Today I Learned: Virginia leads in executions.

[shortylickens]

This was news to me:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment_in_Virginia

DC Sniper

 

[BarkingGhostar]

Why does it matter which state 'leads'?

 

[Jaskalas]

Why does it matter which state 'leads'?

Then the question becomes, what are we measuring?

In the case before us, the DC sniper, there's a REALLY good chance we got the right guy. But for executions in general, FAR too many cases are circumstantial without substantial evidence. We risk executing the wrong people. Thus execution in general is considered immoral, and must be stopped. To answer your question, it matters to us which state leads in wrongly killing people. It's something that should be stopped or more heavily restricted to a new standard of absolute guilt beyond all doubt.

 

[GagHalfrunt]

Why does it matter which state 'leads'?

What's the point of doing anything if you're not trying to win?

 

[allisolm]

Since 1976 Virginia has executed 113 while Texas has executed almost 5 times that many. Since 1930, TX is #1 and VA #9. In 2016 GA executed the most and in 2017 it was TX. Not sure what Virginia "leads" in.

https://www.infoplease.com/top-ten-most-executions-state
https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/executions-united-states

 

[imported_tajmahal]

Yep, sorry Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_executed_in_Texas,_2010–

 

[senseamp]

Conservatives sure love to brag about how many people their states execute, because what else would they brag about?

 

[1prophet]

Conservatives sure love to brag about how many people their states execute, because what else would they brag about?

They sure do especially since it is part of their tough on crime mantra like they used against Mike Dukakis in 1988 also known as the Willie Horton controversy,

But being a bleeding heart liberal doesn't win elections so the democrats knew they had to fight fire with fire and brought in the Clintons who where Democrats in name only and could stand up to any republican toe to toe using their own playbook which is why the GOP hates them so much.

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2008/5/22/520138/-
Bill Clinton Killed A Black Man To Become President

Bill Clinton, in 1992, as part of his plan to secure the presidency, resolved to position himself as an advocate of the death penalty, in contrast to the anti-death penalty positions of the failed Democratic nominees before him.

He was also determined to distance himself from the "special-interest group" of black people, which he and his people had decided had helped sink the campaigns of Walter Mondale and Michael Dukakis.

Clinton first, and foremost, sought opportunities to publicly estrange himself from the nation's most prominent black Democrat, Jesse Jackson. This he achieved, in spades, when he seized the opportunity to criticize a little-know rap artist, Sister Souljah, for stating "if black people kill black people every day, why not have a week and kill white people?" He then gleefully slammed Jackson for "including" Souljah in Jackson's Rainbow Coalition.

I will never forget the phone call I received from a Clinton operative, jubilant after Clinton's public dissing of Souljah and Jackson, crowing "together with burning Rector, this will take us into the White House!"

Off and on, I worked oppo research for state and national Democrats for more than 25 years. It is not a glorious business. You learn more than you want to know. "Jaded" is soon no longer a word, but your life. You, pretty much, swim around in cesspools. Your targets, most of the time, are not even of the opposition party, but of your own. For instance, in 1984, hired by a Democrat who thought he might someday run for president against Bill Clinton, I learned all I'd ever want to know about The Clenis. I wish it had all just stayed in the seedy gossipy oppo world. But, in the end, it didn't. Did it?

The gloato who'd called about Souljah & Jackson had also called to "set [us] straight" about the burning of Ricky Ray Rector.

We were informed that even though all the lower courts had freely admitted that Rector had "lobomotized" himself, and that Rector literally didn't know his ass from a hole in the ground, it was important that he get snuffed, because the courts said he could be snuffed, because he'd killed a cop, because Gennifer Flowers was all over the news, and because Bill, to be seen as "tough on crime," needed to snuff a man, and especially a black man . . . to show that he was not only tough on crime, but tough on blacks.

This was my introduction to the Clintonoid wing of the Democratic Party, and its twist on the "Southern Strategy": that only a southern Democrat, in the wake of the post-1964 loss of the southern racists from the FDR coalition to the GOP, could regain the White House, by, through the proper winks and nods, attracting enough racist voters back to the party. If Bill ignored the fact that Ricky Ray Rector couldn't tell Tuesday from a tire, and coldly and ornately put him to death, Clinton would thereby, with a wink and a nod, impress an important cesspool of voters that might serve to bring him victory in the general election.

In our office, listening to this shite, we thought these people were suck sons of bitches, and we went back to work for Jerry Brown. Oppo world, at least then, was so twisted and underground and murky that, in 1992, we were, through various cut-outs, working for three different Democratic presidential candidates, contending against one another.

Why am I saying this, why am I violating omerta? Because I don't work in that world any more, and neither do my coworkers or boss. And because I want people to know just what kind of gutter scum are attempting to wrest the nomination from Barack Obama . . . and in the meantime destroy this country. And because I feel soiled, I feel the need for public confession, I feel that in working for these people I worked for the functional equivalent of Republicans.

The best lawyers, the best arguments, were before Bill Clinton when he decided whether or not to snuff Ricky Ray Rector. But the best argument to the lawyer Bill Clinton was that if he snuffed this man he would prove himself tough not only on crime, but on blacks.

So he killed him.

For fifty minutes they searched for a vein in Ricky Ray Rector's arm, and then they killed him. He had left his slice of pecan pie on his prison tray, telling his guard that, after his execution, he would come back to eat it, "later."

"Later," in 2002, tardily following the long-ago lead of Justice Marshall, then dead, the United States Supreme Court, voting 6-3, ruled that executing the mentally retarded or disabled constitutes cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

You read Sid Blumenthal's book, and you know that Bill Clinton is not a racist. But you get involved in the Ricky Ray Rector case, and you understand that Bill Clinton was ready, eager, and willing to use racism to attain political power.

Same with his wife. Not a racist, but running on racism. She has not, as was true of her husband, actually killed a black man. But, in her blind selfish groping grasp for power, she is perfectly willing to use racism, to kill the character of a black man, to kill his chances of prevailing against the Republicans in 2008.

Do not, people, make the mistake of giving these Clintons any slack. They are, as John Huston expressed it in Chinatown, "capable of anything."

Me, I've washed my hands of these people. I read them out of our party. I invoke bell, book, and candle. I pronounce them anathema.

 

[ElFenix]

Then the question becomes, what are we measuring?

In the case before us, the DC sniper, there's a REALLY good chance we got the right guy. But for executions in general, FAR too many cases are circumstantial without substantial evidence. We risk executing the wrong people. Thus execution in general is considered immoral, and must be stopped. To answer your question, it matters to us which state leads in wrongly killing people. It's something that should be stopped or more heavily restricted to a new standard of absolute guilt beyond all doubt.

faulty positive IDs by witnesses (which would often be direct evidence, rather than circumstantial) are more problematic than circumstantial evidence would be. assuming that crime labs aren't faking things like DNA (which is circumstantial evidence) (and they probably are faking it, after all, they've been faking hair and fiber and footprint and bite analysis forever)

 

[imported_tajmahal]

What? You don't have absolute faith and trust in the FBI? What are you some kind of Trumper?
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/04/csi-is-a-lie/390897/

 

[brycejones]

What? You don't have absolute faith and trust in the FBI? What are you some kind of Trumper?
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/04/csi-is-a-lie/390897/

Chances that tajbot would be posting this if the FBI had recommended charging Clinton over buttery emails and determined people associated with the Trump campaign hadn't discussed anything with Russians?

I would say exactly 0.

 

[Jaskalas]

faulty positive IDs by witnesses (which would often be direct evidence, rather than circumstantial) are more problematic than circumstantial evidence would be. assuming that crime labs aren't faking things like DNA (which is circumstantial evidence) (and they probably are faking it, after all, they've been faking hair and fiber and footprint and bite analysis forever)

I hold witness testimony to be of little to no value, below circumstantial. It's a shame others do not always agree.

 

[desy]

I thought Virginia was for Lovers? oh well...

 

[shortylickens]

I thought Virginia was for Lovers? oh well...

Thats the biggest lie ever told on the east coast.
Since moving here I've met more angry miserable assholes than anywhere else on earth, and I've navigated the globe one full time.

 

[Darwin333]

I hold witness testimony to be of little to no value, below circumstantial. It's a shame others do not always agree.

Witness testimony has been proven time and again to be the lowest form of testimony and wrong in a shitload of cases. Unfortunately in the justice system it is often presented, and seen by jurors, as the gold standard.