Comment by yellowapple | Hacker News Reader

Comment by yellowapple | Hacker News Reader

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> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felony_murder_and_the_death_pe.... There are quite a few under-18 cases.

Per the article: "No one was struck or killed in the shooting."

So again, [citation needed] about people committing the "exact same" crime being on death row, given that the crime described in the article is far below the bar necessary to warrant capital punishment.

> let me state that I find it incredible that many people such as yourself believe that the CEO of a multimillion dollar company, who participated in a violent hate crime and avoided the consequences of his actions due to a sympathetic court and typo, is the victim in this whole affair.

And let me state that I find it incredible that many people such as yourself believe that people (especially teenagers) can't be victims of indoctrination, can't possibly feel genuine remorse for their mistakes as teenagers, and must be deprived of their rights forever because of those mistakes. I don't give the slightest sliver of a damn whether he's a CEO or a cashier. Morality is morality.

Comparing a crime that resulted in zero injuries or deaths to two men beating someone to death face-to-face is nonsensical. We can possibly argue intent (i.e. did Patton et. al. intend to actually kill people inside the synagogue), but it should be entirely unsurprising that someone who neither injured or killed someone went relatively unpunished due to said lack of injury or death, especially given that he was willing to plead guilty and testify against the other perpetrators.

Patton still did a shitty thing, but we have every indication that in the 30 years since then he's turned his life around and is genuine in his remorse. If there was evidence he continued to fraternize with skinheads even after that trial, especially recently, then by all means it's reasonable to be skeptical, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

> And let me state that I find it incredible that many people such as yourself believe that people (especially teenagers) can't be victims of indoctrination, can't possibly feel genuine remorse for their mistakes as teenagers, and must be deprived of their rights forever because of those mistakes.

If you are going to continue to attack a complete straw man of my arguments, I’m not sure how productive continuing this chain will be.

Your entire argument is predicated on 1) Damien, at almost 18 years of age, having absolutely no culpability for his actions, and 2) that he has shown genuine remorse for his actions, despite receiving essentially no punishment for a premeditated murder attempt and having shown no signs of remorse until he was asked to comment on the story. In other words, an entirely speculative argument that relies on your own personal character projections.

I would encourage you to extend the same level of generosity and charitableness you seem to show Damien Patton to the next person who challenges your worldview.

> If you are going to continue to attack a complete straw man of my arguments

It would be a strawman if the arguments against which I'm arguing were of my construction, but they don't seem to be.

> Your entire argument is predicated on 1) Damien, at almost 18 years of age, having absolutely no culpability for his actions, and 2) that he has shown genuine remorse for his actions, despite receiving essentially no punishment for a premeditated murder attempt and having shown no signs of remorse until he was asked to comment on the story.

Meanwhile, your entire argument appears to be predicated on 1) Damien, at less than 18 years of age and therefore legally and (arguably) psychologically a child, was somehow a perfectly rational actor with unquestionable culpability for his actions and was perfectly able to resist manipulation (which began, mind you, at 15, if not earlier) by adults wanting to use him as a tool for their hateful agendas, and 2) that he should be considered guilty of continued antisemitic beliefs/associations until proven innocent.

I won't pretend to know what that says about your personal character projections, but your argument is visibly just as speculative. Neither of us have enough information to judge that aspect of his character. Unlike you, apparently, I prefer forgiveness and the presumption of innocence in the absence of evidence to the contrary.

That's not to say that I don't judge him for being complicit in other immoralities, though (namely: being a current perpetrator of and accomplice to an unethical and likely-Constitutionally-illegal surveillance state, and his own resulting perpetration of such a state's implicit guilt-until-proven-innocence attitude).

> I would encourage you to extend the same level of generosity and charitableness you seem to show Damien Patton to the next person who challenges your worldview.

Like I said: I don't care who he is or how successful he became after apparently turning his life around. I just care that he apparently turned his life around and stopped associating with violently-antisemitic groups. If you have evidence indicating that he did not, then by all means present it and I'll gladly reassess.

And this is a standard I apply to all humans universally (both in theory and - as I grow older and hopefully more mature - increasingly in practice). I haven't exactly kept my attitudes and beliefs and opinions around rehabilitation-over-retribution and its impact on recidivism much of a secret over the years, whether here on HN and elsewhere on the World Wide Web.

I've given the benefit of the doubt to people who have done worse, specifically because I have the self-awareness to understand that people can and do change on the scale of decades (I know I've changed a lot in just one).

> I’m not sure how productive continuing this chain will be.

Neither am I.

I wonder if you and the rest of these commenters extend the same amount of compassion to the hundreds of thousands of non violent people stuck in prison that you do to the multimillionaire CEO of a state surveillance company. Someone who literally got away with shooting up a place of worship.

And if you do, great. Lets work towards fixing the mass incarceration problem in our country. That way, many more people can be given the same second chance that allowed Patton to attain a material wealth that vastly surpasses the overwhelming majority of humans on the planet.

> I wonder if you and the rest of these commenters extend the same amount of compassion to the hundreds of thousands of non violent people stuck in prison

Yes, I do, which is exactly why I'd much prefer we work against that issue instead of advocating for making the problem worse.

The American justice system has a chronic issue of prioritizing retribution over rehabilitation, and while I'm thankful to not have been a victim of that myself, I also recognize full well that I'm one of the lucky ones, and that millions of Americans (whether currently incarcerated, or having already "done the time" but still effectively-permanently handicapped from being productive members of society due to having a criminal record) are not so fortunate.

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