The nation’s oldest juvenile lifer, Joe Ligon, left prison after 68 years
inquirer.com
inquirer.com
I have a slightly unpopular stance that death penalty is appropriate if there is overwhelming evidence of an unrepentant killer. I don't see any value in keeping them around in prison, especially if they will continue to have a negative influence on peers in prison for decades.
But other than that, I think even life is inappropriate in most cases, and especially for teens who don't really understand the impact of their actions.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Interstate_75_rock-throwi...
If you falsely imprison somebody, even though you can't give them the time back, you can at least give them their freedom for the time they have left, and enough compensation to set them up for a decent life.
Certainly imprisoning a juvenile for a whole life term does seem to me the very definition of cruel and unusual, and especially if they weren't directly responsible for any murders.
It's an odd contradiction to me that people who support the death penalty are mostly not ok with the state using, for example, punitive rape as a punishment, but killing is somehow okay, if the crime is severe enough.
The fact that it is regarded by some as an acceptable punitive measure carried out by the state, whereas other, lesser crimes against human beings are deemed "off limits" for such purposes, seems to me to expose an inherent contradiction. To avoid the contradiction, either both should be acceptable, or neither.
Presently there seems to be a slight majority consensus on Earth that the correct answer is "neither", with the overall trend suggesting that the rest of the planet will get there in another couple hundred years.
I, too, am not sure that I'd prefer life in prison over death, but in practice it takes decades to execute a convicted prisoner in the US, and since you're considered a particularly dangerous prisoner (since you have nothing to lose) you're held in particularly isolated and unpleasant conditions during those decades. If I thought I was going to get the death penalty I might prefer to just blow my brains out quickly and easily before they have a chance to slap the handcuffs on.
I can't be arsed to fact-check it, but I'm pretty sure I've read that death row inmates are more likely to die of natural causes while awaiting execution than they are to actually be executed - that's how long the legal process waits.
Norway doesn't even have a statutory penalty of "life without parole" except for military offences. The maximum prison sentence it's possible to receive in 30 years - although it's still possibly in practice to be imprisoned for longer, because your release after 30 years is conditional and the sentence may be extended. Even Anders Breivik, the terrorist who killed 77 people in 2011, didn't get a "life sentence" as that term would be understand in the US.
And even the reduced cost associated with the death penalty is arguable, as many of those sentenced remain on death row for quite a while.
Excessively harsh for a _white kid_. Ligon getting life without parole in 1953 is not at all shocking. Ligon is just lucky that a white girl wasn't involved or he would've gotten the chair.
Teenage black boys are still having their lives disposed of in 2021 because they dared to be dumb teenage boys while black.
It says a lot that you don't acknowledge any systemic connection between these. Sure, rich people with their idea-implants can be referenced collectively. Society making you tired, also a reasonable grouping. But implying that white people have been visiting injustice on black people, including having intentionally kept them poor? How dare you, sir.
https://www.ussc.gov/research/research-reports/demographic-d...
Outright, publicly known racists get protection of judicial immunity, and only near impossible judicial impeachment can do anything about them.
What is the solution?
But step one is to acknowledge that systemic racism exists in the first place. Half of the voters in the country explicitly deny the existence of systemic racism and the need to change anything at all.
"Democrats, liberals, Americans under the age of 50 and those who score low on the racial resentment scale are all far more likely than Republicans, conservatives, Americans older than age 50, and those scoring high in racial resentment to think that Blacks are treated less fairly than whites by the police."
I see that 48% of American adults view it as not a problem or a problem in the other direction. Granted this is only a 1000 person study based on subjective experience. I wonder if they have larger studies, or any studies on objective evaluation[0] of if someone was treated differently based on race. I know I've been treated poorly by police but I don't believe race was a factor.
[0] seems like the 20% harsher sentencing could be an indication, but I'll have to look at that more
It's a great book, with copious references and research behind it.
Bryan Stevenson's book 'Just Mercy' is also well worth reading, and directly relevant to this discussion. Stevenson was the lead in the supreme court case that led to death and LWOP being off limits for juveniles.
I've had a similar experience with a magistrate who was a former cop and retired police chief. He was biased the entire time, violated due process, and made false claims. The complaint is still ongoing. I doubt it will result in much, but it could be useful for future civil cases.
You can't have a review board, or impeachment do anything with a judge with 100% black prosecution record just because it is such.
That's the paradox. Either you subject judiciary to political judgement, or you can't do anything about judges who are not politically impartial.
It’s horribly cruel, but as our disgusting Supreme Court has declared of similar violations of human life, it is “not unusual”, and so it still stands and it still is done.
It is excessively harsh, and the only way we’re ever going to fix it is by calling our representatives and calling out our representatives to change this.
On the other hand you are right in one respect - they're not remotely similar in that one boy was white and the other black. I know we're not going to "solve" racism in the comments section of HN but I think it's important to confront the fact that race is an overwhelming factor in how these cases play out.
There’s more than enough cases that legitimately make the case for racial sentencing discrimination. Quoting this ridiculously politicized case will only harm the cause by providing ammunition to the other side.
I mean, I personally think that 68 years in prison for almost anything is a horribly abusive practice. Acceptable for some few instances of violent crime. But since I also believe that killing in self-defense can sometimes be justified with no punishment, it’s not a very good point to use for discussing.
They will have to decide that he A) He used only the force necessary to prevent or terminate interference with his person. And B) He reasonably believed that such force was necessary to prevent imminent death or great bodily harm to himself.
He shouldn't have been there in the first place, and there shouldn't have been any incentive for anyone else to be either. The fact that there was a remotely plausible rationale for a vigilante policing force in the first place is just insane. That the police didn't roll up and say "go home, this is our job" is ridiculous. Then, of course, pouring fuel on the fire, the whole situation attracts a lot of people who want to commit violence - maybe including Rittenhouse himself. None of this should happen in a first-world country, and it's not something that will be solved with a murder trial. Regardless of its outcome.
There seem to be deep and persistent currents in American society that form the basis for events like these, and every honest assessment and candid dialouge attempting to fix them is a good thing. It might be off topic to a degree, but people getting life sentences willy-nilly is definitely part of the same web of causal relationships.
Most of the time under those circumstances, the question of self defense isn't going to enter into the following discussion.
At the same time, sentencing a 15-year old kid (who hasn't even committed murder) to life in prison and not reconsidering it so far into the 21st century - that's cruel and unusual punishment. Boggles my mind.
Of course we're dealing with hypotheticals so people will play dumb and either pretend I'm being absurd or just say they'd treat both the same because that's the easy way out. But I think deep down we all know the truth.
Said my lawyer when I had to deal with stacked charges leading to years of incarceration for the mildest of subjective crimes.
Why? So they could have me plead guilty.
Never happened. Fuck the system.
97%!
It would be interesting to understand better why. My theory is that part of it is to do with rising standards of criminal trials. IIRC the average murderer went from arrest to dead in something like a month, 1950s. Most had no appeals. Certainly no expert witnesses to explain the DNA evidence to the jury. Today the default seems to be decades of appeals, thousands of hours of lawyer-time. That doesn't scale.
what, like someone saying "I'm glad they're dead"? I mean if the rule was that only unrepentant killers were executed everyone would do their best to appear repentant - unless of course they were crazy or suicidal or something, in which case executing someone like that would not seem that gre3at.
My childhood friend got hooked on drugs, broke into some empty houses when no one was home and stole some electronics. He got 15 years. It was his first offense.
The problem with that is that it is impossible to tell the difference between an unrepentant killer and a falsely convicted innocent who will not admit to something they didn't do.
This isn't an unreasonable thought, but (a) I would prefer to have a bright-line international rule that that killing prisoners is always unacceptable to make it easier to condemn countries that use it to violate human rights and (b) in the American system, the death penalty inevitably leads to more time and expensive of appeals, more publicity for the convict, and more expensive than life sentences.
And I agree that life sentences are really just death by another, longer means. I would also reserve them for the most extreme cases, where you are really convinced that someone will never be able to live in society again without causing serious harm. There are definitely some cases out there that meet that, but many nevertheless tragic cases that don't. Even them I'm not sure that there is any need for "life without" as the whole purpose of a parole board is to make these decisions--if the individual continues to behave poorly in prison and does not accept responsibility, he will not get parole.
With the cost of execution these days, I'd like to see life with hard labor used more as a replacement. You know, earn your keep.
Did you really need to look at the article to know he was black?
https://www.gazetadopovo.com.br/wiseup-news/brazils-greatest...
Absolutely not.
Even if the services for ex-cons are not perfect, it's no reason to continue someone's incarceration and detention if they have served the time they have been sentenced to, and have been granted proper legal release from custody.
He did watch TV so he isn't entirely out of the loop and will probably learn how to navigate today's world with a smartphone and the internet in a couple months/years. Given an option, I think staying outside of prison is better than staying inside for everyone.
My uncle has been in prison for nearly 40 years, and got paroled at the age of 75. Life outside was terrifying, bewildering, and harsh. At 75, with a felony conviction, no recent work experience, he's got no prospects for legitimate employment. No pension, little to no social security, he was completely overwhelmed. He made a minor mistake and violated the terms of his parole. Despite covid sweeping through his prison, he feels safer inside than out. I wouldn't generalize his story to everybody, but I understand that this isn't uncommon.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment_in_the_Unit...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment_in_the_Unit...
Further, if we were talking about another country being cruel to its citizens, we would name and shame them.
When an American goes and violates lots of laws in China or Japan and gets thrown in jail, the country name is plastered all over the post.
Plenty of other countries put people in jail for life from a young age. Some countries are so non-transparent you could never discover a fact like this. Doesn't make what happened to this person right by any means but using it as a cudgel to tear down the US is pretty cowardly IMO.
This implies the choice to migrate to the US is rational and well researched, weighted against other nice places like Luxemburg, Sweden, Switzerland. In practice, it's just the largest Western country, so gets you the most blanket quantity of Western opportunity per unit of migration hassle.
The US has enormous problems, there are many downsides to American life, especially if you're poor, black, or both, and there are many ways in which the US lags behind comparable Western countries.
There are also many fantastic things about the US and things it does very well compared to most if not all other countries, and a very large number of Americans live happy, prosperous lives as a result of what America has to offer. There are lots of good reasons why someone would want to migrate to the US. I'd love to migrate to the US, or at least live there for a few years, even though I know I wouldn't like certain things about it compared to Europe.
America is neither uniquely virtuous, nor uniquely evil.
You're reading quite a bit into a simple observation, shouldn't you be criticizing those who didn't ask for clarification instead?