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Notes -
Yesterday a man named Marcellus Williams was executed via lethal injection in Missouri. He was convicted of the murder of a local journalist. The main points of the case are that
a) no forensic evidence at the scene (the victim's house) connected him to the crime; DNA fragments on the murder weapon (a butcher's knife from the kitchen) were not his; a bloody footprint was not the same shoe size he wore.
b) He sold a laptop taken from the house to someone else;
c) Two people, a former jailmate and ex girlfriend, both told police that he had confessed to the murder. However, they had a financial incentive for doing so.
On balance it seems fairly likely that he did it; being a career criminal, having two unrelated people tell the cops you did it, and having possession of an item from the crime scene is pretty damning. It also can't be that hard to avoid leaving behind forensic evidence - use gloves, shave your head or wear a balaclava, even deliberately wear differently sized shoes. But when talking about the death penalty, we must take the 'reasonable doubt' thing extra seriously. So what do you think mottizens?
The whole case seems like a Toxoplasma of Rage classic. A scumbag whose guilt for the murder is near certain, but at the same time procedural errors in convictions get guilty people off all the time, or at least delayed. It's a surprise that the anti-death penalty people lost on this one as they rarely seem to take such high profile defeats. But for me the big question is why this awful, guilty murderer has been made a cause celebre. Sure, I just referenced toxoplasma of rage, but that only explains public attention. Why did the innocence project and other anti-death penalty campaigners choose this case to focus on? It's clearly going to be a disaster if anyone pays the slightest bit of attention!
Because they sympathize with murderers far more than the murdered.
Remember, these are the same people who thought rittenhouse should have let himself be beaten and shot rather than have the gall to defend himself, all because he decided that rioting and looting were wrong
Are they, though?
Rittenhouse haters insisted he was a murderer, and that didn’t earn him any sympathy.
The "crime is good" crowd makes an exception for self-defense, which is only valid when used against cops.
There is no “crime is good” crowd. There’s a “crime is better than this” crowd, which is disgusted with the state of policing.
Said group assumed Rittenhouse was a provocateur looking to play cop. They probably also assume the state cuts corners and commits injustices in cases like this one. Neither of these is an endorsement of crime.
I remain unconvinced that morally or practically the distinction matters, though in tone-policing forums such as this it may be worth distinguishing.
Criminals are a "crime is good" crowd, including Seth Rogan and Chesea Boudin's entire extended family.
I do have a hard time accepting the positions of people who are thoroughly insulated from the consequences of their beliefs or immune to the logical conclusions of their beliefs.
I believe it's Chesa Boudin.
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