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Abolish capital punishment
I'm so tired of being a part of the murder of innocents on a systemic level.
I'm tired of being part of the murder of the guilty on a systemic level. No crime is heinous enough for me to say "Yeah, government, go ahead and murder us".
There are absolutely crimes worthy of removing you from the species, permanently.
But until we have a system that can do it with 100% accuracy it shouldnt be an option.
Blackstone's Ratio is very relevant here, "It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer"
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“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.”
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Brewer has long expressed remorse for the killing and a desire to apologize to Laminack’s family.
“I will never be able to repay or replace the hurt (and) worry (and) pain I caused you. I come to you in true humility and honest heart and ask for your forgiveness,” Brewer wrote in a letter to Laminack’s family that was included in his clemency application to the parole board.
So did he do it then? Because it sounds like they were trying to get him off on a technicality, rather than because he didn't do it and was falsely accused.
You have to show sympathy and remorse to qualify for clemency or parole, so you say you're sorry for the situation and their loss but never that you're at fault.
Absolutely, I can understand why he would say he felt sorry for the family. But saying sorry for the pain he caused is an admission of guilt.
I think the timeline went like this:
- 1990 Brewer (then 19) and his girlfriend attack Laminack, killing him.
- 1991 Brewer is convicted and sentenced to death.
- 2007 Supreme Court overturns the decision because of a technicality on the jurors' instructions.
- 2009 Brewer is re-tried, and again convicted, in part due to expert testimony from Coons.
- 2010 In another trial, Coons' testimony was ruled as "insufficiently reliable".
- Brewer's lawyer then raises an appeal in Texas over Coons' testimony in 2009. Appeals court says "you should've said that in 2009".
- Brewer's lawyers escalate to the Supreme Court, however they decline to hear the case, deferring to the Texas Appeals Court's judgement.
Presumably, Coons' testimony could have been challenged in 2009 in exactly the same way as it was in 2010, but they didn't do this. I'm sure Coons is now seen as an unreliable witness, but he was considered reliable up until 2010.
It was actually the Texas Appeals Court that ruled that Coons was unreliable, however presumably the appeal in which they established that was granted for other reasons than his statement alone. Indeed, this is the 2010 case, there were 25 points in question. While the court ruled that Coons' testimony was unreliable, they still reaffirmed the conviction.
It's something they must do, read clemency pleas they're basically all the same because boards want to see the same thing. Factually not guilty people have said the same thing in clemency letters.
I dunno who exactly is at fault nor did I read that much into it, what I am saying is don't particularly base anything on clemency or parole letters, they're intentionally flawed so they can be used against the subject later, it's holdover slave shit that persists.
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It wasn't a question of whether he committed the crime. The appeal concerned sentencing.
The high court found jurors were not allowed to give sufficient weight to factors that might cause them to impose a life sentence rather than death. Brewer was abused as a child and suffered from mental illness, factors jurors were not allowed to consider, his lawyers argued.
Brewer was again sentenced to death during a new punishment trial in 2009.
Brewer’s lawyers allege that at the resentencing trial, Coons lied and declared, without any scientific basis, that Brewer had no conscience and would be a future danger, even though Brewer did not have a history of violence while in prison.
This is the 2010 trial in which Coons was declared unreliable: https://law.justia.com/cases/texas/court-of-criminal-appeals/2010/20229.html
In that appeal, they considered 25 points. While they agreed with points 3 and 4 regarding Coons' testimony, they still upheld the conviction and death sentence. It was the same Texas Court of Appeals that considered that hearing as well as Brewer's request for appeal.
Brewer and his lawyer were trying to get an appeal based on Coons' statement, but this almost certainly wouldn't be enough to change the sentencing, based on their 2010 ruling. I haven't dug up Brewer's appeal to see if there were any other reasons, but the fact that they were focusing on this one suggests that there wasn't much else they could have argued.
No, he was trying to say he would have been sentenced to life instead of death if the jury hadn't heard certain expert testimony.
I would guess the testimony would be along the lines of blood splatter or some other pseudoscientific forensics where the expert might say the crime was particularly vicious.
That didn't matter in the death sentence appeal where the court ruled the testimony as unreliable: https://law.justia.com/cases/texas/court-of-criminal-appeals/2010/20229.html
They ruled that the testimony was unreliable, but still let the sentence stand. If all Brewer was arguing was the testimony, then the court would have reached the same conclusion.
Barbaric
The thumbnail looks like a set from a Victorian horror film
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It's ok, they can just unexecute him later when new evidence comes to light, or an appeal finds that a mistake was made.
It is better to punish too many than too few, because then you have a higher degree of probability of getting the right guy! Even if it's not "your" guy, you also increase the chance of killing someone who committed a different crime and happened to get away with it. This way, statistically, we will be a safe and healthy society, on average. It's simple maths, people. If for every caught criminal we also punish two or three random citizens, just imagine, we would all keep each other in check and be happy.
We should also institute governmental snitch centrals, and letting people starve to death in cages hung outside the city gates, but those are optional.
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When Cameron Willingham was wrongfully evening, Rick Perry changed out the chair and 2 other Members of of the forensic science commission 2 days before they were going to hold a meeting to share their findings that it was a bad kill.
15 minutes, fuck. It's such a bullshit and simply meant to torture, whatever they claim. There are enough methods to kill quick and painless but no, that would not satisfy the people watching. Animals.
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The inmate was pronounced dead at 6:39 p.m. local time, 15 minutes after the chemicals began flowing.
15 MINUTES?!
A run of the mill school shooter could kill a whole high school in that time and with less agony.
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Surely, the life begins at birth people will mourne say this is a travesty
Anyone who believes in the death penalty is a moron. That’s my final answer.
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this post was submitted on 10 Nov 2023
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