years Coin toss
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Oh dear, I remember this, its being imported transatlantic. Another argument is you are being prosecuted and defended by simply different arms of the State.
In my younger days, I once came out of court on a fume after an injustice; I was instructing a +60yr old barrister who had seen it all, had sat as a Judge and ultimately refused to act for the UK State any longer. A defence man. He said to me ‘boy, just where does the State try its criminals’; dunno I said ‘in its own courts’.
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Did you use matrix because I remind you of Neo?
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The timing of all this is hugely problematic. Trump is out of control. His lying about election fraud is getting nowhere. He has lost case after case and the Supreme Court slapped him down the other day. Still he lies. So Texas is taking up the case, trying to get it to the Supreme Court. And sleaze ball Ted Cruz said he would make the argument if it gets there (obviously trying to appeal to Trump’s base, the slimy bugger).
Anyway, it won’t get there, and Trump can do nothing about it, other than lie and bluster his way through, as he has done his whole life. Only this time there is a proper consequence, as the people have spoken and he is getting ejected from office no matter what bullshit he continues to spout.
So, what’s a man to do under the circumstances?
- Continue to whip your base into a frenzy in case you want to stay in politics
- Line your pockets as suckers send in donations for you to continue the fight against the deep state
- And because you aren’t just a conman, but in fact something even more sinister (racist, probably evil too) hurry through some executions because those people are worthless to you, and their deaths will add to your hard man image among your base
- Fire people and install lackeys even at this late stage - likely to suppress evidence of wrongdoing
It’s awful beyond belief.
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This is so sad it makes me weep.
Money from the moneyless and defenseless.
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Thought it was the poor have little means and expertise to defend themselves…
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I suspect the IRS have had their resources continually cut while wealthier people are likely to have much more complicated financial positions making it easier to justify the focus on people with much simpler finances.
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