[HN Gopher] Who is Marcellus Williams: Execution in Missouri des...
___________________________________________________________________
Who is Marcellus Williams: Execution in Missouri despite evidence
of innocence
Author : bjourne
Score : 331 points
Date : 2024-09-25 12:05 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (innocenceproject.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (innocenceproject.org)
| rdtsc wrote:
| > Even the victim's family believes life without parole is the
| appropriate sentence
|
| That is odd, if there is no evidence that links him to the crime
| why not argue to let him go? Is that just from a desire to have
| someone punished, no matter who it is.
| throwaway314155 wrote:
| Grief is a powerful thing.
| kergonath wrote:
| Unfortunately the victims or their relatives are not really the
| best suited to determine the appropriate punishment. These
| things are too subjective.
| rdtsc wrote:
| I am assuming there is still some kind of logic behind the
| statement. How they interpret it for themselves.
| DoughnutHole wrote:
| Presumably they still think he's (probably) guilty.
|
| Victims and their family's can and often do oppose capital
| punishment on moral grounds, same as anybody else.
|
| They want him punished but believe that killing him is a moral
| wrong, or they're more comfortable with the risk that he's
| innocent if he's in prison with the possibility of being
| exonerated rather than killed.
| alistairSH wrote:
| They who? About the only people who wanted the death penalty
| were politicians up for re-election.
| shusaku wrote:
| As far as I could find reading about this case, the "evidence
| of innocence" is very flimsy. But it's a reasonable moral stand
| by the family to want to stay the execution if they think there
| is even a slim chance of innocence.
| rob74 wrote:
| If you read the article, the "evidence of guilt" is equally
| flimsy. And if we take "innocent until proven guilty"
| seriously, that means he not only should not have been
| executed, but should never have gone to jail in the first
| place...
| sparrish wrote:
| A jury of his peers thought there was enough evidence to
| convict him and they did. At that point, he's "guilty until
| proven innocent".
| formerly_proven wrote:
| This seems like an exceedingly bad hill to die on. Curtis
| Flowers was convicted and sentenced to death six times
| for the same murder by juries of his peers, yet he's a
| free man today.
| concordDance wrote:
| We don't have a better system at the moment, accepting
| its judgements is reasonable in light of that. And
| backseating when we're probably missing 90% of the
| evidence presented at court is unlikely to be any more
| accurate.
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| It's a bit circular when people say "This court decision
| is wrong" to argue "But this is the decision that was
| made."
| krisoft wrote:
| > the "evidence of innocence" is very flimsy
|
| "Evidence of innocence" is a very problematic concept. Have
| you thought through what is your evidence of your innocence?
| (Not just regarding to this case, but regarding all cases
| involving dead or missing people.) Should we execute you if
| you ever come up short?
| DoughnutHole wrote:
| The problem is there are two different standards of proof
| at different points of the legal process.
|
| Conviction requires proof beyond a reasonable doubt -- all
| the onus is on the prosecution to prove that you
| indisputably committed that crime. In this case unreliable
| evidence was used without which this standard likely would
| not have been met.
|
| Once you've been convicted (in this case on shoddy
| evidence) the onus is on you to offer evidence that you're
| actually innocent - a reasonable doubt is no longer
| sufficient, you need to offer strong, new evidence that
| disproves the already decided "fact" that you committed the
| crime.
| EForEndeavour wrote:
| So conviction is a "trap door" of evidence weight? If
| someone is convicted based on evidence that is later
| shown to be totally insufficient to support that
| conviction, this new information does nothing to overturn
| the conviction?
| soerxpso wrote:
| Can you elaborate on what you mean by "later shown to be
| totally insufficient to support that conviction"? The
| sufficience of evidence doesn't randomly change. If you
| mean that they were convicted based on evidence that
| shouldn't have been shown to the jury, you can win an
| appeal on that.
|
| The standard before your convicted is that the jury must
| find you guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. The standard
| after you've been convicted is that you must have found
| substantial new evidence that warrants reconsidering the
| verdict, or you must show that the original trial was
| mishandled somehow. "I think the jury was stupid" is not
| a valid appeal.
| seadan83 wrote:
| Interesting points. The full details of the evidence was
| not presented to the jury. In that way, it did change. It
| is more, "the jury was not told the full story."
|
| I think this re-raises the "trap door" question.
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| A lot of rights (like your right to remain silent, your
| right to a speedy trial, your right to bear arms, your
| right to vote, your rights to be free from search without
| reason) have been interpreted only apply up to the point
| of conviction. So yes, things get MUCH tougher once
| convicted as many rights no longer apply to you or are
| stripped from you.
|
| In this case, up until conviction you are presumed
| innocent and guilt must be proven. Post conviction most
| of the appeals process is bared if not filed within 14
| days of conviction (it used to be forever but then the US
| Justice system decided woohhh there that's too long and
| burdensome on the Justice system so 14 days was deemed a
| reasonable change to the previous 'forever'. A totally
| reasonable happy middle). After 14 days from conviction
| really the only relief available is to prove actual
| innocence, a much higher and more difficult standard to
| meet.
| EForEndeavour wrote:
| So falsify and/or misrepresent evidence just long enough
| to fool a jury. If the ruse is discovered one minute
| after conviction, who cares? Person's convicted now,
| doesn't matter?
|
| With the caveat that this is coming from someone with
| zero training in law: what a load of horseshit.
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| No, people have 14 days not one minute (previously
| forever but reduced to 14 days to find a happy balance to
| ease the load on the judicial system) after conviction in
| the Feds to file what most Americans' think of when they
| think of an appeal. After 14 days (previously forever)
| the appeal process is greatly limited.
| throw_evidence wrote:
| Posting as a throwaway for obvious reasons...
|
| "evidence of innocence"...
|
| I was once accused of a financial crime, around taking money
| from an account. I was, admittedly, guilty, however, the
| amount claimed was nearly triple the amount that I had taken
| (there were multiple shenanigans happening).
|
| When my attorney and I said "Actually, we think the amount is
| $X, not $3X, because x y and z", we had an _extraordinarily
| difficult_ time with the Prosecutor, who wanted US to justify
| why we thought the amount was only $X.
|
| Apropos of any plea or deal or whatever, no... the onus is on
| the Prosecution to verifiably demonstrate the loss. Not for
| me to justify why I think the amount is different.
| Ironically, the justification we _did_ provide came from the
| Prosecution. "You said the loss was $Z, including $Y in
| checks which were diverted. Witness statements and other
| testimony showed that these checks were NOT diverted, by
| their _own words_. Ergo, the loss is $Z-$Y. "
|
| Prosecutor was still "you need to show me the math for what
| that equates to". "No, that amounts to incriminating self,
| and is, bluntly, not my responsibility. You need to assert
| how you came to the number you are claiming in the charge."
| alistairSH wrote:
| Our justice system isn't supposed to require evidence of
| innocence.
| knodi123 wrote:
| There's plenty of evidence. He confessed to his girlfriend, and
| a cellmate. He pawned the victim's possessions. He was seen
| disposing of bloody clothes. He already had 15 felony
| convictions in addition to offenses related to Ms. Gayle's
| murder: robbery (2), armed criminal action (2), assault (2),
| burglary (4), stealing (3), stealing a motor vehicle, and
| unlawful use of a weapon.
|
| Now, as to whether this evidence is solid enough for a death
| penalty conviction, that's tougher to say. But there's plenty
| of evidence.
| JeremyNT wrote:
| > _There 's plenty of evidence. He confessed to his
| girlfriend, and a cellmate._
|
| Be careful, this is hearsay and not evidence. Those people
| _claim_ that he confessed to them, but there is a lot more
| context. Here is what the linked story says about the "he
| confessed" part:
|
| > _The investigation had gone cold until a jail inmate named
| Henry Cole, a man with a lengthy record, claimed that Mr.
| Williams confessed to him that he committed the murder while
| they were both locked up in jail. Cole directed police to
| Laura Asaro, a woman who had briefly dated Mr. Williams and
| had an extensive record of her own._
|
| > _Both of these individuals were known fabricators; neither
| revealed any information that was not either included in
| media accounts about the case or already known to the police.
| Their statements were inconsistent with their own prior
| statements, with each other's accounts, and with the crime
| scene evidence, and none of the information they provided
| could be independently verified._
| whamlastxmas wrote:
| Someone who is incarcerated snitching on someone who's in
| there with them just screams "give me your cupcake or I'm
| gonna tell the cops you confessed to me". Williams was also
| a person who was black and Muslim so prejudice alone could
| have been a motivation
| kergonath wrote:
| People say stupid things all the time as well. It's not
| inconceivable to brag about something that's not true
| either as an act of defiance or for social reasons such
| as to get some respect, look important, or to be left
| alone.
| EasyMark wrote:
| Right, these types of hearsay are only useful if they can
| lead investigators to more evidence that is actually
| supported by a solid source/chain-of-legitimacy. So it
| can be valuable but probably shouldn't be submersible to
| court or at least the defense should really be able to
| lay into and tell the jury it is -highly- suspect.
| amoorah wrote:
| He did not convert to Islam until he was in prison.
| qingcharles wrote:
| As someone who has personally known jailhouse snitches, I
| don't think this is accurate. The biggest problem with
| becoming a snitch is that you are then forever more
| labeled as a snitch, and while (unlike the movies) this
| is unlikely to result in violence, you will certainly be
| shunned for the rest of your prison life.
| knodi123 wrote:
| > Both of these individuals were known fabricators
|
| Careful- it we're considering their history, then Mr
| Williams has a history of over a dozen counts of armed
| violence, burglary, robbery, and assault.
|
| > this is hearsay and not evidence
|
| Conflicting reports say that Asano provided verified
| information that had not been publicized. And Asano refused
| a cash reward for relaying the confessions she had heard.
| Regardless,
|
| https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/3501
|
| > Nothing contained in this section shall bar the admission
| in evidence of any confession made or given voluntarily by
| any person _to any other person_ without interrogation by
| anyone, or at any time at which the person who made or gave
| such confession was not under arrest or other detention
| atmavatar wrote:
| I would think the far more compelling detail is the one
| you overlooked:
|
| > Their statements were inconsistent with their own prior
| statements, with each other's accounts, and with the
| crime scene evidence, and none of the information they
| provided could be independently verified.
|
| Not only were the two known liars, but their accounts
| could not be verified, and they conflict with each other
| as well as the existing evidence. That seems enough
| reason to me to call their testimony into question.
|
| Also, I'm a little curious about your assertion:
|
| > Conflicting reports say that Asano provided verified
| information that had not been publicized
|
| When TFA specifically included the following:
|
| > neither revealed any information that was not either
| included in media accounts about the case or already
| known to the police.
|
| That, coupled with the fact that apparently none of the
| evidence at the scene was linked to Marcellus Williams
| makes me wonder how he was ever convicted in the first
| place. If we can take TFA at its word, the whole thing
| smells wrong.
| knodi123 wrote:
| TFA is published by The Innocence Project, which
| obviously only presents one side of the story.
|
| I was also using a statement from the governor,
|
| https://governor.mo.gov/press-releases/archive/state-
| carry-o...
|
| who makes some assertions which contradict the innocence
| project's.
| jasonlotito wrote:
| Did they explain why they convened a board to research
| the topic to get to the bottom of this and then disbanded
| the board before they finished? Seems kind of shady when
| the government says "We are not sure, we need to do more
| research before we do this" and then never actually do
| that research and just kill someone?
|
| Either you trust the government, and agree that they
| should have waited.
|
| Or you don't trust the government, in which case you
| really can't trust them to kill someone.
|
| So which is it?
| awb wrote:
| The previous governor stayed the execution and created
| the commission to investigate which lasted 6 years until
| the new governor was elected. The new governor disbanded
| the commission. They were from different political
| parties and probably had different views on the death
| penalty / the use of state resources.
| jasonlotito wrote:
| So you agree they should have waited.
|
| Gotcha. Thanks!
| randallsquared wrote:
| The quote
|
| > neither revealed any information that was not either
| included in media accounts about the case or already
| known to the police.
|
| from The Innocence Project seems carefully worded to
| imply that they didn't say anything that mattered, while
| still leaving open that they provided information that
| the police had, but which had not be publicly released.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| It's worded that way as if one side of the interview
| knows something, it can easily leak to the other side
| intentionally or accidentally.
| awb wrote:
| Whereas the Governor's statement does say that
| information provided to the police by one witness was not
| known publicly.
| pjfin123 wrote:
| > When speaking with law enforcement, the jailhouse
| informant provided information about the crime that was
| not publicly available, yet consistent with crime scene
| evidence and Williams' involvement.
|
| This is hard to fake and seems like pretty compelling
| evidence that the informant is telling the truth.
|
| https://governor.mo.gov/press-releases/archive/state-
| carry-o...
| klyrs wrote:
| > Careful- it we're considering their history, then Mr
| Williams has a history of over a dozen counts of armed
| violence, burglary, robbery, and assault.
|
| This is all superfluous to the question of the
| credibility of the two witnesses. It isn't about being
| "fair" and treating Williams and the two witnesses the
| same -- one is on trial, the others are not.
| soerxpso wrote:
| > Be careful, this is hearsay and not evidence.
|
| You're mistaken. There are many exceptions to the
| evidentiary rules against hearsay in the US, and one of the
| more common exceptions is a statement made by the opposing
| party (i.e. while the prosecution is questioning a witness,
| a statement made by the defendant to that witness) (Rule
| 801(d)(2)). It's evidence.
|
| Your issues with the credibility of those witnesses are
| valid, and the defense had the opportunity to bring those
| issues up at trial (that's why we have jury trials and why
| you have a right to defend yourself at your jury trial).
| They certainly weren't the only pieces of evidence against
| him (there's _a lot_ ), and I'm sure the jury considered
| that.
| pcthrowaway wrote:
| There was also a $10,000 reward for information which
| easily could have incentivized them to provide false
| testimony
| knodi123 wrote:
| According to the governor,
|
| > The girlfriend never requested the reward for
| information about Ms. Gayle's murder, despite claims that
| she was only interested in money.
| amatecha wrote:
| except..
|
| > The woman at first denied having information about the
| crime, prosecutors' motion states. But after meeting with
| police several times - and being promised charges she was
| facing would be dropped and told she would be eligible
| for the reward - Asaro eventually cooperated, telling
| police she had indeed seen Williams on the afternoon of
| the murder, the motion states.
|
| https://www.cnn.com/2024/08/21/us/marcellus-williams-
| missour...
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| It's not hearsay to go to the witness stand and say the
| defendant told you something. That defendant is there in
| court and is able to defend themselves.
| klyrs wrote:
| That's literally the definition of hearsay.
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hearsay
| jkhdigital wrote:
| ...did you read the link you just posted? If the person
| whose words are being presented as evidence is _available
| for cross-examination_ then (legally) it's not hearsay.
| The defendant in a criminal case is always available, so
| any statement they make out of court is never hearsay.
| tzs wrote:
| That's not quite correct. An out of court statement
| offered to prove the truth of the matter asserted therein
| is always hearsay. The exceptions given in that Wikipedia
| article are not exceptions to it being hearsay. They are
| exceptions to the rule that hearsay is not admissible.
|
| > The defendant in a criminal case is always available,
| so any statement they make out of court is never hearsay.
|
| That's also not quite correct. A declarant is considered
| to be unavailable for example if they refuse to testify
| about the subject matter despite the court ordering them
| to. They are also considered to be unavailable if they
| testify that they cannot remember the subject matter. See
| rule 804(a) of the Federal Rules of Evidence for the
| criteria for being unavailable.
|
| (I'm using FRE because that seems to be what others are
| using. Really though we should be using Missouri's rules
| of evidence. I think most state's rules of evidence are
| fairly close to the FRE so that's probably reasonable).
| lazy_moderator1 wrote:
| from the article :)
|
| > if Susan is unavailable for cross-examination, the
| answer is hearsay
| tzs wrote:
| Correction: it is in fact hearsay _but_ it is admissible
| under one of numerous exceptions to the rule that hearsay
| is not admissible.
|
| Laws are generally clearer if you write them as general
| definitions and general rules and if those cover too much
| carve out exceptions in the rules rather than the
| definitions. It would work to make the exceptions to the
| definitions instead, or to both the definitions and
| rules, but that is usually going to be more complicated
| and less clear.
|
| For hearsay the general definition is "an out of court
| statement offered to prove the truth of what the
| statement asserts" and the general rule is "hearsay is
| not admissible", and that is narrowed by a bunch of
| exceptions to the "hearsay is not admissible" rule. As
| far as I remember pretty much everyone has left the
| definition untouched.
| mjan22640 wrote:
| > Laws are generally clearer if you write them as general
| definitions and general rules and if those cover too much
| carve out exceptions in the rules rather than the
| definitions.
|
| Similar motivation as exceptions for error handling
| TZubiri wrote:
| >Be careful, this is hearsay and not evidence.
|
| I think you are out of your element. To my understanding
| hearsay refers to a claim made by someone not in court. In
| this case the girlfriend and jailmate were called as
| witnesses and gave testimony in court.
|
| Witnesses are evidence and they are one of the oldest forms
| of evidence, your view that evidence is only material is a
| gross misunderstanding of trial procedures.
| twojacobtwo wrote:
| Here's a more thorough definition:
|
| > Evidence that is not within the personal knowledge of a
| witness, such as testimony regarding statements made by
| someone other than the witness, and that therefore may be
| inadmissible to establish the truth of a particular
| contention because the accuracy of the evidence cannot be
| verified through cross-examination.
|
| Tying the two together, basically it would be anything
| that can't be verified (in court) by the one who the
| witness is 'quoting'.
|
| Regarding witness testimony, I don't think the tradition
| of it makes it any more iron clad. We used to have a lot
| more testimony of sorcery and such as well that got
| people killed. Further, we have only recently begun to
| study it scientifically. From what I gather, from my very
| limited knowledge of the studies thus far, it doesn't
| look good for eye-witness accuracy in general.
| TZubiri wrote:
| That's a take, but it's far from reality. Witnesses are a
| central evidence in most cases.
|
| When the parties are present for cross examination it's
| not hearsay.
| twojacobtwo wrote:
| > When the parties are present for cross examination it's
| not hearsay.
|
| That's exactly what I just said.
| concordDance wrote:
| > Be careful, this is hearsay and not evidence.
|
| Note that it's possible the person you are replying to was
| using the everyday "observation increases relative
| likelihood of theory" definition of evidence rather than
| the legal one.
| diogenes_atx wrote:
| As stated in the article written by the legal scholars at the
| Innocence Project:
|
| > "There is no reliable evidence proving that Marcellus
| Williams committed the crime for which he is scheduled to be
| executed on Sept. 24. The State destroyed or corrupted the
| evidence that could conclusively prove his innocence and the
| available DNA and other forensic crime-scene evidence does
| not match him."
|
| DNA evidence is based on proven science, and the DNA evidence
| that was not destroyed by the state is _exculpatory_.
| makomk wrote:
| As far as I can tell, this isn't actually true: "the DNA
| evidence that was not destroyed by the state is
| exculpatory". The Innocence Project are being very careful
| with their wording here. Initially, they relied on trace
| DNA on the knife that didn't match the accused murderer,
| but that ended up being from someone in the prosecutor's
| office handling it _after_ it had been processed for
| forensic evidence. Then they tried to argue that this
| showed the state had destroyed evidence which would 've
| proved his innocence, but the courts didn't buy it because
| all available evidence suggests the killer's DNA was simply
| never on the knife. (Which isn't that surprising - DNA
| evidence isn't perfect and gloves exist.) The other
| "forensic crime scene evidence" seems to be hothingburgers
| like a few non-matching hairs in a house that'd had a large
| number of people going in and out in the recent past.
| rysertio wrote:
| DNA evidence is where it's hard to get a false negative
| then false positive.
| CSMastermind wrote:
| It's sad to me that the Innocence Project, instead of being
| a neutral third party investigating and then pushing back
| against wrongful convictions, have just become an all out
| 'stop the death penalty' advocacy group.
|
| Ultimately I think this undermines their cause and hurts
| their ability to save truly innocent people.
| bombcar wrote:
| This is the real issue. Either the death penalty is wrong
| in all cases, even when it's brutally obvious that the
| person is guilty of heinous crimes, or it is simply a
| matter of taste when it should be applied, like
| seasoning. The argument against executing someone should
| stem from the first not the second, even though the
| second is much easier to play in the media.
| remarkEon wrote:
| The Innocence Project has been like this for a while.
| They are not a neutral third party, they are activists.
| In this particular case, this man was plainly and
| obviously guilty of a heinous murder. They're using
| weasel words and a disingenuous reading of DNA evidence
| to argue that there's reasonable doubt when there is not.
| If their issue is with the death penalty then just argue
| that issue.
| seadan83 wrote:
| Do you have reason to also claim that any of the points
| raised in the article are incorrect? If not, that would
| seem to contradict your claim that they are just a stop-
| the-death-penalfy advocacy group.
| xyzzyz wrote:
| They have always been such.
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| There cause is to sow distrust and spread misinformation
| to discredit the death penalty so it will be abolished.
| They are doing a fair job.
| anon291 wrote:
| DNA evidence is notoriously faulty. Let's not pretend it's
| 100% accurate. If I understand correctly, the innocence
| project has -- in the past -- used the fact that it's not
| accurate as a way to cast doubt on convictions.
| aguaviva wrote:
| _But there 's plenty of evidence._
|
| Perhaps so. I'm not familiar with the details of the case.
|
| But this I do know: prior felony convictions are manifestly
| _not_ evidence.
|
| Presenting them as such causes me to seriously doubt the
| broader argument you are trying to make here.
| virissimo wrote:
| Prior convictions are evidence in the broad sense (because
| they provide information that could update one's belief
| about a defendant's character or likelihood of committing a
| crime), but not legally admissible evidence (in many
| jurisdictions).
| asveikau wrote:
| As I understand it, it's also extremely rare for a prosecutor
| to admit mistakes and that a convicted person is innocent, even
| when it is sufficiently proven, they tend to double down on bad
| convictions. In this case the prosecutor said the defendant
| didn't do it. Which makes this a very rare case.
| chakintosh wrote:
| Probably so he could have a chance at freedom in case new
| evidence comes to light exonerating him.
|
| Can't really defend yourself if you're dead.
| KenArrari wrote:
| Apparently the family believes that he is guilty but doesn't
| want him executed (but does want him in prison). In some
| countries the families wishes are enough to prevent an
| execution but not in the US.
| olivermuty wrote:
| It doesn't say in the article, but he was executed last night :(
| yapyap wrote:
| Thank you, was looking for this info since they did mention the
| 24th but hadn't said if they really went through with it or
| not.
|
| Sad shit, just as sad is the fact that it seems like nothing
| will change.
| monero-xmr wrote:
| The prosecutor who wanted to pardon him was not the original
| prosecutor, but a recent progressive elected one. The original
| prosecutor still believes he is guilty. Furthermore it is highly
| suspect that he was caught selling the laptop stolen from her
| house and the story about how he came into it is implausible.
|
| People who are willing to commit murder are often sociopaths and
| pathological liars. It isn't surprising he would maintain his
| innocence for years.
|
| That said we shouldn't execute him, there's enough doubt to make
| it possible he didn't do it and executing an innocent man is
| horrendous. And IMO we should eliminate the death penalty anyway.
|
| But regardless, I still find the weight of evidence much stronger
| in favor of guilt over innocence.
| tokai wrote:
| >People who are willing to commit murder are often sociopaths
| and pathological liars
|
| Only 27% of them apparently[0], so even murderers are still
| more likely to not be a psychopath.
|
| [0]
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S135917891...
| tempfile wrote:
| Thanks for posting this, the quoted text smelled like
| something pulled out of... the air.
| kergonath wrote:
| > Furthermore it is highly suspect that he was caught selling
| the laptop stolen from her house and the story about how he
| came into it is implausible.
|
| Things like "the State destroyed or corrupted the evidence that
| could conclusively prove his innocence and the available DNA
| and other forensic crime-scene evidence does not match him"
| should at the very least make everyone pause and reconsider the
| course of action. I am not familiar with the case so I don't
| have an opinion on whether he is guilty or not, but this is not
| a way of running a justice system.
|
| In any case, yes, the death penalty is a barbaric anachronism
| in a liberal society.
| y-curious wrote:
| I'm not entrenched in my position, but I would argue that
| there are cases where the death penalty makes sense. It seems
| more cruel to lock someone up for the rest of their life with
| no chance of parole AND denying them the ability to commit
| suicide. Maybe avoidance of cruelty isn't the point of
| getting rid of the death penalty, though.
| soneil wrote:
| I'm against the death penalty - I do believe there's times
| it makes sense, and I certainly believe there's crimes
| worthy of it. But I don't trust the state to make this
| determination with 100% accuracy - and anything less than
| 100% means we have to make the choice between not giving
| the death penalty to those who do deserve it, or executing
| those who don't deserve it.
|
| It's not unusual to hear stories of people being found
| innocent after decades in prison - and every single time it
| hammers home to me that they could have been pardoning a
| grave.
| zigararu wrote:
| If it were up to me it would be in the constitution that
| everyone has the right to euthanasia and suicide with no
| conditions. At first i thought it seems like a completely
| unrelated issue to the death penalty. After thinking about
| it more maybe you have a point. Society will likely never
| get over the taboo of enabling suicide so i suppose it can
| be seen as a lesser moral evil to kill someone rather than
| subject them to life imprisonment under suicide watch.
| Interesting moral questions
| kergonath wrote:
| > It seems more cruel to lock someone up for the rest of
| their life with no chance of parole AND denying them the
| ability to commit suicide.
|
| It does, but at least it is reversible. I think when the
| worst case (an innocent being killed) is so wrong, it makes
| sense to design the system to avoid it, even if this has
| side effects such as making it worse for the actual
| criminals.
|
| I would support leaving the opportunity to commit suicide
| in good conditions rather than strangling themselves with
| their bedsheets, but doing that properly would be tricky.
|
| > Maybe avoidance of cruelty isn't the point of getting rid
| of the death penalty, though.
|
| That's a tricky one. It is hard to want to avoid cruelty in
| the case of gruesome murders. Nobody wants to say that they
| want to make the life of jailed terrorists better.
|
| But among the opponents to the death penalty, I don't think
| that cruelty is the main point. By keeping them alive, we
| don't lower ourselves to their level, we leave them an
| opportunity to become better, and we avoid the moral cost
| of killing innocents.
|
| Besides, life in prison is as good or bad as we
| collectively want it to be. There is a spectrum between
| Swedish jails and a hole in a dungeon.
| nemo44x wrote:
| This was all considered by the state Supreme Court. Due
| process was invoked and after numerous reviews at every level
| no court found anything to retry or reverse the case.
|
| My personal take - of course he was guilty as unrelated
| people recounted confessions he made to them that included
| details that were never made public. And the property
| findings.
|
| Saying that I'm not sure killing people is the greatest
| thing.
| blcknight wrote:
| > unrelated people recounted confessions he made to them
| that included details that were never made public
|
| Do you have a source?
|
| "The case against Mr. Williams turned on the testimony of
| two unreliable witnesses who were incentivized by promises
| of leniency in their own pending criminal cases and reward
| money. The investigation had gone cold until a jail inmate
| named Henry Cole, a man with a lengthy record, claimed that
| Mr. Williams confessed to him that he committed the murder
| while they were both locked up in jail. Cole directed
| police to Laura Asaro, a woman who had briefly dated Mr.
| Williams and had an extensive record of her own.
|
| Both of these individuals were known fabricators; neither
| revealed any information that was not either included in
| media accounts about the case or already known to the
| police. "
| nemo44x wrote:
| Literally the Missouri Supreme Court decision and US
| Supreme Court decision that supports it.
| kergonath wrote:
| I get your point and I am not arguing for his innocence,
| but both courts are highly suspect these days.
| nemo44x wrote:
| Everything is fallable, sure. But consider this: the guy
| had millions of dollars of pro bono legal machinery
| behind him and even still could not produce an argument
| or counter evidence to support his claim. Our system is
| amazingly transparent and corruption or outright denial
| of evidence would be clearly apparent. And it's not
| there.
|
| The system works almost always but does get it wrong
| sometimes. I doubt that this was that time. Justice was
| served.
| sophacles wrote:
| > and corruption or outright denial of evidence would be
| clearly apparent
|
| Not really - the legal discovery rules require full
| disclosure of all evidence, yet you regularly hear about
| how prosecutors don't disclose evidence. Sometimes the
| appeals process will grant a new trial, sometimes they
| overturn, but often the judges will just say "we're not
| going to bother worrying about the lack of a fair trial".
| It happens often enough that prosecutors are willing to
| take the gamble on it, otherwise it wouldn't continue to
| be a common news story.
| nemo44x wrote:
| In this case though the defense never even challenged the
| evidence or if it was sufficient. You "regularly" hear
| about it because it's so rare that it's news if it
| happens. It's a very rare event.
|
| Read the background here and tell me you really support
| this man who stabbed that woman - mother and wife - 43
| times.
|
| https://law.justia.com/cases/missouri/supreme-
| court/2003/sc-...
| tiahura wrote:
| The same justices that put a pro-abortion amendment on
| the ballot.
| dropin685 wrote:
| > " [...] neither revealed any information that was not
| either included in media accounts about the case or
| already known to the police. "
|
| My brain is short-circuiting over the two parts of this
| snippet from The Innocence Project. Presumably both are
| intended to suggest unreliable individuals and an unjust
| guilty verdict, but I find a mismatch between the two.
| It's one thing to suppose the individuals revealed some
| details that were featured in media accounts. But it's
| quite a different thing to suppose the individuals
| revealed some details that were known only to police. The
| former point is of no consequence, but the latter point,
| if true, supports the reliability of the individuals and
| the guilt of the accused.
|
| Not that I support the death penalty anyway. But I'm
| leaning toward nemo44x's personal take mentioned above.
| And the snippet was presumably written to coax us that
| the man was innocent. Am I missing something? They seem
| like weasel words, as another poster put it. :(
| nemo44x wrote:
| Just read the background from the appeal case and urs
| clear as day he's guilty. They challenged a bunch of
| technicalities with flimsy arguments. At no point did
| they challenge if the evidence was sufficient.
|
| https://law.justia.com/cases/missouri/supreme-
| court/2003/sc-...
|
| He stabbed that women 43 times. And yet these fools
| support this evil monster of a man.
| hdlothia wrote:
| This is a lawyer's evasive way of hiding that these
| individuals revealed info that was not known to the
| public but was confirmed to be accurate by the police
| nemo44x wrote:
| I love how they try and paint the witnesses as unreliable
| because they have "records" while defending the guy who
| had 15 violent felonies and already serving time for
| armed robbery as a victim of the system. While also
| ignoring the testimony of the person he fenced the
| victim's laptop to and the victim's belongings being
| found in the car he used to drive to burglary turned
| murder.
| jmclnx wrote:
| I cannot help but wonder if his race had something do with the
| outcome :(
|
| The US Supreme Court denied a stay, with 3 liberal justices
| saying they would have stopped the execution. Thus my comment.
| giarc wrote:
| I haven't read anything about the Supreme Court's decision,
| but did they dissent on the grounds that they believed he was
| innocent, or that capital punishment shouldn't be allowed
| (and not comment on his guilt)?
| jmclnx wrote:
| IIRC, they declined to hear the case.
|
| https://www.scotusblog.com/2024/09/supreme-court-allows-
| marc...
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| Supreme Court justices don't typically explain their
| reasons for dissenting in emergency applications like this.
| They can if they choose to, but they didn't here.
| krferriter wrote:
| The US Supreme Court's decision was that there was not
| grounds for them to interfere in the case, because the
| state courts had already provided sufficient due process.
| They made no official ruling about guilt or capital
| punishment.
| sofixa wrote:
| > The prosecutor who wanted to pardon him was not the original
| prosecutor, but a recent progressive elected one
|
| It's beyond stupid to _elect_ people who are in charge of
| upholding laws and prosecute crimes. They have to campaign,
| make their views known, and to get elected, show views which of
| course aren 't necessarily related to what their job should be
| about.
|
| Get professionals that are as impartial as possible. They will
| still have biases, but they won't have to advertise them and be
| beholden to them in order to get reelection.
| Hasu wrote:
| If prosecutors are going to be biased either way, I'd prefer
| a choice in those biases.
| sofixa wrote:
| I'd prefer them to not have biases, to be criticised when
| they do, and not to be incentivised (reelection) to proudly
| show them.
| seadan83 wrote:
| Then you're also okay with me choosing the bias of a
| prosecutor prosecuting you?
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| Who, exactly, gets to choose how unbiased the prosecutor
| is? You won't get that from a democratic election and you
| won't get that from elected officials choosing them.
| seadan83 wrote:
| My question is sincere. If the upstream comment wants to
| choose bias, then a "yes" answer to my question would be
| a consistent position and interesting if sincerely
| answered that way.
|
| To your question, a priori bias would be hard to
| evaluate. Post facto there would be some data and perhaps
| some metrics that could be used. It would less be "who",
| but "how."
|
| Prosecutor bias is a bit nebulous though. Prosecutors
| should be honest and present the best case possible, met
| with the best defense possible. The best defense being a
| function of wealth rather than a consistent standard is
| damning. But I quickly digress...
|
| I would be interested to have my original question
| answered.
| Hasu wrote:
| > If the upstream comment wants to choose bias, then a
| "yes" answer to my question would be a consistent
| position and interesting if sincerely answered that way.
|
| I have no idea what you're saying here, but my comment
| was just saying that I want _to vote_ for prosecutors
| rather than having them appointed. I prefer to decide for
| myself how biased the candidates are than to trust an
| elected official to pick someone who is unbiased, and to
| have my fellow citizens vote as well.
|
| I don't have to assent to any random Dick, Joe, or Harry
| choosing a prosecutor for me to believe that everyone is
| better off if we are all prosecuted by someone elected.
| seadan83 wrote:
| > I prefer to decide for myself how biased the candidates
|
| > have my fellow citizens vote as well.
|
| I find those positions at odds to one another. Personally
| I don't want prosecutors to be neither appointed by
| elected officials nor elected. Though, I am more digging
| into that you think you might get a choice when voting.
|
| Re-read what I wrote. I believe the grammar correct and
| it is clear.
|
| Though, I'll illustrate with an example. Let's say the
| electorate is 10 people. You, 3 of your friends that
| think identical to you, and me with 5 of my friends that
| think identical to me. This is a 6 vs 4 situation. Now
| let's say we put up two prosecutors for election. One who
| will always try you unjustly, and one who will always try
| me unjustly. If there is an election, the 6 to 4 majority
| would not vote your way. Thus, despite there being a vote
| - you are not getting the choice of bias. Ergo, when
| saying (paraphrasing) "I want to choose the bias via
| vote", you are also saying: i am okay with others
| deciding the bias of a prosecutor against me
| Hasu wrote:
| Your point is completely out of scope of what's being
| discussed. My comment was a reply to a comment saying
| "It's beyond stupid to elect people who are in charge of
| upholding laws and prosecute crimes." My argument is
| entirely and only an argument that prosecutors should be
| elected instead of appointed.
|
| All this other stuff about language is not relevant and I
| don't care about your thought experiment because it's
| completely unlike the way elections work in the real
| world, and has nothing to do with me preferring that over
| a situation where one of the 10 people gets to pick the
| prosecutor!
| seadan83 wrote:
| My point is to demonstrate that a minority can be
| consistently oppressed by a majority. Thereby negating
| the vote of the minority. This is how people feel in
| northern California, eastern Oregon, and many other
| places.
|
| My point is that appointments and elections are almost
| the same thing, nearly a distinction without a
| difference. Don't like the appointments, then vote for a
| different person. Bit of a distinction of representative
| democracy vs direct. Not necessarily that different.
| Almost entirely equally broken IMO.
|
| > situation where one of the 10 people gets to pick the
| prosecutor!
|
| That is not at all the simplification. We could change it
| that the 10 people are voting for someone to do the
| appointment of a prosecutor. Or we could flip it to a
| real world example where someone is in eastern oregon
| voting conservative, or someone lives in 1930s rural
| south as a minority.
|
| The majority rule can lead to a bad path. Notably
| authoritarian regimes where the prosecutor promises to go
| after the minorities. Which has its examples historically
| throughout the world, including the US
| Hasu wrote:
| No, that's silly and not at all the same thing as a
| prosecutor being accountable to the electorate as a
| whole. The entire point is that I don't trust one person,
| or a small group of people, to pick someone who is
| "unbiased". I don't trust the electorate as a whole
| either, but I trust them more than elected officials.
|
| Only three states in the US have appointed, rather than
| elected, district attorneys. The United States Attorney
| General is an appointed position, and we've seen in
| recent administrations how it can be corrupted quite
| easily.
| seadan83 wrote:
| > No, that's silly and not at all the same thing as a
| prosecutor being accountable to the electorate as a
| whole.
|
| In my perspective, it is exactly the same thing when you
| disagree with the electorate. Which is why (personnally)
| I don't want you, or any electorate choosing prosecutors.
|
| If every time you voted for a prosecutor, and every time
| your vote was in a minority, would you still feel you had
| a say in the bias of the prosecutor?
|
| I agree with respect to appointments being not good. In
| my view those are proxies for an election. I personally
| trust neither electorate nor elected officials.
| Hasu wrote:
| > In my perspective, it is exactly the same thing when
| you disagree with the electorate.
|
| In a democracy, you can argue with and convince your
| fellow citizens to change the law and how it is enforced.
| If a majority doesn't agree, you won't get your way. This
| is not a good system, but it is better than any other
| system.
|
| If there were some other alternative that guaranteed that
| everyone always gets a completely unbiased prosecutor -
| great, I'm all for it! That system doesn't exist, though.
| seadan83 wrote:
| Would you answer:
|
| > If every time you voted for a prosecutor, and every
| time your vote was in a minority, would you still feel
| you had a say in the bias of the prosecutor?
|
| You said previously at least by voting you had a say in
| the bias. Is your answer to the above a genuine "yes"
| because you feel there was opportunity to lobby other
| citizens?
|
| I don't agree that there is necessarily even that
| possibility. Thus my position is that elected or
| appointed by an elected official are equally broken.
| nyeah wrote:
| "People who are willing to commit murder are often sociopaths
| and pathological liars. It isn't surprising he would maintain
| his innocence for years."
|
| An innocent person would also maintain his innocence for years.
| With respect, this reminds me of some commentary at the time of
| the Central Park Five case. "They did it because they're evil."
| Well, somebody was evil, but we needed to know a little more
| than "we found these kids and there is evil". In the end that
| attitude led to a horrifying miscarriage of justice.
|
| Somebody was a murderer, it sounds like we agree on that.
|
| I'm ignorant about the case, but the abundance of physical
| evidence at the crime scene, none of it pointing to the
| executed man, seems much more relevant than anything you cited
| in your comment. Again, I say this with respect. If you care to
| respond, I hope I'm open to logic and reason.
| hdlothia wrote:
| Bell and the victim's family wanted a commuted sentence, not a
| pardon. They did not believe in his innocence.
| dbrans wrote:
| Marcellus Williams was executed yesterday, Tuesday.
| https://apnews.com/article/missouri-execution-marcellus-will...
| frontalier wrote:
| don't you mean murdered?
| knodi123 wrote:
| an unlawful killing? well that's an uphill battle, but I'll
| be intrigued to see how far you can get with your claim.
| pirate787 wrote:
| The governor's statement: https://governor.mo.gov/press-
| releases/archive/state-carry-o...
| spacechild1 wrote:
| There is no place for the death penalty in a civilized country!
| louwrentius wrote:
| To me the definition of a 'civilized society' is an absence of
| the death penalty.
|
| Many people are also very confused about the justice system in
| America. It isn't about determining the truth. It's about
| trying to get you convicted, to advance the career of the
| prosecutor.
|
| In that sense, the 'justice department' is anything but. The
| 'innocence project[0]' has shown time and time again that truth
| finding isn't the goal.
|
| In the mean time, study after study shows that the death
| penalty doesn't deter people from crime and it's much more
| expensive than long prison sentences.
|
| However, a strong reason not to execute people, is
| acknowledging that the 'justice system' is made of people who
| can make mistakes and that we can never be _that_ certain.
|
| Instating the death penalty shows a lack of humility and shows
| that it's absolutism is mostly for political gain. It scores
| with more authoritarian inclined voters who like 'simple
| solutions' and ignore all the complicated context.
|
| [0]: https://innocenceproject.org
| nomilk wrote:
| <thought experiment> Suppose we lived in a world where it was
| possible to know someone's guilt or innocence with strictly
| _100%_ confidence. Curious to know if your views would change?
|
| Note the cost of incarceration is around ~$70k/year; enough to
| save lives, house people, heal people, feed people etc if put
| to other uses.
| atoav wrote:
| You assume that the laws are flawless. They are not. It is
| hard to un-kill a person if you realize a law was bogus.
|
| The first law I would introduce would be that the death
| sentance only applies to people who demanded it publically
| before.
| StockHuman wrote:
| In such a world (which is, by any means likely ever to be
| available, impossible), we'd still run against the issue that
| the state has the authority to kill people. This world would
| also have to be free of political corruption, and be so
| politically stable that what constitutes a crime worthy of
| the death penalty could never change.
| rwmj wrote:
| If I could fly by flapping my arms, I wouldn't need
| airplanes.
| aqme28 wrote:
| What's the point of this analogy? We can't know 100% so it
| doesn't matter.
| tempfile wrote:
| The point is to distinguish between an act that is immoral
| in and of itself and one that is immoral because we aren't
| sufficiently smart/honorable/efficient. This informs the
| argument - in the latter case killing could be permissible
| if only we become more advanced - in the former case it
| would never be permissible.
| gizajob wrote:
| If murder is illegal, then it makes no difference if the
| state does it as punishment for committing murder. You've
| still sanctioned a murder, admittedly _of_ a murderer. A
| civilised country accepts this simple logic and doesn't
| sanction murder under any circumstances.
| nicolas_t wrote:
| In that case, would a civilised country have a military?
| Any military operations is state sanctioned killings.
| bbor wrote:
| I love the moral direction, but this sadly doesn't hold up
| to philosophical scrutiny. Is it murder to
|
| 1. Kill someone who's about to kill someone?
|
| 2. Kill someone in a defensive war to defend your freedoms?
|
| 3. Kill someone by prioritizing things other than their
| medical care, eg in hospice?
|
| 4. Kill someone by letting them smoke/drink/overeat?
|
| 5. Kill someone by letting them starve?
|
| If you want to say that no country is civilized yet then
| hey I'm with ya. Otherwise, it's not quite so simple. The
| death penalty is a tragic injustice, I agree, but just
| saying "it's murder" is not a serious engagement with the
| issue IMO.
| tempfile wrote:
| No. Murder is not the same as killing, just like not all
| taking is stealing. Even the most civilised society
| imaginable admits that killing is sometimes acceptable (in
| self defense, for example). Killing done by the state is
| trivially not murder by definition, and less trivially
| there are justifications you can argue about. But you have
| to argue about it, your "simple logic" is unfortunately too
| simple.
| gizajob wrote:
| You're right that it is too simple, but it's an easy rule
| of thumb with which to think about and frame the problem.
|
| If it's illegal to kill a human being, then it's illegal.
| The existence of a death penalty where the state is able
| to do it in certain cases, as in the main case where
| someone themselves has broken the rule and murdered, for
| me, still does not justify any kind of legalistic
| justification for sanctioning they be killed. While "the
| state" is this abstract entity formed by all of us, the
| state has to act through people, who then have to be
| involved in taking a life. The state's premeditation of
| the killing of the murderer is even more premeditated and
| drawn out form of murder. It's easy to be blinded by the
| language used around this towards what is happening. I
| believe even further that if the state is allowed to do
| it, it opens a loophole in thought that could actually
| cause more murders to happen, because if the state can do
| it, then maybe I'll do it too...
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| This goes much further into philosophy, politics, and
| legality than I'm comfortable with but there's lawful and
| unlawful killing, the difference being... well, one is
| allowed and the other isn't, as per the law (be it national
| or e.g. international / warfare laws).
|
| I can't even make a statement whether killing is always
| morally injustifiable or not.
| sparrish wrote:
| By this logic, holding someone against their will is
| illegal too. When a state does it, we call it
| incarceration. Is it wrong for the state to sanction
| incarcerating someone?
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Incarceration can be appealed.
| wtcactus wrote:
| Robbery is also ilegal and yet, each month, the government
| takes about 50% of my wage in taxes.
| colinb wrote:
| Here's another thought experiment. We have ample evidence
| that the death penalty hasn't made America safe from murder.
| But we don't know if it has deterrence value for lesser
| crimes.
|
| I propose death by hanging for repeat littering and speeding
| near a school. I bet that'd be effective.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Hanging? Why not shoot on sight, like the second amendment
| absolutionists/extremists think is the way to go?
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| > We have ample evidence that the death penalty hasn't made
| America safe from murder. But we don't know if it has
| deterrence value for lesser crimes.
|
| You seem to be suggesting that because murders still
| happen, we know the death penalty has no deterrence value?
| That's not how deterrence works.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| Even if we had 100% certainty what crimes are 100% worth
| death? Not even that is simple.
|
| If you want to consider cost, it costs literal millions to
| execute someone.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Plus what of the potential profit? The guilty person could
| be a teenager making a silly mistake who could grow up to
| become the next Einstein. Insert Bill Gates' mugshot here,
| who is responsible for hundreds of thousands of jobs and
| bringing billions into the US / worldwide economy.
|
| But he was guilty and it would probably have been better to
| execute him because what if he did something else wrong?
| sparrish wrote:
| They don't give the death penalty to teenagers making
| 'silly mistake's. It's a sentence not handed out without
| weighty thought and only to those who knowingly and
| intentionally take life.
|
| I'm so tired of the "next Einstein" pithy replies. These
| are adults who have done heinous crimes against innocent
| people. Justice requires severe consequences.
| spacechild1 wrote:
| > Curious to know if your views would change?
|
| It wouldn't. There are cases where we do know someone's guilt
| with 100% confidence, but in my country we still don't
| execute them.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Guilt or innocence is irrellevant to the discussion about
| whether the death penalty is justified though, for several
| reasons; it's binary thinking (there's a right and a wrong,
| there's good and bad people); it's dehumanizing (a bad person
| is forever bad and will forever be a burden to society); it's
| reductionist (a prisoner unit costs X per year at no benefit
| to society), etc. I don't know enough philosophy to list
| everything wrong with this premise.
|
| Think hard about why someone commits a crime. What is their
| background, their circustances, and what would have prevented
| it from happenign. Then think about what you think the
| purpose is of a sentencing? Is it for revenge, revalidation,
| setting an example, or removing undesireables from society
| (temporarily, indefinitely, or permanently)?
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| > Think hard about why someone commits a crime. What is
| their background, their circustances, and what would have
| prevented it from happenign.
|
| I think that the kind of crimes which lead to a death
| sentence happen because the perpetrator is a bad person who
| likes to hurt others. There's no "background" or
| "circumstances" that would make you break into a woman's
| house and stab her to death - to do such a thing, you have
| to either not know or not care that it's wrong.
|
| That doesn't by itself prove that the death penalty is
| right, or even that people who commit these kind of murders
| can never be rehabilitated. But it's really disturbing to
| me how often people whitewash the specific crimes death row
| inmates are accused of, as though we're all a couple missed
| paychecks away from randomly murdering people.
| dpkirchner wrote:
| Suppose we could see everything that happened in the past,
| perfectly, and see in to the minds of everyone. We could save
| dollars!
| ctxc wrote:
| I believe there are heinous crimes that do. Both fitting the
| crime and as a deterrent.
| bmicraft wrote:
| > as a deterrent
|
| Do you have any sources supporting the claim that does
| actually deter anybody?
| tristan957 wrote:
| The US has more violent crime than other Western countries,
| so as a deterrent, it does not work. Perhaps instead of
| wasting money on death penalty appeals and killing innocent
| people, we should think about how we as a country can
| overhaul the prison system and our societal structures.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| That logic doesn't follow, because it could be the case
| that America would be even more violent if we didn't
| execute people. Having said that, I find the deterrence
| angle suspect. Very few people would consider spending the
| rest of their life in jail acceptable, but being put to
| death unacceptable.
| dawnerd wrote:
| For profit prisons are not helping anything. They have zero
| interest in rehab and reformation - and unfortunately a lot
| of people in the states and beyond believe once you're a
| criminal you're tarnished forever.
| mercutio2 wrote:
| It's extremely difficult to compare crime statistics that
| don't involve death. There's under reporting right and
| left, and there are classification problems.
|
| With that said, I don't think it's true that the US has,
| per capita, significantly more violent crime than the
| median Western country. What we have is a LOT more guns,
| which increase the probability that our violent crime
| becomes lethal.
|
| We DO have vastly more incarceration than most other
| countries, though.
| n1b0m wrote:
| There was another execution in South Carolina on Friday despite
| new evidence of innocence
|
| https://amp.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/sep/20/south-caroli...
| ruph123 wrote:
| That case is even worse as it rested fully on the testimony of
| the other robber, which he made to get a lesser sentence and
| later rescinded:
|
| > Prosecutors had no forensic evidence connecting Allah to the
| shooting. Surveillance footage at the store showed two masked
| men with guns, but they were not identifiable. The state's case
| rested on testimony from Allah's friend and co-defendant,
| Steven Golden, who was also charged in the robbery and murder.
| As their joint trial was beginning, Golden pleaded guilty to
| murder, armed robbery and criminal conspiracy and agreed to
| testify against Allah. Golden, who was 18 at the time of the
| robbery, said Allah shot Graves.
| fakedang wrote:
| > Golden said he agreed to plead guilty and testify when
| prosecutors assured him he would not face the death penalty
| or a life sentence - a deal that was not disclosed to the
| jury.
| awb wrote:
| > "I substituted [Allah] for the person who was really with
| me," he wrote, saying he concealed the identity of the
| "real shooter" out of fear that "his associates might kill
| me". He did not identify this person.
|
| If your friend is wrongly facing the death penalty and you
| know they're innocent there's no reason to not name the
| person you claim is the real shooter.
| jmyeet wrote:
| If you're wondering if the Missouri governor Mike Parson
| sparingly uses his clemency and pardon power, you'd be mistaken
| [1]:
|
| > Parson, a former sheriff, has now granted clemency to more than
| 760 people since 2020 -- more than any Missouri governor since
| the 1940s
|
| including those who waved guns at BLM protestors [2] and the son
| of the KC Chiefs coach who caused grave bodiy injuries to someone
| in a DUI.
|
| Available data shows a pretty clear trend [3]:
|
| > An analysis of available demographic data conducted by the
| Missouri News Network indicates that almost 90% of those who have
| been granted clemency by the governor are white.
|
| If you're wondering where the US Supreme Court stands on this,
| consider this quote from then-Justice Antonin Scalia [4]:
|
| > [t]his 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.
|
| Also, consider this racial bias demonstrated in the exoneration
| for those sentence to death [5]:
|
| > Since 1973, at least 189 people wrongly convicted and sentenced
| to death have been exonerated. 100 of the death row exonerees are
| Black.
|
| Lastly, even if you want to ignore the immorality of the death
| setnence, look at it from the lens of cost [6]. Death penalty
| cases are substantially more expensive to litigate and death row
| inmates are substantially more expensive to incarcerate. A life-
| without-parole would be substantially cheaper.
|
| Also, you can release someone from prison wrongly convicted. You
| cannot bring them back to life and there are multiple cases of
| people who were executed and later exonerated. Williams is sadly
| added to that list.
|
| [1]: https://apnews.com/article/kansas-city-chiefs-britt-reid-
| com...
|
| [2]: https://www.npr.org/2021/08/03/1024446351/missouris-
| governor...
|
| [3]:
| https://www.columbiamissourian.com/news/state_news/governors...
|
| [4]: https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/stories/associate-justice-
| anton...
|
| [5]: https://www.naacpldf.org/our-thinking/death-row-usa/
|
| [6]: https://www.amnestyusa.org/issues/death-penalty/death-
| penalt...
| amatecha wrote:
| > Parson, a former sheriff, has never granted clemency in a
| death penalty case.
|
| https://www.khou.com/article/news/crime/missouri-governor-st...
|
| > Parson, a former sheriff, has been in office for 11
| executions, and has never granted clemency.
|
| https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/parson-state-supreme-co...
| jstummbillig wrote:
| > "The family defines closure as Marcellus being allowed to
| live," the petition stated. "Marcellus' execution is not
| necessary."
|
| Imagine we lived in that world.
| spiritplumber wrote:
| Aside the fact that the death penalty shouldn't exist in the
| first place, the victim's family should be able to veto it
| (automatic commutation to a life sentence).
| fakedang wrote:
| Incidentally, that's a feature of Islamic law, and where the
| concept of blood money comes into picture. Which also means
| that you might be able to get away with murder, if you're
| rich enough.
| BostonFern wrote:
| From CNN:
|
| "Other evidence that helped convict Williams 'remains intact,'
| the attorney general said.
|
| 'The victim's personal items were found in Williams's car after
| the murder. A witness testified that Williams had sold the
| victim's laptop to him. Williams confessed to his girlfriend and
| an inmate in the St. Louis City Jail, and William's girlfriend
| saw him dispose of the bloody clothes worn during the murder,'
| the attorney general's office said."
|
| https://lite.cnn.com/2024/09/24/us/marcellus-williams-schedu...
| TrackerFF wrote:
| So it seems that the original case rested on the following:
|
| - Williams GF witness testimony, that Williams confessed to her.
|
| - Jailhouse witness testimony, that Williams had confessed to
| them.
|
| - That Williams had items (purse, laptop, etc.) in his car, on
| the day or day after the murder.
|
| But no DNA evidence?
|
| A death penalty seems pretty egregious, when you have that kind
| of evidence. Seems like there's plenty of reasonable doubt in the
| picture.
|
| (FWIW, I completely oppose the death penalty - on the grounds
| that innocent people have been executed. One is one too many)
| voisin wrote:
| The argument is that the girlfriend and jailhouse snitch both
| were looking to get the $10k reward money for his conviction.
| And that's the only way the third point (had the items in the
| car) was known (from the girlfriend).
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| No, they knew the items were in the car because they searched
| his car and found the items. He has not, as far as I know,
| offered any alternative explanation of how he came into
| possession of a murder victim's random personal items.
| EasyMark wrote:
| This is exactly what I would focus on as a juror. How did
| he come by the items, surely if someone sold them to him he
| would say immediately who that was or offer some other way
| of getting it other than "I murdered her"
| brewdad wrote:
| Nor is he required to give an explanation. The prosecutor
| must prove that possession of the items leads to proof of
| guilt.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| That's true, but I'm not sure what your point is. The
| prosecutor did prove that, convincing a unanimous jury
| that he was guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.
|
| Perhaps you're thinking of it as a self-incrimination
| issue? That's a misperception I've seen before, where
| people generalize from Fifth Amendment protections to a
| broad rule that criminal defendants can never be at a
| disadvantage for refusing to explain themselves. That's
| not the case. If the prosecution says you obtained some
| items by taking them from the victim, and that's the only
| reasonable explanation the jury hears for how you got
| them, it's 100% within bounds for them to infer it's the
| correct explanation.
| anon291 wrote:
| He is not required, but absent an explanation, a jury
| might think him guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. After
| all, if your husband comes home late at night with
| lipstick all over him in a drunken stupor and unzipped
| pants, and then, as you threaten divorce and kick him out
| of the house, he offers no explanation, you too might
| think him guilty. Whereas, if he claims to have been
| assaulted by a very large woman you might listen to him.
| The 5th amendment protects you from being called as a
| witness _against_ yourself. That doesn 't mean you should
| not offer the jury testimony in defense of yourself.
|
| In general, if you have an alternative explanation for
| the circumstances which have led to your suspicion, you
| should offer them up readily.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _argument is that the girlfriend and jailhouse snitch both
| were looking to get the $10k reward money for his conviction_
|
| The Governor's counterargument being the "girlfriend never
| requested the reward for information about Ms. Gayle's
| murder, despite claims that she was only interested in money"
| [1].
|
| The interesting thing is I could see myself, were I on the
| jury, and if the other facts of the case aligned, finding
| Williams guilty beyond reasonable doubt where the punishment
| is life without parole. But I can't reach the certainty I'd
| want for the death penalty. Yet that implies a tremendous
| amount of faith in my ability to finely distinguish
| probabilities of guilt, an ability I don't think I have.
|
| This discussion is confusing because it's about two separate
| issues: a Rorschach test on your views on capital punishment
| and an orthogonal one about due process and William's guilt.
| (They're not orthogonal, but the interaction between those
| can probably be entirely described by the former.)
|
| [1] https://governor.mo.gov/press-releases/archive/state-
| carry-o...
| XorNot wrote:
| It also highlights the stupidity of the death penalty: the
| jury is instructed "if you find this person guilty, we will
| kill them for it" - i.e. an action with no possibility of
| reversal or redress.
|
| It's an odd stress test of the idea of "reasonable doubt"
| because of course in reality, there's always some doubt but
| the level of doubt for "let's irreversible kill a person"
| versus "let's detain them for life, but admit the
| possibility extraordinary evidence might emerge which
| changes our decision" is pretty vast.
|
| In a world where the development of DNA testing technology
| changed _a lot_ of outcomes including numerous capital
| punishment cases, it 's essentially unthinkable that we
| could continue with it.
| blendergeek wrote:
| In Missouri (as in most US States with capital
| punishment), the death penalty must separately be
| approved by the jury after the jury convicts.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment_in_the
| _Un...
| seadan83 wrote:
| > But I can't reach the certainty I'd want for the death
| penalty
|
| There is a degree of certainty required for a conviction.
| It is up to the jury to only decide if that degree of
| certainty has been reached. It is up to the judge to
| determine the sentence. I make this point as the US justice
| system is set up explicitly so that the jury is not
| considering the sentencing, but only guilty or not guilty.
| This removes the rorscach test from the jurors
| consideration.
| blendergeek wrote:
| In Missouri (as in most US States with capital
| punishment), the death penalty must separately be
| approved by the jury after the jury convicts.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment_in_the
| _Un...
| seadan83 wrote:
| Interesting! Thank you for the additional information.
|
| Would it be fair to call this an aberration in the US
| justice system? Namely that except for death penalty
| cases, that my previous comment holds? I generally viewed
| that distinction of guilt finding vs punishment selection
| as fundamental. This is food for thought -thank you.
| freeone3000 wrote:
| The death penalty is unique, in that the crime must be
| convicted, death chosen as the punishment, and then a
| second jury formed to actually decide if death is
| warranted in this case given the guilt.
| kelnos wrote:
| In addition to what the sibling commenter said about
| extra approval, also consider that in many places the
| prospective jurors is told up-front that the death
| penalty is on the table, and jury candidates who are not
| ok with that are dismissed.
|
| So I'd expect that if possible punishments _weren 't_
| discussed beforehand, you'd end up with a jury that
| doesn't support the death penalty quite as much.
|
| And in that jury you'd be more likely to find someone who
| might believe the defendant is guilty, but vote to acquit
| because they don't believe their crime merits death, but
| are pretty sure that that's what the sentence would end
| up being if convicted.
|
| And in that jury you might even find someone who is
| opposed to the death penalty entirely, and vote to acquit
| for the same reasons.
| ToValueFunfetti wrote:
| Probabilities at the extremes are counterintuitively easy
| to distinguish. There is a negligible difference between
| the evidence that would leave you 50% certain and that
| which would leave you 51% certain, but if you go from 99.9%
| to 99.99% certain, your evidence has gotten 10x stronger.
| ruined wrote:
| asaro had more reasons to make these claims
|
| https://www.cnn.com/2024/08/21/us/marcellus-williams-
| missour...
|
| >And though Picus' laptop was recovered, the prosecuting
| attorney's office says Roberts told investigators Williams
| said he'd gotten it from Asaro - a claim Roberts reiterated
| in an affidavit signed in 2020. Jurors at trial never heard
| this assertion, which the prosecutor's motion says
| illustrates "the person with the most direct connection to
| the crime" was "Laura Asaro, and not Marcellus Williams."
|
| additionally, they only made the statements after being
| threatened by police
|
| >The woman at first denied having information about the
| crime, prosecutors' motion states. But after meeting with
| police several times - and being promised charges she was
| facing would be dropped and told she would be eligible for
| the reward - Asaro eventually cooperated, telling police she
| had indeed seen Williams on the afternoon of the murder, the
| motion states.
| sdiufshi wrote:
| What amazes me is how routine this practice is to this very
| day. It is commonplace for police to use vile tactics and
| tell patent lies. The entire system is rigged in a way that
| cares not about truth but about winning. When you measure
| things in conviction rate this is bound to happen.
| slibhb wrote:
| That seems like pretty strong evidence to me!
| maximinus_thrax wrote:
| For a civil case, probably. But for a criminal case, the
| threshold is 'beyond reasonable doubt'. Plenty of reasonable
| doubt in there.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| It seems strong enough to keep someone in jail, potentially
| forever.
|
| Executing him requires there's absolutely no room for a
| reversal, and from that point of view the evidence isn't that
| strong.
| nemothekid wrote:
| It's unfortunate that a lot of the messaging has shifted to
| he's innocent, where I believe the right message (and far
| less viral message), is the government has not shown enough
| evidence beyond a reasonable doubt that the death penalty is
| warranted. I don't believe in the death penalty because I
| don't think the state should have the authority to execute
| citizens and even moreso when a very high bar of culpability
| hasn't been reached.
|
| In this quest for vengeance I think people forget these rules
| are in place for the State to not abuse it's powers. I'm not
| against the death penalty because I'm a hippy vegan. I'm
| against it because I don't think it's a power the state
| should be able to wield.
| slibhb wrote:
| > I believe the right message (and far less viral message),
| is the government has not shown enough evidence beyond a
| reasonable doubt that the death penalty is warranted.
|
| The jury makes that determination after being locked in a
| room and forced to hear both sides and all the evidence.
| How much of the evidence are you aware of? What The
| Innocence Project posted?
|
| This thread is full of people who are anti-death penalty
| who don't think some guy should be executed. That's hardly
| a surprise, but it has nothing to do with the evidence
| presented by the state.
| SadTrombone wrote:
| The prosecutor's office and the victim's family both
| pushed to stop the execution due to reasonable doubt.
| Think they might have an idea of the available evidence?
|
| The previous governor had begun an inquiry into the
| matter but the new governor shut that board down and
| blocked any and all attempts to halt the execution.
| xyzzyz wrote:
| No, a prosecutor at no point argued that this guy was not
| guilty. Nobody argued that, except dishonest activists
| who lied to you. All prosecutor offered was commuting the
| death penalty to life without parole.
|
| In addition, I don't see how a random prosecutor's
| opinion is relevant. If this was the original prosecutor
| who prosecuted the case, then it would have some
| evidentiary value. In this case, this is just some guy
| with zero connection to the original case. Why should we
| care what he believes, over opinion of hundreds of
| prosecutors in this country who are happy that the
| justice has finally been served?
| komali2 wrote:
| The exact words of the person you're replying to were
|
| > The prosecutor's office and the victim's family both
| pushed to stop the execution due to reasonable doubt.
|
| Nobody claimed the prosecutor argued he's not guilty.
|
| > Why should we care what he believes, over opinion of
| hundreds of prosecutors in this country who are happy
| that the justice has finally been served?
|
| Because he's correct. The State doesn't have enough
| evidence to justify execution. Justice isn't being served
| by executing this man.
| hdlothia wrote:
| The victim's family do not believe in the death penalty,
| I have not seen anywhere that they doubt his guilt.
| iwontberude wrote:
| > This thread is full of people who are anti-death
| penalty
|
| Who even argues in favor of it? What studies shows that
| the death penalty is effective? Who has done cost benefit
| analysis for civic life to have the government executing
| people generally speaking? So many truthy arguments on
| behalf of the death penalty.
| WheatMillington wrote:
| I oppose the death penalty, but social policies should
| not be based on the outcome of cost/benefit analysis. If
| they were, executions would be used far more, on much
| less serious crimes, given rates of recidivism and
| revictimisation amongst certain crime types.
| komali2 wrote:
| Cost benefit analysis wouldn't shake out in favor o
| execution on serious crimes due to add on effects.
|
| Cost benefit analysis and evidence based policy making
| would lead to a restorative justice system.
| telotortium wrote:
| Rehabilitation has not been shown to work regularly in
| practice, particularly for criminals with long criminal
| histories (such as Marcellus Williams). The primary
| benefit of incarceration is incapacitation - keeping
| repeat criminals off the streets.
|
| Personally, I would make prison conditions less harsh, as
| long as we could guarantee that repeat criminals would
| stay in prison until they reach the age at which
| aggression has declined enough that they're unlikely to
| impulsively commit crimes. That might have to be 50+
| years old. Then they should be released with a UBI. Most
| people who would get sent to prison for decades after a
| life of crime were never suitable employees in the first
| place, and they'll be even less so after prison. However,
| they should have enough money to live a life of dignity
| after prison, and if they can keep a job, they should
| keep all that money too.
| mandmandam wrote:
| > Rehabilitation has not been shown to work regularly in
| practice
|
| It works when it's done right [0].
|
| One of the main reasons it fails to work is when the
| justice system itself is perceived as unfair [0]. So,
| things like inconsistently applied sentencing (!),
| systemic racism (!), over-the-top punishments (!) even in
| cases with significant doubt (!), etc...
|
| 0 - https://www.innovatingjustice.org/sites/default/files
| /docume...
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| Cost benefit analysis would likely trace back to root
| causes in the same way it's cheaper to fix a bug before
| it gets shipped.
|
| There's a great TED talk from a lawyer who was looking to
| reduce death penalty executions, who realised the best
| way to do that would be to reduce the number of murders
| and the best way to do that was to support kids and
| families with problems due to poverty and poor mental
| health.
|
| The childhood anecdote from the guy he was working with
| that got executed has stayed with me for over a decade
| now:
|
| https://youtu.be/HYzrdn7YLCM?si=ehMUoSFbLvQt_h3F
| nemothekid wrote:
| > _How much of the evidence are you aware of?_
|
| I'm aware of the evidence - the lack of direct evidence
| is why I'm arguing against the death penalty. Again, I
| don't think the guy should be set free as it's credible
| he committed the murder. I'm against the state generally,
| and especially when there's no direct evidence, executing
| a defendant.
|
| > _This thread is full of people who are anti-death
| penalty who don 't think some guy should be executed._ >
| _That 's hardly a surprise, but it has nothing to do with
| the evidence presented by the state._
|
| Again, call me a "small government" freak, but I think
| the cases in when the state should be allowed to execute
| someone is vanishingly small. I don't think anyone should
| live in a state that is allowed to execute someone based
| entirely on testimony.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| > I'm against it because I don't think it's a power the
| state should be able to wield.
|
| 100% agree. We ought not grant the state the power to take
| our lives.
| Beijinger wrote:
| "In this quest for vengeance I think people forget these
| rules are in place for the State to not abuse it's powers.
| I'm not against the death penalty because I'm a hippy
| vegan. I'm against it because I don't think it's a power
| the state should be able to wield."
|
| I am not sure what the US tries to achieve with the death
| penalty. Deterrence? Seems not to work. And EU countries
| have much lower violent crime. Even if they have assault
| rifles at home (Switzerland). Revenge? An eye for an eye
| leaves the whole world blind.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _not sure what the US tries to achieve with the death
| penalty. Deterrence?_
|
| Retribution, incapacitation and deterrence [1]. (In my
| opinion, in that order.)
|
| [1] https://www.bsslawllc.com/blog/2021/12/the-four-
| pillars-of-s...
| awb wrote:
| > the government has not shown enough evidence beyond a
| reasonable doubt that the death penalty is warranted
|
| The jury only provided the unanimous guilty verdict. After
| that point, the defendant has been declared guilty beyond
| all reasonable doubt by the state, and it's up to the judge
| to determine the appropriate punishment for someone guilty
| of the crime of 1st degree murder, robbery, etc.
|
| It's possible that some on the jury did not want the death
| penalty, but were not ready to acquit.
|
| > I'm against it because I don't think it's a power the
| state should be able to wield.
|
| To your point, the Innocence Project claims 251
| exonerations, with ~9% (22) exonerations coming after the
| death penalty had already occured. The IP reported
| receiving 65,600 letters for assistance, so around ~0.4% of
| all requests for help were later proven to be wrongful
| convictions. There are currently around 2,200 prisoners on
| Death Row (https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/death-
| row/overview/death-row-us...). Assuming the ~0.4% wrongful
| conviction rate is representative for this population, that
| would be around 8-9 people. Some States have paused
| executions, and the US executes about ~20 people per year.
| So that would be a wrongful execution every ~12.5 years on
| average, again if these percentages are representative of
| death row convictions.
| JohnBooty wrote:
| Friend, this is completely the wrong math on so many
| levels!
|
| I don't even know where to start... these numbers are not
| even remotely representative of anything about the larger
| prison population. The IP reported
| receiving 65,600 letters for assistance, so
| around ~0.4% of all requests for help were later
| proven to be wrongful convictions. [...]
| Assuming the ~0.4% wrongful conviction rate is
| representative for this population
|
| For this to be even remotely representative of the
| overall wrongful conviction rate, this would mean that
| the IP thoroughly investigated and pursued all 65,600
| cases and that new and completely fair trials were
| conducted in all 65,600 cases.
|
| - The 251 exonerations were obtained by pursuing only a
| small fraction of those 65,600 cases. Presumably ones
| where they felt most certain of overturning the
| conviction.
|
| - The 65,600 letter-writers are surely not representative
| of the overall prison population; this is a subset of
| convicts who have the resources to know about the IP and
| get a letter to them, with some kind of self-belief in
| their own innocence
|
| - While apparently not true in this case the standards
| for death sentences tend to be higher than those for
| other convictions because they are so likely to be
| appealed, so the percentage of wrongfully convicted
| people on Death Row is likely to be different than that
| of the general convict population
|
| - etc etc etc
|
| I don't think your numbers are correct even as a back-of-
| the-envelope Fermi equation sort of estimate...
| awb wrote:
| Sure, it's a ballpark, but in the context of a
| conversation about how many innocent people are being
| executed, I think the wrongful conviction rate of the
| entire prison population is less relevant than a ballpark
| rate of those wrongfully sentenced to life/death. For
| example, if the wrongful conviction rate for minor
| offenses or white collar crimes was as high as 10%, it
| wouldn't necessarily indicate that 10% of people
| sentenced to death were also wrongfully convicted. Its
| very possible that juries dealing with more serious
| crimes and more serious punishments are more careful in
| their decisions or innately require a higher burden of
| proof to convict.
|
| I assumed that most of the letters received by the IP are
| for life/death sentences or at least major crimes with
| multi-decade long sentences, which I think would probably
| have a more consistent wrongful conviction rate in the
| group vs. the entire prison population.
|
| And while you're right that the IP might only have the
| resources to attempt to overturn the top X% cases, one
| could assume that they don't win all their cases and that
| the next tier of cases they don't accept would have
| diminishing returns.
|
| So I think it's fair to treat this estimate as closer to
| a lower bound with some significant error bars, but I'd
| be surprised if the reality is 5x or 10x higher.
| blendergeek wrote:
| > The jury only provided the unanimous guilty verdict.
| After that point, the defendant has been declared guilty
| beyond all reasonable doubt by the state, and it's up to
| the judge to determine the appropriate punishment for
| someone guilty of the crime of 1st degree murder,
| robbery, etc.
|
| In Missouri (as in most US States with capital
| punishment), the death penalty must separately be
| approved by the jury after the jury convicts.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment_in_the
| _Un...
| awb wrote:
| Thank you, I learned something new. And overall if you're
| going to have the death penalty , probably a better
| process than a single judge deciding.
| truetraveller wrote:
| > on the day or day after the murder.
|
| They found this a 8-10 months later, not the next day. So much
| misinformation, I believe on purpose. And her GF snitched
| before, not to mention she wanted the reward.
| game_the0ry wrote:
| Does anyone find it deeply disturbing that the justice system
| will just sit on its own hands when presented with new evidence?
| It seems like prosecutors are more interested in maintaining a hi
| conviction rate rather than seeking justice. Judges seem totally
| apathetic.
| knodi123 wrote:
| > when presented with new evidence?
|
| They weren't, for the record.
| DoughnutHole wrote:
| In this case the prosecutor actively pushed against the
| execution, arguing that his guilt was no longer beyond a
| reasonable doubt.
|
| The blame for this lies squarely on the Missouri Supreme Court
| and Gov. Parson (who has never once granted clemency in a
| capital case).
| EasyMark wrote:
| As well as the US Supreme Court
| xyzzyz wrote:
| "The" prosecutor was not pushing against the execution. "A"
| prosecutor was, who did not have significantly greater
| relationship to the case than thousands of other prosecutors
| in this country. I don't see how this guy's opinion is more
| relevant that anyone else's.
| concordDance wrote:
| > the prosecutor actively pushed against the execution
|
| Reading this thread, it's obvious there's been a big game of
| telephone with regards to what happened (half saying "a",
| half saying "the").
|
| I hope this reminds people that they need to chase down
| sources as close to the original information source as
| possible as things can get misunderstood or distorted along
| the way.
| trod123 wrote:
| Yes very disturbing, but not unexpected.This is the
| foundational nature of government, and why citizen's don't
| generally want big government.
|
| Government jobs inherently suffer from a number of structural
| issues. Both organizationally, as well as psychologically.
| Without a loss function, such as is required in business (where
| people get fired for lack of production and revenue dictates
| hiring), psychology changes in forever jobs.
|
| Social coercion and corruption occur commonly, and this grows
| with time trending towards negative production value and other
| forms of corruption. The nail that sticks out gets hammered
| down, best describes the former. Anyone doing too much work is
| making everyone else look bad and they need to be harassed and
| punished until they fall into line.
|
| The way the interlocking centralized systems operate, anyone
| working in any position backed by government would be
| incentivized to meet a classical definition of evil just to do
| their job, and the psychology tests often done select for
| complementary characteristics towards that.
|
| Sure they manage to catch some real bad guys occasionally, and
| there are rare people who take their job seriously; don't fall
| to corruption and stay on the straight and narrow; but these
| are the exceptions, and the ends don't justify the means when
| the person is innocent.
|
| The mechanics of just doing their job would almost certainly
| enable many acts of evil to be performed by them without them
| ever knowing, and information control makes them blind to it.
| They chose the job and that is part of the job so they
| willfully blinded themselves.
|
| This presents both ethical and moral paradoxes, with little
| penalty when they get it wrong after a certain point. Mistakes
| happen as everyone is fundamentally flawed (and not perfect),
| but when those mistakes aren't fixed because of structural
| issues; they become as they were incentivized to be; and the
| dead cannot be brought back to life.
|
| By Definition, Evil acts are destructive acts, Evil people are
| those who have willfully blinded themselves to the consequences
| of their evil acts (often through repeated acts of self-
| violation, such as falsely justifying the unjustifiable, and
| bearing false witness (storytelling a narrative when the
| evidence doesn't support it), etc.
|
| Regarding judges seeming apathetic, it is almost impossible to
| remove judges in most cases. Only judges can judge other
| judges, and there is a inherent old boys club. Only rarely for
| egregious misconduct do removals happen because if a judge is
| removed, all cases they presided over need to potentially be
| reviewed.
|
| There is incentive to never remove judges due to cost of
| mistakes, and for a similar reason judges rarely favor appeals
| because they would be overturning previous judges rulings.
|
| Needless to say, when innocent people are killed because judges
| didn't do their job, and they remain blind to that consequence
| with no resistance towards repeating it, they'll be in for one
| 'hell' of a surprise when they pass and find no pearly white
| gates waiting for them.
|
| Most truly evil people believe they are good.
|
| This drives home the importance of choosing your profession
| carefully and wisely because you spend the most time at it, and
| it changes you for good or worse.
| I_am_uncreative wrote:
| Funny, all the "small government" people I know are fine with
| this.
| pie_flavor wrote:
| The justice system wasn't presented with any new evidence. Some
| DNA from the prosecution's office ended up on the weapon
| sometime in the preceding 17 years, big whoop. This isn't
| exculpatory and doesn't contradict a single claim made by the
| prosecution, and there was plenty of strong evidence that he
| did it, such as possessing all the victim's stuff and pawning
| her laptop and bragging about how he did it in words that
| included nonpublic details about the crime.
|
| This is the Innocence Project's standard beat. They attempt to
| free a lot of convicts with arguments that the media
| automatically takes as trustworthy because they have the word
| 'DNA' in them, whose conviction was based on very strong
| evidence and whose defense offered zero plausible explanations
| of the evidence, and the DNA-based argument doesn't actually
| contradict anything at all.
| haswell wrote:
| > _there was plenty of strong evidence that he did it, such
| as possessing all the victim 's stuff and pawning her laptop_
|
| This should not be sufficient to justify the death penalty.
| Whether or not this guy did it, using such an incredibly weak
| standard _will_ and almost certainly _has_ killed innocent
| people.
|
| > _This is the Innocence Project 's standard beat. They
| attempt to free a lot of convicts...whose conviction was
| based on very strong evidence_
|
| "Very strong" evidence should never be enough to sentence
| someone to death. The evidence should be irrefutable.
| Anything less is unacceptable and inexcusable.
| qingcharles wrote:
| It is very hard to get cases reopened, it is true. Once DNA
| testing came about many convicts tried to get the evidence in
| their cases tested to prove their innocence, but this took
| many, many years in a lot of cases.
|
| In fact, getting anything fixed or changed after conviction is
| a long process. I know someone who was given 100 years extra on
| his sentence due to an error by the judge, instead of the ~15
| he was due. That was two years ago and a simple error like that
| still hasn't been rectified.
| anonzzzies wrote:
| Still not sure with so many of the (esp right leaning) in the US
| claiming to be christian, can also accept this as a punishment.
| But I get nonsense begets more nonsense.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| A large part of the organized activism _against_ the death
| penalty is also run by christians, especially catholics and
| orthodox who are a lot more consistent on this.
|
| It's not the christianity per se that makes them bloodthirsty.
| Contemporary american evangelical christianity is a novel
| social-political-religious movement and in some theologically
| significant ways has broken with near-universal christian
| tradition. Trying to understand it purely as a religion is too
| incomplete.
| o11c wrote:
| As a serious Christian and a dabbling linguist, I really hate
| that they've ruined a word meaning "gospel" (the English
| calque).
|
| We really should call them "dysangelical" when they bring
| death like this (as opposed to _warning_ of death, which is
| in scope of euangel when there 's also a way to avoid it).
| spacechild1 wrote:
| Also, it's often the same people who claim to be "pro life".
| ImJamal wrote:
| It is pro innconcent life, not pro murderer life? Pro life
| and pro choice are just marketing terms. People who are pro-
| choice aren't pro not wearing a seat belt (well some may be,
| but it has nothing to do with the topic). It has to do with
| abortion and only abortion.
| squarefoot wrote:
| As in: "Only God can administer life and death, so stop those
| abortions or we'll set on fire your clinic and kill the
| doctors". Psychology can explain completely that behavior,
| however this is not the right place for such discussions.
| Ylpertnodi wrote:
| > _Where_ isn 't the right place for such discussions?
| Nathanba wrote:
| I think even as a non-christian and especially if you comment
| like this you should know the absolute minimum about
| christianity: that the death penalty is obviously in the bible
| and commanded by God plenty of times
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| There's also testimony of God overturning / fulfilling prior
| commandments (Matthew 5:17-21, Acts 10:9-16). The Bible
| contains a lot of laws and punishments that aren't respected
| in the United States: selective quoting doesn't strike me as
| a particularly compelling argument.
|
| There's _also_ testimony of Jesus disrupting an instance of
| capital punishment (John 8:3-11). There may have been
| procedural issues in that case, of course - for example, no
| accusers are said to have claimed witness to the crime
| itself, which was legally required for an execution - but
| Jesus points this out after the mob has dispersed, not
| before, and many Christians interpret that verdict more
| generally.
| cvoss wrote:
| It is important to understand the difference between moral
| laws, which are immutable, and other laws in the Bible,
| often categorized as civil or ceremonial.
|
| In modern legal theory, we have a similar distinction,
| which you may know from Legally Blonde: malum in se (that
| which is inherently wrong) and malum prohibitum (that which
| is wrong because a lawful authority prohibits it). Example:
| endangering the safety of others by driving too fast is
| wrong in itself, while breaking the speed limit is wrong
| because the town said so.
|
| The former type (moral, and in se) doesn't depend on the
| existence of a government or system of laws and justice.
| The latter type certainly does, and the wrongness of those
| things 1) is changeable at the will of the governing
| authority, 2) applies only to those properly under the
| authority, and 3) expires when the governing structure
| expires.
|
| Christians believe the ten commandments are moral law,
| whereas when we get into the ins and outs of the ancient
| Israel system of justice, described at length in Leviticus,
| eg, we are seeing one civilization's implementation of that
| moral law into civil law, coupled with religious law and
| ceremonies that symbolized and pointed to deeper realities.
|
| When Jesus says he does not abolish but fulfills the law
| (and he means all of the law, not just some laws), he can't
| mean you are now free to murder. He means if you murdered
| someone, you may yet receive eternal life and not eternal
| death, because he can pay the penalty on your behalf. He
| means he lived a perfectly moral life and can impute that
| to you. That's fulfillment of moral law.
|
| It also doesn't mean eating pork was immoral and now it's
| moral. That dietary restriction was a malum prohibitum
| component of the ceremonial cleanness symbolism that was
| meant to point the Israelites to the reality of what
| happens to a soul that consumes unholy things. It was never
| immoral, only prohibited. But the law is fulfilled in that
| the symbol is no longer required. Jesus institutes a new
| symbol that fixates on his own holiness and cleanness
| imputed to us as if by eating it (the Lord's Supper). The
| early Christian movement quickly incorporated non-Jews who
| had no heritage of living under the authority of the
| Israelite state, which was, by this time, already
| expired/expiring, many times over through successive
| conquests and occupations by various other governments.
| Neither the non-Jewish Christians nor the Jewish Christians
| needed to abide by those laws, though many did for a time,
| as it was an integral part of cultural and religious
| custom.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| You're right, Jesus isn't saying "you are free to
| murder". But in every case we see Jesus prevent (or
| reverse: Luke 22:49-51) bloodshed, the bloodshed would
| have been retribution or punishment. Jesus is presented
| as reasonably anti-murder. Whether that holds in the case
| of capital punishment, I can't say.
|
| Though, Jesus _was_ subject to capital punishment,
| despite the original prosecutor (Pontius Pilate) claiming
| no lawful basis for the execution (Luke 22:66-23:25).
| This was presented as unjust, despite Jesus ' insistence
| that it had to happen. This is a bit muddled as an
| analogy, but I see how some people might take "capital
| punishment is wrong" from it.
| rhcom2 wrote:
| The Catholic Church at least is pretty strongly against it.
| gen220 wrote:
| Christ preached non-violent resistance. Death penalty was in
| mosaic law, and Christ deliberately contradicted it.
|
| Anybody who professes to be a Christian or follower of
| Christ's teachings who supports violence in any form is in
| fact living in contradiction.
| Beijinger wrote:
| "Still not sure with so many of the (esp right leaning) in the
| US claiming to be christian, can also accept this as a
| punishment."
|
| You shall not kill!
|
| What I don't understand. It is my impression that most of the
| US states that still have the death penalty, strongly oppose
| abortion. I find this a contradiction. And also these are the
| states that oppose abortion, at the same time are strictly
| against any kind of welfare "not our problem!".
| awb wrote:
| Here's my guess:
|
| I think it's a question of agency. If you're an adult that
| makes their own choices (crime, bad financial decisions,
| etc.), then you know what the consequences are.
|
| If you're an unborn child, you're don't have agency.
|
| For some there's probably deeper religious belief in good
| things (birth) being the work of God and bad things (crime,
| vice, death) being the work of Satan.
|
| To your point there are plenty of competing religious
| teachings that could lead some to be pro-choice, pro-welfare
| and anti-death penalty.
| kkfx wrote:
| To my European eye I'm curious why those who have ordered and
| those who have executed the wrongfully convicted prisoner,
| despite the evidence, are not arrested for aggravated murder...
| It's simple: they have choose, they are responsible for an
| homicide PERIOD.
| diogenes_atx wrote:
| Since capital punishment was reinstated in 1976 in the USA, many
| innocent Americans have been executed by the state. There is a
| considerable literature of scholarly research documenting this
| issue. For those interested in learning more, I highly recommend
| the following books:
|
| Justin Brooks (2023) _You Might Go to Prison Even Though You 're
| Innocent_, University of California Press
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Might-Prison-Though-Youre-Innocent/dp...
|
| Brandon Garrett (2011) _Convicting the Innocent: Where Criminal
| Prosecutions Go Wrong_ , Harvard University Press
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Convicting-Innocent-Where-Criminal-Pr...
|
| Mark Godsey (2017) _Blind Injustice: A Former Prosecutor Exposes
| Psychology and Politics of Wrongful Convictions_ , University of
| California Press
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Blind-Injustice-Prosecutor-Psychology...
| ideashower wrote:
| I was doing some reading based on your comment, and I'm kind of
| astonished to learn that public support for the death penalty
| only went up after the Gregg decision, peaking at 80% for in
| 1990. Wow.
| mykowebhn wrote:
| Why is this submission not on the front page if it has so many
| upvotes in the past hour, and the number of upvotes exceeds the
| number of comments?
| kergonath wrote:
| Probably too many comments. Too much activity compared to the
| number of votes is interpreted as a sign of flame wars and
| heated and unproductive discussions, and sink stories. This
| kind of topics don't stay on the front page for long, usually.
| CollinEMac wrote:
| Update: it's too late...
|
| > Marcellus Williams, whose murder conviction was questioned by a
| prosecutor, died by lethal injection Tuesday evening in Missouri
| after the US Supreme Court denied a stay.
|
| > The 55-year-old was put to death around 6 p.m. CT at the state
| prison in Bonne Terre.
|
| https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/24/us/marcellus-williams-schedul...
| jimt1234 wrote:
| I applaud the Innocence Project for taking this case, but
| honestly, Missouri? What did they expect? This is the same
| governor that tried to prosecute a newspaper reporter after they
| uncovered social security numbers in the HTML code from a state-
| run website. Then, when the governor was informed about how
| stupid his claim was, he doubled-down, insisting he would seek
| prosecution.
|
| https://www.npr.org/2021/10/14/1046124278/missouri-newspaper...
| t-writescode wrote:
| I imagine a team like The Innocence Project expects to lose
| most of their cases, but they try anyway because every life is
| worth saving.
| plandis wrote:
| It's sad that the US government unnecessarily deprived a human
| being of their right to life.
|
| I hope one day the people involved are prosecuted for this
| premeditated murder.
| WheatMillington wrote:
| State executions are literally, by definition, not murder.
| DandyDev wrote:
| Legally they aren't, morally you could argue they are.
| NietTim wrote:
| And who wrote that definition again? Right, the murderers.
| arp242 wrote:
| Legally speaking Stalin's purges were also not murder, by
| definition.
|
| It's obvious the previous poster was making a point of
| morality, not legality. You can of course disagree with that
| morality. That's fine. But going "but akshually the law
| says..." is being highly obtuse.
| karpatic wrote:
| Chiming in like this makes me wounder what your view on
| abortion is. I'm not asking, though.
| istjohn wrote:
| If we aren't going to abolish the death penalty, we should at
| least require a higher standard of proof than beyond a reasonable
| doubt to carry it out. It should require incontrovertible proof.
| Circumstantial evidence should not be allowed. Expert testimony
| should be barred. The evidence must be conclusive, plain, and
| certain to every member of the jury. This would allow you to
| execute, e.g., mass shooters who give themselves up, but make it
| extremely unlikely to irreversibly kill someone on the basis of
| junk science, induced or extorted testimony, or other fallible
| evidence.
| ajross wrote:
| I think most people would agree with that stuff in isolation,
| but reasonable solutions aren't really addressing the problem.
| Support for the Death Penalty is a political shibboleth in the
| modern US. It's not going to change, realistically ever, absent
| a major demographic realignment in the way we sort our citizens
| into parties.
|
| Preaching to a choir of geeks looking for "solutions" is the
| wrong target.
| chris_wot wrote:
| IMO, the only solution is to abolish it.
| Trill-I-Am wrote:
| Plenty of states have banned it in the past 50 years. It's on
| the decline.
| gibbetsandcrows wrote:
| And some states while not having banned it outright have
| made it effectively impossible to carry out. Oregon IIRC
| had their execution chamber and death row dismantled when
| their last governor left office. Execution is still on the
| books though.
| koenigdavidmj wrote:
| We don't use the word reasonable anymore the way it was written
| originally, and the actual meaning is what you're asking for,
| except for every conviction, not just capital ones. It doesn't
| mean "a small but tolerable level of doubt". It means doubt
| backed by reason. "Aliens made me do it" is doubt that is not
| backed by reason. "There is another plausible way that conforms
| to the evidence given that he came to possess that laptop" is
| reasonable doubt.
| qingcharles wrote:
| There's almost never incontrovertible proof in a criminal
| trial. Even if the suspect is on camera confessing. The sheer
| number of people who confessed to crimes and were then found
| innocent through DNA evidence is perturbing.
| brewdad wrote:
| Maybe that's a clue that we should almost never be using the
| death penalty.
| qingcharles wrote:
| 100%. I've seen so many wrongful convictions. A lot of
| those, the person wasn't necessarily innocent, but the
| trial process was so faulty that they did not receive the
| due process they were owed.
|
| The primary responsibility of a defense attorney isn't what
| a guilty defendant wants (to get off the charges), but it
| is to ensure that their client receives an absolutely fair
| trial with all the fairly-obtained evidence fairly
| presented.
| lm28469 wrote:
| > There's almost never incontrovertible proof in a criminal
| trial
|
| Having watched a few FBI interrogations and other true crime
| related videos there certainly are such proofs.
|
| I have a few of these come to mind, like the dude who killed
| his ex, took the house surveillance cameras down after the
| facts but didn't know they were backed up on servers, he was
| caught with the cameras in his truck shortly after. Most of
| these publicly known cases have a ridiculously long trail of
| proofs actually
|
| I'm not saying mistakes don't happen, they obviously do, but
| in many cases it's extremely easy to prove if someone's
| guilty or not.
|
| > Even if the suspect is on camera confessing.
|
| That's not enough in most countries
| coryfklein wrote:
| I wonder how one would encode such a level of burden of
| truth into the legal system such that the "really
| incontrovertible" cases are distinguishable from the "not
| really incontrovertible" ones.
| edanm wrote:
| > It should require incontrovertible proof.
|
| There's really no such thing.
|
| Instead, there is a very high burden of proof, there's a lot of
| protections built into the process, and, most important, it's
| an _adversarial process_ in which one side is standing up for
| the defendant. If the evidence isn 't good enough, the
| defendant's lawyer can and must show that to the jury, with
| them making the final decision on who is right.
| ossyrial wrote:
| > There's really no such thing.
|
| Which, in my opinion, is a fantastic argument against the
| death penalty.
|
| "Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve
| life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to
| deal out death in judgement. For even the very wise cannot
| see all ends." - Gandalf
| edanm wrote:
| I completely agree. One of several reasons I'm against the
| death penalty.
|
| Then again, it's not like I'm super happy about someone
| being in prison for their whole life, if they're innocent.
| But practically speaking, there needs to be _some_ way to
| incarcerate people.
| Aaronstotle wrote:
| I am currently of the belief that the death penalty should
| be reserved for the most extreme of the most extreme
| circumstances. The Boston Bomber & The Park School Shooter
| are two prime examples.
|
| There is a very high burden of proof for both of them and
| to my knowledge, no doubts as to their guilt. I personally
| find it morally reprehensible individuals like themselves
| are still gifted with life after the lives they ruined.
|
| Maybe this is a mindset I will grow out of as I grow older.
| noworriesnate wrote:
| I once met a man who told me he had killed his neighbor
| once. Here's the story:
|
| His neighbor was a kleptomaniac. He constantly broke in and
| stole stuff from the man I was talking to.
|
| The man I was talking to constantly reported it to the
| police, who said they could do nothing unless the man broke
| in.
|
| The man I was talking to eventually caught the thief
| breaking in, at which point he held him at gunpoint until
| the police came and arrested the thief.
|
| The man served his time in prison, eventually got out and
| went right back to his thieving ways.
|
| The man I was talking to waited until the guy broke in,
| then shot him to death.
|
| Problem solved, but what a stupid and roundabout way of
| solving it.
| K0balt wrote:
| In principle , I am in favor of capital punishment, but the
| way we do it is a mechanism of injustice. I'm not sure there
| is a solution.
|
| The problem is the way that the severity of the crime makes
| juries less reliable.
|
| When there is particularly severe circumstances (like a
| particularly horrific homocide) the psychological penalty for
| -not- convicting is much higher, and the desire to feel
| certain that a perpetrator has been found is much higher than
| say, a case of property theft.
|
| Combined with the death penalty, these biases add up to a
| murder machine rather than an instrument of justice.
|
| Estimations based on actual exonerations place the false
| conviction rate in some states >1%. If 1% are exonerated
| (which requires extraordinary evidence, often obtained by
| happenstance in solving other crimes) it's a pretty safe bet
| we may be looking at >10% false convictions.
|
| Add to this the fact that even confessions are unreliable,
| something I have some personal anecdotal experience with.
|
| When I was eleven, school officials accused me of doing
| something I absolutely did not do. (and in fact there was no
| evidence that the thing had actually even happened, it was
| later told to me by the person claiming the event that it was
| fabricated from whole cloth)
|
| I became so convinced that I did in fact do it that I
| invented an entire scenario where I had some kind of
| psychological episode, explaining why I did not directly
| remember doing the thing, but I was 100 percent sure that I
| had actually done it.
|
| I am not, and was not , a weak minded person. I did, however,
| at that time, trust in the idea of authority figures.
|
| It is not hard to to imagine that an adult on the other side
| of the bell curve that was basically trusting in society
| might easily fall into the same trap of
| disbelief->rationalization in an effort to to conform their
| reality to the "objective truth".
|
| After this experience,I don't place much weight in
| confessions, even less in plea bargains.
| diogenes_atx wrote:
| Many of the contributors to this thread are under the wrong
| impression that the police found the victim's laptop and other
| items in Marcellus Williams' car. This is not true. According to
| Wikipedia, the murder occurred in August 1998, but it was not
| until May 1999 that the victim's family "announced a $10,000
| reward for information leading to an arrest and conviction in the
| case. In response, two individuals, Henry Cole and Lara Asaro,
| named Marcellus Scott Williams as the culprit."
|
| The wikipedia article continues: "Lara Asaro, the girlfriend of
| Williams at the time of the crime, gave testimony that Williams
| had confessed to her... This is after she discovered evidence
| from the crime scene in Williams' car."
|
| This is an important clarification: The police did not find the
| victim's property in Williams' car. Rather, Williams' ex-
| girlfriend, who was incentivized by reward money, claimed, _more
| than 8 months after the crime_ , that _she saw_ the victim 's
| property in his car.
|
| This is one of the the main reasons that the Innocence Project
| correctly argues that there is no reliable evidence linking
| Marcellus Williams to the murder.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Felicia_Gayle
| MikeAmelung wrote:
| "The next day, the police searched the Buick LeSabre and found
| the Post-Dispatch ruler and calculator belonging to Gayle. The
| police also recovered the laptop computer from Glenn Roberts.
| The laptop was identified as the one stolen from Gayle's
| residence."
|
| https://law.justia.com/cases/missouri/supreme-court/2003/sc-...
| wpm wrote:
| Circumstantial. There are a 1000 different ways he could have
| obtained those items without committing a murder. Prove that
| having them is proof positive he killed someone.
| tptacek wrote:
| I don't think we should have capital punishment at all,
| anywhere, and certainly this is a textbook example of why,
| but circumstantial evidence is real evidence, admissible in
| court cases.
| droopyEyelids wrote:
| This is true, but circumstantial evidence is seldom
| enough to have the DA bring a case to trial because it is
| weak evidence.
|
| At least, thats my impression im not a lawyer.
| tptacek wrote:
| My understanding is that the opposite is closer to the
| truth: most cases are made on circumstantial evidence.
| Jury instructions apparently tell jurors not to weight it
| any differently than direct evidence.
| sitkack wrote:
| What does that mean? That they makeup spurious causal
| chains and believe that is reality?
| tptacek wrote:
| Just search [missouri model jury instructions
| circumstantial evidence]. Jury instructions are written
| in plain English.
| mahmoudimus wrote:
| This is indeed true. Most cases are made on
| circumstantial evidence.
| tiahura wrote:
| Actually the instructions tell the jury that how much
| weight to give to any evidence is up to them.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| Multiple witnesses seeing a suspect run out of a store
| holding a smoking gun shortly after the store clerk was
| shot is both circumstantial evidence and plenty for a DA
| to bring to trial.
| tptacek wrote:
| I don't think? this is even a real debate. One can want
| it to be otherwise, but criminal law does not disfavor
| circumstantial evidence.
| harshreality wrote:
| I don't think there are 1000 different ways to get both a
| ruler and a laptop that belonged to the same murder victim.
| atoav wrote:
| [1] Ruler is in the folded laptop, laptop gets stolen,
| laptop is sold, ruler inside, buyer is told he can keep
| the cool ruler.
|
| [2] Murderer specifically tries to pin the murder on
| someone else. Someone else being prosecuted is a good way
| to live free after, gifts his laptop and a ruler to the
| suspect or leaves them somewhere where they are
| discovered and taken.
|
| Is that unlikely? Is it _more_ unlikely than a murderer
| keeping the laptop and ruler from a victim, tying him to
| the murder?
|
| For me this alone would be absolutely insufficient
| evidence, to sentence someone to death. The ease with
| which some here would do this shocks me.
| awb wrote:
| Fair, but the Innocence Project did not argue that the
| defendant received inadequate representation. So
| presumably the defense would have had to offer an
| explanation during the trial and the jury was apparently
| unconvinced.
|
| Juries can get things wrong, but we're also just getting
| the cliff notes of the trial rather than the whole story.
| trainfromkansas wrote:
| "Circumstantial" evidence is often stronger than "direct"
| evidence. e.g. DNA is almost always "circumstantial", yet
| more modernly maligned eye witness evidence is "direct".
| diogenes_atx wrote:
| The full quote from the article in justia.com states the
| following: "In November of 1999, University City police
| approached Asaro to speak with her about the murder. Asaro
| told the police that Williams admitted to her that he had
| killed Gayle. The next day, the police searched the Buick
| LeSabre and found the Post-Dispatch ruler and calculator
| belonging to Gayle. The police also recovered the laptop
| computer from Glenn Roberts. The laptop was identified as the
| one stolen from Gayle's residence."
|
| The only thing linking the laptop to Williams was the
| testimony of a witness. Even if the witness is telling the
| truth, he has no way of knowing how Williams obtained the
| laptop.
|
| By any reasonable standard, all this is extremely flimsy
| evidence: More than a year after the murder, the police found
| a "Post-Dispatch ruler and calculator" in the suspect's car
| that belonged to the victim? And someone testified that
| Williams had the victim's laptop. And it is on the basis of
| this pitifully weak evidence that you would justify the
| execution of Williams, the suspect? Even though, as the
| Innocence Project correctly observes, there is no direct
| physical evidence linking Williams to the crime scene, and
| the DNA recovered from the crime scene does not match
| Williams?
|
| https://law.justia.com/cases/missouri/supreme-
| court/2003/sc-...
| MikeAmelung wrote:
| I was just helping everyone understand that your important
| clarification, was in fact, wrong.
|
| Since I wasn't on the jury, I can't say whether or not I
| would have been ok with the death penalty in this case,
| although the murder was particularly heinous.
| analog31 wrote:
| As I understand it, you have to be OK with the death
| penalty, to be on a capital jury.
| atoav wrote:
| Of all the situations within which it would be morally
| okay to lie..
| encoderer wrote:
| false.
| partitioned wrote:
| you mean, true?
| norir wrote:
| This in and of itself very likely creates a bias against
| the defendant. For me, there is overwhelming evidence
| that many innocent people have been executed. To support
| the death penalty, you seem likely to either not believe
| in systemic injustice (which means you are also probably
| more likely to believe flimsy testimony) or accept that
| innocent lives are a tolerable tradeoff to ensure that
| some people are executed for their crimes. Both groups
| seem more likely to convict to me than a random sample.
|
| Personally, I also feel that it is morally wrong to give
| jurors life and death decision making power. The jurors
| themselves can be deeply harmed by this if they later
| learn that they convicted a defendant on the basis of
| false evidence.
|
| I think the bigger problem though is that the death
| penalty is too abstract. There are many people who
| believe that certain crimes are worthy of execution. I
| don't personally agree, but I accept other's beliefs on
| that point. But even if I grant the righteousness of
| execution in certain cases, it seems nearly impossible to
| implement justly and without heavy costs to society. This
| includes the costs to the people who must carry out the
| execution as well as the exceedingly high financial costs
| relative to other forms of punishment.
| amiga386 wrote:
| It doesn't matter how heinous the murder was if you have
| the wrong suspect.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_DrsVhzbLzU
|
| > Priti Patel: this is about having deterrents...
|
| > Ian Hislop: It's not a deterrent killing the wrong
| people!
| graemep wrote:
| its not a deterrent for multiple other reasons too:
|
| 1. most murderers do not expect to get caught if they are
| acting at all rationally, and do not care if they do not,
| and, 2. unless you execute a high proportion of people
| committing a particular crime any one criminal knows they
| are unlikely to be executed.
|
| I think the Tutu quote at the end of the video.
|
| Most of the rest of the work world has abolished capital
| punishment, and most of the rest uses it very sparingly.
| The big exceptions are China and the Middle East. Good
| company to keep?
| reginald78 wrote:
| This is the second time in as many days I've seen some
| one use the argument that the severity of the crime meant
| the standards for conviction should somehow be less
| stringent. Sadly, I don't get the impression is an
| uncommon way of thinking.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| Horribly, you regularly see this in supreme court cases.
| Some case has the conservatives denying a significant
| right to a criminal suspect and the decision will start
| with a lurid depiction of the crime they were convicted
| of through the denial of some right.
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| Sometimes the crime in case isn't actually that bad, so
| they have to dig for a lurid description of a different
| crime entirely.
| dialup_sounds wrote:
| In your prior comment you say that Asaro was incentivized
| by a reward offered in May 1999, but that doesn't agree
| with waiting for the police to approach her in November.
| mrgoldenbrown wrote:
| The "approach" by the police was essentially an offer to
| either testify and get the reward money and have police
| drop some charges against her, or not testify and face
| the charges herself.
| Bnjoroge wrote:
| not the same thing at all lmao
| sashank_1509 wrote:
| It seems wrong, that the 2 major points of evidence against
| Marcellus are a testimony from his ex and cellmate. I don't trust
| humans, to trust convicting people based on 2 hearsay sources of
| testimony. Maybe this worked in the past when America was smaller
| and the average morality of a person was very high, but now this
| just seems ripe for abuse.
|
| I wouldn't use this evidence to make a decision in an office
| dispute.
| ugh123 wrote:
| Ah, Republicans are the responsible party here. Right to life my
| ass.
| lapestenoire wrote:
| I am very happy when I see The Innocence Project taking on a case
| like this because it tells me they have already worked through
| the backlog of actually innocent people as well as the people who
| might possibly be innocent, and now have worked there way to the
| cases which are 1% flawed but in which the correct perpetrator
| has nevertheless been identified, tried by a jury of his peers,
| convicted, appealed, etc.
| nycticorax wrote:
| Is the transcript of the original court case available online
| somewhere? The oldest thing I'm seeing is
|
| https://law.justia.com/cases/missouri/supreme-court/2003/sc-... ,
|
| which is (I think...) the decision of the state supreme court on
| the appeal. There are several points where it seems like there is
| some dispute about what exactly the evidence is tying Williams to
| the murder, and where the original trial transcript might help
| clarify things.
| 7ero wrote:
| .
| yieldcrv wrote:
| Its wild how these discussions dont factor in who the murderer is
|
| Just out there walking around somewhere
| timwaagh wrote:
| the American justice system is flawed. It's mob justice that was
| only fit for the 1700s when there was nothing better. Or maybe
| there was,I wasn't around. Untrained people can't decide on guilt
| or innocence. They can't judge evidence. They allow themselves to
| be swayed by beauty or likeability to greater extent. They're
| lives are no good, on average. This makes most of them mean and
| vindictive. If they can allow someone to suffer like they have,
| it feels good to them.
|
| I'm not sure whether it's racism. It's the usual explanation for
| this phenomenon. I can understand racism. I don't believe in
| opening the floodgates. it sounds more like plain bloodlust.
| Because blood is what you're going to get if you go on this way.
| euroderf wrote:
| It is evil. The governor is evil. 'Nuf said.
| anon291 wrote:
| Reading the governor's letter it seems clear:
|
| 1. The witness who claimed Williams confessed provided non-
| publicly-available, but known-to-police, details about the case.
| This is very strong evidence that the confession was made to
| them.
|
| 2. The girlfriend's hesitation to go to police (she never asked
| for the reward money) is due to the fact that Williams threatened
| her family, which is a real threat considering his history of
| violence
|
| 3. The prosecution had several other witnesses that were not
| called to the stand to whom Williams told about the murder
|
| 4. Williams not only had Gayle's laptop, but had her husband's
| laptop and had sold it to someone. The police found the laptop
| and the owner identifier Williams as the seller.
|
| 5. Williams not only had her laptop but a bunch of household
| items. Tell me, when have you had several items from a murder
| victim in your car? Williams offers no explanation for where
| these came from.
|
| Look... criminals are not the type to take responsibility for
| their actions. Williams criminal history and jailhouse violence
| indicate that this is not a man who learns from past mistakes, or
| who even think he needed reform of any kind.
| diogenes_atx wrote:
| I was unable to find a "letter" from Missouri Governor Michael
| Parson about this case, but there is a press release from the
| Office of the Governor (url copied below). Here are some of the
| highlights of the Governor's statement to the press:
|
| The Governor's Office offers the following summary of the
| crime: "Marcellus Williams murdered Felicia Gayle on August 11,
| 1998. He burglarized Ms. Gayle's home, ambushed her as she left
| the shower, stabbed her 43 times and left the knife lodged in
| her neck."
|
| Because of the bloody and brutal nature of the crime, the
| police were able to recover DNA evidence at the crime scene.
| However, as the Innocence Project observed, the DNA evidence
| that was left behind by the killer _does not match_ Marcellus
| Williams. The perpetrator left a knife in the victim 's neck,
| but the DNA recovered from the knife - which could have
| conclusively determined who killed the victim - was
| contaminated and destroyed by the state, as noted by the
| Innocence Project.
|
| Yet, the governor's press release completely ignores these
| facts, and then proceeds to deliver an astonishing statement:
| "I also want to add how deeply disturbed we've been about how
| this case has been covered. Mr. Williams' attorneys chose to
| muddy the waters about DNA evidence, claims of which Courts
| have repeatedly rejected. Yet, some media outlets and activist
| groups have continued such claims without so much of a mention
| of the judicial proceedings or an unbiased analysis of the
| facts."
|
| DNA is proven science, and a true "unbiased analysis of the
| facts" would presumably include the critical details that (1)
| none of the DNA evidence recovered from the crime scene matched
| Williams, and (2) the murder weapon was mishandled by state
| investigators, thereby destroying potentially exculpatory
| evidence that could have exonerated Williams.
|
| The other evidence cited by the Governor's Office is all
| circumstantial. Contrary to the Governor's assertions, the
| witnesses who testified against Williams were in fact
| incentivized with reward money, and they did not offer details
| of the crime that were unknown to the public through media
| reports.
|
| In summary, there is no direct evidence connecting Marcellus
| Williams to the crime scene. The real murderer in this case is
| Missouri Governor Mike Parson.
|
| https://governor.mo.gov/press-releases/archive/state-carry-o...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Felicia_Gayle
| anon291 wrote:
| DNA evidence is notoriously iffy. I would not convict / not
| convict someone based purely on that. There's so many
| confounding factors. No one knows whose DNA was left. There's
| no way to know any DNA is 'the killers'. For all we know
| Gayle was having an affair. That doesn't explain the hard
| facts of why her stuff ended up in his car and she died in a
| manner that fits Williams' previous violent attacks.
|
| Look... obviously I can't see he did or did not do it with
| incomplete information. However, it's pretty clear the
| innocence project is wildly manipulating the story. Moreover,
| the innocence project frequently calls out the iffi-ness of
| DNA evidence when it suits them, and are now claiming that we
| should listen only to it.
|
| The truth is that the police recovered some DNA and it
| happened to be a man's they cannot connect. It could be her
| killer. It could not be. It could be a friend; it could be an
| affair partner; who knows. Either way, that man did not have
| all her stuff, and did not confess to the murder.
|
| > DNA is proven science, and a true "unbiased analysis of the
| facts" would
|
| DNA exists sure. but no one knows whose DNA was collected,
| and DNA matching is not 100%.
|
| > none of the DNA evidence recovered from the crime scene
| matched Williams, and (2) the murder weapon was mishandled by
| state investigators, thereby destroying potentially
| exculpatory evidence that could have exonerated Williams.
|
| Why would we expect any of the DNA to match? DNA of all sorts
| of people are everywhere. It doesn't seem there was much
| struggle. There was no rape. Exactly what do you expect to
| find?
|
| Here is what the innocence project says (https://dpic-
| cdn.org/production/legacy/MarcellusWilliamsBoar...):
|
| > The presence on the knife of a male DNA profile is also
| significant and worthy of additional testing and evaluation.
| In briefing, the State argued that the presence of DNA on a
| kitchen knife is unremarkable because anyone in the home
| could have used the knife. However, the State has long
| recognized the power of DNA found on a murder weapon and has
| relied upon such evidence to secure convictions. Here, the
| only male who lived in the home was the victim's husband.
| Additional testing could be performed to develop a profile
| from the husband for comparison to the profile found on the
| knife. Assuming the victim's husband (who is not and never
| was a suspect) is excluded as a match, it is then clear that
| the DNA matches the killer. Yet, law enforcement has never
| conducted such testing.
|
| The innocence project is making the wild claim that the male
| DNA _on the kitchen knife_ is certainly the killers. Let me
| ask you... how many men have you had at a dinner party? The
| idea that their DNA on the murder weapon should be sufficient
| to indict them, while all the other physical evidence linking
| Williams to the murder is not sufficient is... a stretch.
| Under this scheme, Mrs Gayle 's dinner guest from the night
| before is more likely to be the murder culprit than the
| random attacker who just happens to have _a ton_ of her
| personal belongings after she is killed? Come on. Let 's live
| in the real world.
|
| What we do know is that Williams has a track record of
| violence and then not doing anything to address it, while
| blaming others for his crimes.
| spoonfeeder006 wrote:
| Can you verify point #1 from publicly available sources? I.e.
| not relying on the governor's word
| yawpitch wrote:
| I was foreman of a jury on a murder trial once; it's my signature
| on the verdict form that sealed the fate of a man. In an
| extremely real and personal sense, I am directly responsible for
| putting a man in prison, and given his age, health conditions,
| and the sentence that was going to be passed, that means I'm
| directly responsible for ensuring a human being dies in prison.
|
| I ask myself every day if we made the right decision. We passed
| the bar of reasonable doubt, but we did that _entirely_ because
| the prosecutor's office had infinite resources and a homeless
| Black defendant with HIV and addiction had zero resources and an
| obviously less than interested (or prepared) public defender who
| had given up the fight.
|
| If I'd been his lawyer, I'm sure I could have gotten him off, and
| IANAL... I just would have poked at obvious and extremely
| reasonable holes in the prosecutor's story.
|
| Because the prosecutor had nearly infinite resources (victim
| brought significant press attention) they had nearly infinite
| power to keep retrying until the defense was simply overwhelmed.
|
| Don't know a damned thing about this case, but after seeing how
| the sausage that is the law actually plays out and how very
| little anything in a real court resembles TV, I don't think
| anyone should _ever_ ask a juror to pass a death sentence on
| someone else. It's simply impossible to take resource bias out of
| the equation, and doubt that _would_ have been reasonable if it
| had just been brought up by an overworked public defender will
| haunt you... in my case nearly 20 years later.
| TrapLord_Rhodo wrote:
| Am i the only one in favor of capital punishment in this thread?
|
| My mom used to work at state hospital for the criminally insane.
| The stories she would tell me about how these people got in there
| were absolutely brutal. (Canabalism, satanic sacrafices of loved
| ones, all manor of wierd shit.).
|
| Instead of executing these lunatics, they send them to a "State
| Hospital" for rehabilitation. It's not a Prison, but a hospital
| so the conditions are great for the guy who ate his mom. So much
| so that some of the gang members claim 51/51 and say craay shit
| to the jury to get sent to a state hospital instead of prison.
|
| The U.S. spends approximately $75 billion per year on
| incarcerating prisoners... You could build a city, every year for
| that amount.
|
| Someone who commits capital murder, admits to it, does 30 years
| in prison. You have robbed them off all life. They aren't
| rehabilitated, they are just a hardened prison inmate with no
| chance to make it back in the real world so their only option
| alot of the time is to do what you've taught them in prison on
| release. Steal, lie, cheat and do anything you can to try and
| stay alive. So, it would cost approximately $2.43 million to
| imprison one person in California for 30 years. (California costs
| around ~81k per year per prisoner).
|
| Death seems to be so feared nowadays to the point where they can
| justify taking away any sense of freedom, rights and soverignty
| and put you in a small cage for 30 years, but yet the death
| penalty is to far? If i ever get falsely accused of a crime that
| would send me to jail for life i would beg for the death penalty.
| wiether wrote:
| Doesn't the US privatized incarceration so it's basically a
| _free_ market, where shady deals are made to funnel more public
| money to private entities, and many people are incentivized to
| have as many people in prison as possible?
|
| In that case, the cost on citizens for incarceration of people
| shouldn't be taken into account in the discussion around
| capital punishment because it's another issue altogether?
| cxvrfr wrote:
| > Doesn't the US privatized
|
| Isn't that less than 10% of the market (i.e. most prisons are
| not private)
| t-writescode wrote:
| But how many services in prisons, like being able to be in
| a call with loved ones, are private?
| UncleMeat wrote:
| The right way to reduce the cost of incarcerating people is to
| end mass incarceration, not to kill people. Just shooting
| everybody on LWOP in the head won't do nearly as much.
|
| Further, I think that we _should_ have a high expense per
| prisoner. It should cost society something to imprison
| somebody, since crime is in many ways a product of society 's
| systems and choices. A world with mass incarceration _and_ a
| focus on reducing the cost of the prison system is a world that
| basically necessitates abuse.
| JellyBeanThief wrote:
| > If i ever get falsely accused of a crime that would send me
| to jail for life i would beg for the death penalty.
|
| That's your life and your choice, which I think should be
| respected.
| calderarrow wrote:
| I used to be, for most of the same reasons as you. What
| ultimately convinced me was realizing that our judicial system
| can never be 100% perfect, so we would always have a non-zero
| number of innocent people executed as long as capital
| punishment is on the table. To me, I think the cost of keeping
| people incarcerated is worth the cost of accidentally executing
| innocent citizens.
|
| Put a bit more personally: would you support capital punishment
| if you had to pull the trigger, and you would be killed if you
| executed an innocent inmate? Most people I speak with would be
| fine pulling the trigger, but no one I've talked with would be
| okay with taking responsibility for mistakes.
| TrapLord_Rhodo wrote:
| i think you missed my last line. That should answer your
| question. The government can never be perfect, and killing
| and innocent is a tragedy. However, you cannot cripple the
| whole system for this vanishgly small chance or you have an
| equal chance of success across the system. If you keep making
| those compromises, putting systems in place to correct the
| errors of past systems; it quickly becomes a losing game. Put
| more simply, If you lose trust in the system, you can't rely
| on the system to fix it.
| mystified5016 wrote:
| So why not just select random citizens by lottery and
| publicly execute one for every 50 or 100 convicts executed?
|
| You're willing to accept that if the random citizen is
| labeled as guilty even if they're not. If it's acceptable
| for innocent people to be executed, what's the difference
| in having a random death lottery?
| calderarrow wrote:
| Perhaps I misunderstood it, but I read that as you not
| finding the value of avoiding accidental executions as
| worth the cost to avoid them. And if so, then I think
| that's a perfectly valid position. But it's subjective,
| since others may find the value worth it.
|
| I'm curious though: is there an error rate where you would
| feel like capital punishment would be off the table? For
| instance, if 90% of people executed were innocent, would
| you still want it for the 10% who deserve it? I admit that
| if we had a 100% success rate, I would be open to capital
| punishment, so we may actually agree that there's a
| threshold where the system shouldn't be allowed to use that
| as a form of punishment, and only disagree about about the
| percentage.
| moshun wrote:
| This argument always falls flat because those that claim
| state-sanctioned killing of innocent citizens is a
| necessary tragedy, never seem to say that they'd be willing
| to be murdered themselves in that scenario. It's more like
| "Some of you may die, but that's a sacrifice I'm willing to
| make."
| foxyv wrote:
| I used to think that false convictions were rare. In capital
| cases like this one it is close to 4%! That made me think, is
| it worth killing 4 innocent people to avoid having to
| imprison 96 guilty ones for the rest of their life? If I went
| out with a gun and killed 100 people, 4 innocent and 96
| justifiably, I may as well be number 97.
| mystified5016 wrote:
| Another way to frame it:
|
| Assume the justice system _is_ perfect and only guilty people
| are executed. However, by law for every five or ten guilty
| executions, a random innocent civilian is also executed.
|
| That system is obviously abhorrent and unjust. However,
| that's how the system works _right now_. For every N truly
| guilty people executed, there 's a truly innocent person
| executed. The only difference is we justify it by calling
| that person guilty even if they aren't.
| widowlark wrote:
| "Better a thousand innocent men are locked up than one guilty
| man roam free."
|
| To clarify, I vehemently disagree with your post and think that
| the pursuit of innocence is an imperative function of the
| state.
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