>"We started asking people for some money so we could get some more wine and one thing led to another..."
>He trails off. But he admits the night ended in a stabbing spree in which he was involved, violence which left two people dead and six injured.
He goes on to say that although he admits to stabbing someone, the person survived, so he didn't murder anyone.
This is not saintly behavior but also not worthy of 68 years in prison.
And yeah, it's conceivable that he was out doing this with people he didn't know very well, and that nobody expected or wanted a knife fight to break out.
You are seriously downplaying what is described in the article as a "stabbing spree" with 8 different victims, 2 of them killed.
And that some participants were escalating more than others, and it not to have been a "gang" conspiracy?
This is I think what I am complaining about. So eager to see perpetrators as irredeemable villains, rather than possibly at a wrong place at a wrong time, with the wrong company, and/or they just messed up. There's often a racial thing at the root of that too.
Don't get me wrong, the event sounds like a tragedy. But so is spending 68 years in jail for a 15 year old's tragic mistake. And make no mistake, a white person who did the exact same thing or worse would get off easier.
You seem to be so sure that Mr. Ligon was just a victim drawn into this situation but for all you know he could be a completely cold-hearted killer.
As someone with a friend who was stabbed to death, I personally am glad to live in a society where stabbing people is more gravely punished than a *tragic mistake*.
It wasn't a single incident/moment in time.
Dig a little deeper. These articles don't like to focus on the negative which is why they haven't even named the 2 dead innocent victims(Charles Pitts and Jackson Hamm,):
https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/4604687/com-v-ligon-j/
> Appellant and four others imbibed wine and, over the course of approximately two hours, proceeded to rob and stab eight people, killing Jackson Hamm and Charles Pitts. When Appellant was arrested that night, he was carrying a knife sheath on his person. A knife was recovered from the patrol car where Appellant had been sitting.
edit: easy enough to find.
https://www.tampabay.com/news/hillsborough/2019/12/16/robber...
https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/missouri/articles/20...
He says himself he has no friends inside or out and that he was better off in prison... Which also means society was better off.
Citation needed.
There were continuous tough on crime efforts throughout (and beyond) the very long “crime wave” period, but there’s very little evidence that they has any impact on turning things around. Better explanations are the demographic bugle aging out of the age range that drives most crime, the lead-crime link, and the legalized abortion crime effect.
[1] www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/06/19/remembering-the-murder-you-didnt-commit
He admitted to murdering them. (Which is what a guilty plea fundamentally is.)
Isn't the accused sometimes advised to plead guilty (regardless of the truth of the matter) because he has little chance of winning a plea of innocence? Or is that just in fiction?
>he has since accepted in an interview with US broadcaster CBS that he stabbed someone who survived
>”I didn't murder anybody."
I wonder if there’s some very simple investigative work that took place, but the article doesn’t mention it, as the author attempts to portray the convicted murder in a way that would foster empathy.
For instance, did the wounds suggest more than one knife was used? If not, that would mean they were handing the knife off to each other. It would be pretty unrealistic that a group of inebriated youngsters could rack up 8 stabbings and 2 murders with 1 knife before the streets were completely cleared and the police were on the scene.
As he’s been convicted, he’s a murderer unless proven otherwise, and deserves his original sentence.
Maybe you don’t think he deserves his punishment. I certainly do. The type of person who would go on a stabbing spree for wine money is not the kind of person who has any place in society I want to live.
A childs reasoning would more likely follow this kind of path: Child wants alcohol->storekeeper has alcohol->child capable of coercion by force (ie stabbing)—>child gets alcohol from storekeeper
However, instead he did this: Young man wants alcohol->storekeeper has alcohol—>alcohol costs money that young man does not have—>innocent passerby’s have money—> young man capable of coercion by force (ie stabbing)—>young man stabs innocent passerby’s for their money—>Evaluate whether amount stolen is enough for alcohol, if not, repeat previous steps, if so—->young man gets alcohol from storekeeper
Good decisions are not proof of brain development, however complex ones are. Given the evidence I would say he was rightly judged as an adult.
Life without parole seems like it should be reserved for those who are beyond saving. Not sure a 15 year old boy would classify as such. It all depends on your view of retribution vs rehabilitation though.
Intentionally misconstruing what others say is something best left for Reddit.
I find that leftist wokes tend to live in their own bubble. They are painfully reminded of it when there is a survey about the death penalty. Luckily the justice system doesn't operate on the whims of the people like in that story of Jesus' trial.
My position is that no 15 year old deserves a life sentence _without parole_. Are there 15 year olds who commit crimes that truly reflect their irredeemable nature? Perhaps. I expect they are in the minority though, and that's the whole point of a parole board (as flawed a system as that is).
To your point about different time and place, yes, but that’s the system: the jury you get, absent a mistrial, is the jury you get and their opinion is what decides what you deserve by definition (absent new evidence, appeals, etc, within the confines of sentencing regulation, etc.).
Perhaps what you’re after is that there’s no universally objective standard of what a person deserves for their actions, given all the myriad influences and conditions that lead to a particular moment in a person’s life, and which may lessen that persons agency. Therefore the judgement of society is imperfect in the sense that it cannot adequately grasp all these attributes, and may give attributes differing weight based on something as small as whether their eggs were over cooked that morning. So for a person to use the word “deserves” with authority is flawed because a person or people cannot render a perfectly objective judgement.
I think you’ll find that this is an argument as old as time, but whether by birth or immigration, people living in a system operate by its rules, and the word “deserve” reflects the authority of a society to bring down punishment on scofflaws. Like when I tell you something is “cold” we need not debate the true principle of what cold means, you assume to context. So should you assume context for the word “deserves”. Society has never achieved perfection in balancing agency and justice but herein lies a predictable truism - if you run around with a band stabbing others so severely that some die and by luck some don’t, society will determine ya dun f’d up.
It was adopted directly from the British system; Americans had some recent experience with and anger about being subjected to fairly novel (at least in their breadth of application in the colonies) exceptions to the norm of trial by jury and the guarantee reflected a reaction against that experience, but trial by jury wasn’t an American innovation.
Having a set, non-nebulous constitution at all, was unique but the claim that trial by jury “ a pretty unique thing about the American system of checks and balances” is false, it was a well-established basic right in the common law system and the deprivation of it in the colonial administration was a fundamental grievance of the American independence movement not because they had some novel ideas about basic right but because they sought it as a deprivation of the rights they saw themselves entitled to in the British common law tradition.
How was France doing with TbJ? How about Japan? China? Russia? Shall we go through the list of countries in the late 18th century to do this by hand? Tally them up and see how many had a guaranteed right to TbJ for criminal offenses by their citizens?
No, the statement I made holds, and you’ll find that by looking at how other countries adjudicated criminal offenses at the time (not just England). Guaranteed TbJ was the exception, not the rule.
My main point is that in a democracy one shouldn't take the law that exists in a particular place and time as some absolute that cannot be questioned because those laws can and do change through political action, as has recently been happening with drug laws and mandatory sentences for drug crimes.
I'm not saying he doesn't deserve punishment but that seems like a very long amount of time to sentence a minor.
So life for multiple murder by a 15 year old doesn’t strike up my curiosity for optimizing the sentencing. Unless there’s lots more info. This article didn’t provide any and since the journalist would likely research to make a good article, I expect there’s not any compelling narrative.
You can die (so we don’t have to worry about your exposure to society) or you can stay in this institution (so we don’t have to worry about you). What do you prefer? ..aaand arguably you can revisit the decision on your own accord later if you choose the latter.
“Time head all wounds” refers to the lessening sense of gravity of experiences over time. This is a function of memory and the healing power of forgetfulness. Life sentences are therefore liable to re-evaluation and pity by their nature, whereas if death was meted out as the sentence, that too would be forgotten in time. I find that interesting, and perhaps it says that we should not trust such emotions in either direction (for or against a punishment) when figuring out how to manage people who systemically murder others.