- cross-posted to:
- news@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- news@lemmy.world
Summary
President Joe Biden commuted the sentences of 37 federal death row inmates to life without parole, sparing all but three convicted of high-profile mass killings.
Biden framed the decision as a moral stance against federal executions, citing his legal background and belief in the dignity of human life.
Donald Trump criticized the move as senseless, vowing to reinstate the death penalty.
Reactions were mixed: some victims’ families condemned Biden, while others supported his decision. Human rights groups praised it as a significant step against capital punishment.
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Good conservative Christian’s LOVE killing!
I can’t help but wonder if this is an assignment to “clear the wait list” for if/when Mangione gets convicted? I don’t quite understand the system but it seems many people on death row spend so many years waiting for the bureaucratic processes to complete before their lives are taken.
The processes that need to complete have very little to do with other death row inmates, so this doesn’t particularly make much sense.
Death penalty cases ostensibly get the most “due process”, as you would expect, and the time is spent in appeals etc. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a barbaric system, we handle it terribly, and I’d say we routinely execute innocent people. But I can’t think of any way this clemency will help them kill Mangione much more quickly.
He still has one shot! No, sorry, I mean he has 3 shots remaining!
He could do the George Carling thing… Upside down nailed to the cross and or launched from a Canon point blank on to a very thick concrete wall. And televise it.
Its just a suggesting to make the best of things.
One of the three he didn’t pardon was Dylann Roof. I thought they fried his ass already, had no idea he was still alive.
I did wonder why the three that weren’t spared were left to die… and I still kinda do.
Also I’m kinda surprised Trump didn’t pardon Dylann Roof.
Because the media now mostly mentions the three bastards who didn’t have their sentences commuted, instead of the 37 that did. Changes the focus. Now people agree with Biden not to commute these sentences, and don’t think much more about the ones that were commuted.
It’s odd when you think about it. Republicans don’t want abortion but whole heartedly support executions. Democrats are against executions but whole heartedly support abortion. Welcome to America.
It’s more odd to me that the ones who believe in original sin and forgiveness for everything are the ones anti-abortion and pro-execution.
What sits particularly strange to me is democrats that are against capital execution, but for vigilante killings. Any argument to be made against capital execution is a hundredfold true for vigilante execution.
Class comrades are class comrades.
If you really don’t understand why, then I would point you to a quote from Warren Buffet.
“There’s class war alright and it’s my class, the rich, that are waging the war and winning it.”
Now class apologists will claim that WB was trying to foster class solidarity, but that fails to hold water under the scrutiny of his actions. Since, quite literally, the moment that he heard that one of his granddaughters had the temerity to give an interview to one of the Johnson & Johnson kids, he disowned her and hasn’t allowed her back in the last ≈ decade and a half, which seems to have had the desired effect since he has another dozen and a half children and grandchildren, and no one in that family has appeared on camera critical of the system since then.
Source: The 1% documentary by said J&J heir
Edit: Happy Holidays everyone. Remember that the good that you do for your local communities will spread farther than you’ll ever know.
Your reply isn’t really relevant to what they said. You can feel solidarity with Luigi and still think the murder was morally wrong and shouldn’t be celebrated.
While I’m overall glad about this, leaving 3 unpardoned inmates really corrupts the “moral stance against federal executions” justification and makes it seem like he is in favor of capital punishment but only for people he thinks deserve it. It also makes it seem like he believes it’s his decision to decide who gets to live and that rubs me the wrong way.
Even the most die-hard anti-death-penalty believer has their limits. It may take Hitler-level atrocities to get there, or maybe even worse. But everyone has their own line in the sand where even they will say “If there was ever a case in favor of the death penalty, this is that case.” That line is in a completely different place for everybody.
It also makes it seem like he believes it’s his decision to decide who gets to live and that rubs me the wrong way.
Since the President has final pardon power, he actually does get to decide who gets to live. It’s a power granted to him by the Constitution.
I have no such limits. Death, as a penalty, is always unjust because humans do not have free will. Every action, every thought, has some biological, or neurochemical, or material basis for it’s happening. Inflicting any form of punishment or suffering on the qualia, the conscious experience of someone, for the illusion of choice we believe to have, is actually just inflicting suffering on innocent beings, because we have no choice.
Now, that’s not too say I’m anti-violence. But I firmly believe that every piece of violence should be evaluated as if it was being done against an innocent person. Things like “guilt” or “they deserve it” should not be taken into the calculation when doing violence at all, only the benefits it has to the rest of society. If you are in the position to levy death as a punishment, I would rather just see them locked up for life.
Yep I’m anti-death penalty, the 3 that didn’t get pardoned should probably just live the rest of their lives in prison. But I’m not going to shed any tears for them.
He didn’t pardon the others, he commuted their sentences to life in prison. Of note, the 3 civilians left are terrorists who committed mass murder and were caught red handed. There are also 4 people on military death row who remain. One is also a mass murdering terrorist; one committed literal treason, attacking his own unit in the middle of the night overseas; one is a serial killer/rapist; and one took three trials over 4 decades to convict of a group murder.
They should probably commute his sentence too…
Yeah sorry that’s what I meant, long day at work. no sympathy for the people on death row, either way they should not be allowed back into normal society.
I understand that and, if you ask me, those 3 guys are pos. My problem is that he said he did it to take a moral stance against death penalty. You can’t do that and go “except for these 3 cases”.
Right, but again…everybody has that point where they say “…except that case”. You and Biden just disagree on where that line is. Even the Pope is eventually going to look at someone who committed some heinous crimes and say “Dude, even the Bible says that shit ain’t cool…”
But not everybody is making a statement about morality. He’s purportedly saying “capital punishment is bad and we should get rid of it”. If you make exceptions, all you’re saying is that you’re in favor of keeping it around for really bad people, which is exactly where they are now.
People make exceptions for things they believe in all the time. Religion is a prime example; show me any established religion, and I’ll show you a few dozen beliefs associated with that religion that 99.9% of worshippers conveniently ignore. That doesn’t mean they don’t believe. That just means they have limits.
show me any established religion, and I’ll show you a few dozen beliefs associated with that religion that 99.9% of worshippers conveniently ignore
Zoroastrianism.
Zoroastrianism.
I’d be willing to bet that if you could even find someone practicing the religion, they’re not praying several times a day in a fire temple.
I’m not sure that’s true. Some people legitimately stop at life in prison and always oppose the death penalty.
I’m one of those. Capital punishment is obsolete in my opinion, since we no longer need to execute people to ensure that they don’t present danger to the civilized population in the future.
I’m confident. Granted, for some people that red line may require atrocities at or above Hitler levels. It may require atrocities that are comically unrealistic. But it’s there. Put up someone who killed a proverbial busload of school children. If that isn’t enough, two. “Yeah, I killed them all, and I raped them first, and I’ll do the same again if I ever escape.”. Someone’s gonna say “Yeah, OK, stick the needle in his arm”, just because they don’t want to take the .000001% chance that he actually does escape.
An extreme example, yes, but I’m sure you get the idea. Everybody’s got a breaking point.
Again, I don’t know if that’s true. People seem to have very strange absolute moral ideas sometimes.
That doesn’t necessarily mean their beliefs are absolute. It just means that the red line needed to shake those believes has yet to be found.
Nope. The most die hard, anti death penalty believer has no limits and literally says “we do not have the right to take anyone’s life, even if they are Hitler. In fact it would be better for society if we got to try to rehabilitate Hitler”.
And I agree with them.Even the most die-hard anti-death-penalty believer has their limits.
I’d love a source for this. Personally, I don’t think we should be in the business of killing defenseless people in any context.
What if they raped a baby to death right in front of you?
Then I’d be a witness and therefore not qualified to pass judgement in their case. Conflict of interest.
Why do you need a source for a fundamental part of human nature? subjectivity
Google/Bing/DDG/Kagi the word…
Because people like to make claims about human nature that simply aren’t generally true. Rather than recognizing the way complex circumstances can shape human feelings and behaviors, I frequently see people break it down into simple platitudes like “humans are lazy, greedy, etc”, rather than recognizing complex realities like the way power erodes empathy.
That means the opposite of what you’re arguing for though
The only thing that I can come to the conclusion is that two of the three are neo-nazis.
He could be sending a message, and that’s what Trump is actually pissed about.
The Boston bomber I can’t justify with that same line of thinking though.
Executions are barbaric, plus life in prison is far more cruel anyway.
He could be sending a message, and that’s what Trump is actually pissed about.
That actually makes sense.
A world leader like the president is deciding on deaths every single day. You are right to think it’s unsavory, but it certainly isn’t unique to this pardoning.
That may be true but singling out 3 people who are currently harmless and saying “you get to die” feels somehow different.
He probably did that the day before and the day after.
well, regardless whether he or anyone believes it or not, it quite literally was his decision to make
Devil’s advocate: do the last 3 deserve it? Are they unsafe to other inmates and also not possible candidates for rehabilitation and release to society?
If yes… Welp.
That’s the point of taking a “moral stance against federal executions”, though — nobody deserves it.
Yeah… Most people don’t. Some do.
When you hear the acts of each, you won’t believe that he did this. Makes no sense. Relatives and friends are further devastated. They can’t believe this is happening.
That’s because like Trump, those people don’t understand justice, they only understand revenge. Trump thinks literally everyone is a horrendous person who wants to wantonly murder others just like him. Control over whether someone lives or dies is the ultimate control, and the one Trump craves most. It’s super clear why this is so upsetting to him, he got his favorite type of domination and control taken away. His toys.
Remember that Trump said that “Relatives and friends are further devastated. They can’t believe this is happening.” Without source, and can be dismissed as something he made up on the spot. The families of the victims are a mixture of reactions some are in support some opposed and some can’t be found for comment.
Justice is a feeling. It’s not a factual thing. You can’t scientifically deduce whether justice has been served or not in a specific case.
Some people think eye for an eye is justice, some have other ideas of what justice is.
Check out restorative justice models. One in Colorado has boasted 95% victim satisfaction and recidivism crashed from 50 down to like 10%. We can use this data to demonstrate what justice models are better, regardless of a definitive definition.
I know those models and am all for them. I’m Scandinavian so I’m not at all for eye for an eye type of justice.
The original comment I was replying to said something along the lines of “these people don’t understand justice”.
I was just pointing out that justice is a feeling more than anything else. You can point out that restorative justice is a better way for society to go and it works better for most individuals too but if someone says that they don’t feel like justice has been served you can’t say they’re wrong.
They just have a different opinion on what justice is.
Yeah, but that’s not profitable
Yeah which is why we have legal guardrails - to protect us from folks who think “eye for an eye” is a sane way to operate in the 21st century. They can have their opinion, but I sure don’t want them setting what is legal.
I agree 100%, but I was never discussing what should be legal or illegal… Obviously any murder should be illegal. I don’t think anyone would disagree with that.
That doesn’t change my opinion that sometimes murder is needed to affect change and sometimes it’s even the morally right thing to do…
You honestly thought I was advocating for making murder legal?
Exactly this. People with primitive fairy tales telling them what is “justice” should not be setting the rules for anything.
Some people think the earth is flat - that doesn’t mean it is.
Justice is a pretty nebulous abstract thing, I agree with that, but modern society has a pretty clear understanding that retribution isn’t Justice.
What does flat earth has to do with this? The shape of the earth is NOT an opinion. It’s a provable fact.
That’s why some people don’t get control over what happens to the convicted. We do know our justice system isnt perfect and makes more mastakes than what even the most rational person would find unacceptable. There is no going back once the state murders someone. And unless we have equal punishment for whomever caused a innocent person to be executed by the state. It should be outlawed in all cases.
Is trump cryingon social media about how he doesn’t get to kill 37 people on Christmas eve ?
Nice move by sleepy joe i guess
Yes, but both sides.
Well, Kamala had that laugh, so…
“The economy!”
-People who spent $41 billion three weeks later.
Santa told him he was getting an inmate to put to death in exchange for every single one of his felonies. Sorry I mean Satan told him.
Anyway he’s pissed that he got coal instead.
Pretty clear donvict knows his qon “pro-life” fanbase is bloodthirsty, and they demand sacrifices.
Yea, this group largely believes an execution sends them to hell sooner to suffer more. As someone who isn’t religious, I’d rather they waste away in jail, as that is much more a punishment than a quick death.
Prison should be rehabilatative, not punitive
Prison is an sentence, thus a form of punishment, as well as a rehabilitation procedure, as well as mean of protection of the public.
Death sentence on the other hand, is a moronic form of punishment as well as ineffective,because it doesn’t prevent the crimes themselves
Prison is an sentence, thus a form of punishment, as well as a rehabilitation procedure, as well as mean of protection of the public.
Not in the United States, it isn’t. The system isn’t designed to rehabilitate offenders; it’s designed to encourage recidivism:
- Background and criminal record checks for jobs outside of high security or confidentiality fields.
- Background check for renting housing post release.
- Anti-homelessness and loitering laws.
- In some states where it hasn’t yet been banned, criminals may have to pay back the prison as part of parole conditions.
But, why would any civilized country allow that to happen? Because the 13th amendment has an exemption for criminals serving their punishment. Prisons can use inmates for mass labor and contracting while paying them a fraction of the value they are producing, generating profit.
Neither Orwell nor Bradbury nor Vonnegut could have come up with anything so bizarre and upside down as to have a complete criminal and felon pretend that he cares about law and order.
Wonder what trump is doing with dylan roof?
Execute? But its his kkk compatriot.
Not execute? But then he looks weak for walking back on his bloodthirsty executioner statements.
Honestly I’m legitimately surprised he didn’t pardon him and give him a freaking medal, then bring Rittenhouse in so he and Roof can argue about whether it’s more redpilled to kill Pro BLM white protesters for being “race traitors” or actual black people for… being black people.
Maybe trump thinks: “Kill count too low, pathetic”
🤔
I mean, he was president during jan 6 and didnt even pardon them
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I have very little issues with executing death row inmates. The only reason I’m not 100% for it is because sometimes we fuck up and get the wrong person.
But if they did a horrible crime personally I think a lifetime in a cell is worse than a quick death, so if we really want to punish them we should only do life in prison to maximize suffering.
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AI slop image
It’s a photo from the White House photographer from Agence France-Presse. What evidence do you have that it’s AI? That’s a pretty strong accusation against someone whose living comes from photography.
these where what caught my eye:
The blue of the rug seemed to be leaking into the chair. Biden almost has a double leg or it’s out of alignment. And his hair seems to merge with the wallpaper.
And strong accusation? Bruh we live in an era where AI slop is basically the norm. Expect people to assume a very staged looking photo where Trump has the appearance of a shocked baby and Biden looks like the good humor ice cream man to raise hackles. And it’s a bummer that their job is under threat, but that doesn’t mean I’ll lower my guard against AI slop.
Being on your guard against AI doesn’t mean jumping at literal shadows. If you’re going to accuse specific people of misrepresentation/ fraud (it would be really bad if a photojournalist assigned to the White House was using AI photos!) you should at least run it through one of the many AI detectors first to see if any of them show it as likely AI. They’re not 100% foolproof, but if they all return very low likelihood of AI then it’s probably not.
No, I won’t be doing those things, and it would be foolish to take the approach you’ve outlined. Far better to set your pass filter higher and simply accept that you’ll have some false positives that where rejected when they shouldn’t have been.
There were horses employed in the millions before internal combustion engines, and it sucks that in this case photojournalism is being replaced with something far worse. However, in a greed economy this seems the way of things, and no amount of effort on my part is going to stop that from happening. So I’ll set my filter a touch higher and sometimes reject somethings for being AI when there not. The consequences of being wrong in that scenario are minimal and far outweigh the cost of being wrong in the other direction.
One of the reasons AI is bad is because of the effect it has on how people perceive reality. Like you deciding that a real photo of Biden and Trump is actually fake, and deciding that it would be stupid to investigate whether the picture is real.
If it’s the AI detector part you object to, it’s simple enough to google the source name and reverse image search the photo.
If you literally do not care whether what you say is true or not and don’t care to find evidence on whether it is then I can’t do anything about that ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
It’s not a matter of it being fake or real, it’s that we’ve already passed the threshold where it’s not remotely worth the time to figure out: you are on the wrong side of the value proposition as it relates to time. 4 years ago it was preposterously easy to detect AI slop. Now? Now not so much. It’s 10x easier to make and 10x easier to detect, and seems to have been doubling in difficulty about every 6-8 months. Simple enough to"just Google and do a bunch of research to confirm something is or isn’t AI garbo"? No, that’s what an idiot would do. Or what someone who either a) doesn’t value their time, or b) their time has no value.
It’s not worth the effort whatsoever. Simply rejecting at a higher rate is a much better strategy. Sometimes you’ll have false positives, but such is life. It is far less costly and has the same if not better outcomes.
Biden: I believe in the dignity of human life, except those three guys. I mean, come on man. I’m just being honest, those guys suck. I respect human life, but them? Ho-wha-ya, I-I, they suck. As your senator, I have made this decision, and Kamala stands by it.
Trump: You know, Biden, Joe Bye-den, Sleepy Joe as I call him. Many other call him Sleepy Joe, very smart people. Kamalala lost, I won. Really, America won, America will be greater under my Administration. We would have been safer too, but Old Sleepy Joe, as I call him, decided he would rather have violent inmates live instead of saving the taxpayers millions of dollars and stop giving them socialized medicine and socialized housing, he wants more of that. You know, he wants to spend our country into poverty while letting millions of illegals, many of whom are criminals, just like those 37 terrible people, and the three Joe loved so much to spare, Hunter Biden, and of course the media filled with liars and terrible nasty people. He wants to ruin America every last second he has. But don’t worry, there will be executions, many more, some would say too many, but I disagree. I spoke with experts in executions, very smart men, some women, if you could believe that, and they told me that we could execute many times more people than any president in history. I asked them how we could do that, how would that be possible, they told me about the concept for a plan to execute millions. I asked them, “millions?”, they told me “Easily”. Those very smart experts said we could easily execute millions, and I believe them. So we are going to make America great again and Sleepy Joe won’t be able to do anything about that come January, when my administration, the best Administration, some will say it will be the best Administration ever, takes control and implements a comprehensive plan to deal with the boarder crisis and make America great again.
We could have had Bernie…
If he’d won a primary, sure. But he didn’t. Sanders still had a massive impact despite his “supporters” attacking his party and by extension him. Because they don’t understand how politics work. This isn’t an endorsement of how politics currently work. Just pointing out that you can’t change how it works without understanding how it works in the first place. Something which Sanders knew very well. But his supporters have no concept of. Just being pissy and angry in his name working against him. But not at his request.
lol. I can’t tell if this is an amazing use of ChatGPT or what; but you’ve got trump’s voice down pat. It is scary that that it feels so dead on.
I despise the prevalent use of LLM. That is all off the dome.
I started reading and then stopped to Google to make sure it wasn’t real. 🤣🤣
