Missouri May Have Killed an Innocent Man Tonight

[Mazderati]

“They will do it even though the prosecutor doesn’t want him to be executed, the jurors who sentenced him to death don’t want him executed and the victims themselves don’t want him to be executed. We have a system that values finality over fairness, and this is the result that we will get from that.”

[J. Barron DeJong]

Yeah, that’s some kind of fucked up.

Great that the six conservative justices decided to uphold the ‘rule of law’.

Gotta show you’re tough on crime by executing an innocent man, so that you don’t lose a primary challenge:

https://x.com/newblackman/status/1838734580922171851?s=46&t=3lUaICPxsR_NcRK2VkCfkg

[halliday]

Let's kill people who kill people to prove that killing people is wrong. I remember something about a guy who was put to death by lethal injection and the cocktail didn't kill him so after that fiasco they made him wait for the state to try it again. As a country we do a lot of things right, but this is not one of them.

[singlesline]

Fun fact:

The same governor that wouldn't stop this execution also pardoned a drunk driver a few months ago.

A drunk driver who gave a 5 year old girl a serious brain injury, had a prior road rage conviction that involved pointing a gun at someone (and involved drug charges and unlicensed firearm charges), AND only had a 3 year sentence that was already halfway over.

Guess which inmate was a white guy from a wealthy family?

[old goat]

I grew up in Michigan, which has never had the death penalty, which is fine with me. There is no correlation between the death penalty and state murder rates.

[Dantheman]

We're up to 200 people exonerated from death row since 1973: https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/database/innocence

So, yeah, we've killed a lot of innocent people and will continue to do so as long as the death penalty exists.

[garyfromterrace]

Fun fact:

The same governor that wouldn't stop this execution also pardoned a drunk driver a few months ago.

A drunk driver who gave a 5 year old girl a serious brain injury, had a prior road rage conviction that involved pointing a gun at someone (and involved drug charges and unlicensed firearm charges), AND only had a 3 year sentence that was already halfway over.

Guess which inmate was a white guy from a wealthy family?

What a fucking piece of shit. And people elect this garbage? I'd be pissed if that douche nozzle was judging stuff in my town.

[Ted Striker]

...we've killed a lot of innocent people and will continue to do so as long as the death penalty exists.

100% this. State executions are barbaric. No country should engage in it - especially not a supposedly first world one.

[DBdude]

the people demand retribution. if you have been locked up till you are fifty, you are aren't a threat. the system just beats it out of you. prison is grueling and in many ways barbaric. some people need to be warehoused away for many years, but a death sentence isn't punishment.

[MultiVerse]

We shouldn't have a death penalty. But assuming I'm wrong, if the state is going to execute people then the state needs to fund a much better legal defense in capital cases. Most people in prison deserve to be there to protect society from people who do horrible things. Most, not all, innocence claims are fake. Few will ever admit to committing murder. Most people on death row are not innocent.

The way we currently decide after trial innocence is narrowly confined to last minute newly introduced evidence. Evidence that in a lot cases would have been introduced by a competent defense with enough resources to do the work. Specialized competent capital defense trial work is expensive and mostly done at late-stage appeals. Innocence arguments however are best litigated at initial trial, not with all too often phony after trial procedures. Unfortunately, trial inequities are a persistent systematic problem.

[old goat]

The way we currently decide after trial innocence is narrowly confined to last minute newly introduced evidence. Evidence that in a lot cases would have been introduced by a competent defense with enough resources to do the work. Specialized competent capital defense trial work is expensive and mostly done at late-stage appeals. Innocence arguments however are best litigated at initial trial, not with all too often phony after trial procedures. Unfortunately, trial inequities are a persistent systematic problem.

The same can be said for criminal cases in general.