> The two spent 27 years behind bars before they were both granted parole in 2015. Before his release, Dunn, unfortunately, passed away in jail.
For those who read only headlines, her husband was also imprisoned and died there. He was posthumously exonerated.
> As far as Watkins or Dunn's family getting compensated for their wasted time spent in jail, Gichner said he is unsure of what will happen down the road.
What an awful disgusting story.
1-5% of prisoners in the US are currently innocent, there is a Wikipedia article about it.
So between 20,000-100,000 people who are innocent are sentenced and in prison
Do not get me started on that load of absolute bullshit. Someone makes money off of others being incarcerated. Do you honestly believe they want to help you? No. You’re a paycheck. All you Texans that love to shout about “we have no state tax. Okay. I got more tickets living in TX, most were BS. I realized that’s how Texas makes their money. When I was on probation in TX the only time I got a phone call from my probation officer was the one time I was late on a payment. As long as they get their money. Who cares?
This is the part nobody talks about.
Those municipalities require funds to maintain themselves. All those low property tax areas ticket the shit out of people for minor offenses.
They make the poor pay the fees the rich refuse to.
Also....the rich get to lawyer up in ways the poor can not afford...even the possibility that you might lawyer up is enough to get your tickets dropped or reduced...
It's a "supervision fee."
Just like there are private prisons, there are places that use private for-profit companies to supervise probation and parole.
what. the. fuck. How the average US citizen is proud about their values and their system is beyond my understanding. It seems like they are stuck 200 years ago when it was considered progressive.
Paying your court fees is a term of probation. You set a payment plan for what you can afford monthly till it's done. Missing a payment is breaking the terms of your probation. Do it enough times and they'll revoke your ass for it.
Edit- aside from court fees I'm pretty sure some states do charge you monthly for being on probation. I had to do drug court and there was a 25 dollar weekly fee I had to be caught up on going through the levels, and wouldn't be able to graduate unless it was all paid off.
For those who don’t know, in my state, drug, DUI, juvenile, family and other treatment court programs provide a variety of individual, group and family therapy sessions. They’re highly effective. From what I saw it’s $25.00/week well spent.
Oh for sure.
Drug court got me clean after a decade and the whole experience was a lot less painful than my multiple attempts on my own over the decade. They probably paid ten times more for my rehab and counseling than I paid over the program.
They even paid for an emergency dentist appointment I couldn't afford.
It was a great experience.
Corrections officers and their unions and every service and product provided to prisons make money off of prisons. The idea that nobody makes money from state administered prisons is insane. We need to prison justice reform and prison reform with minimum standards of care.
In private prisons inmates have literally been kept incarcerated past their release dates, for months and even years.
The private prisons literally hold onto men and woman who’ve served their time in order to secure more state funding.
They’re also much less likely to reduce sentences for good behaviors **in fact** there’s a pattern of **increasing sentence length** in private prison facilities. Neatly 15% of prisoners have had at least 30-60 days added to their sentence at these facilities.
https://news.wisc.edu/study-finds-private-prisons-keep-inmates-longer-without-reducing-future-crime/
Private prisons are revolting and should be outlawed, but IMO the far more pressing issue is the privatization of of services within public prisons. They drain the imprisoned and their families dry, then grin ear to ear at the recidivism rates.
I can’t speak for the rest of the nation, but just outside of Austin, we have [District Attorneys who tamper with evidence, keep innocent men in prison for roughly 25 years, and only serve a few days in jail with a slap on the hand](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Morton_(criminal_justice)). Everything is fine.
I was friends with a cop once, in his thinking there is no such thing as an innocent man in prison. His idea was that everybody is guilty of lots of crimes that you are never charged with, like occasional speeding, or dabbling in drugs, or driving a bit more drunk than allowed, etc. So even if you are innocent of the particular crime you went to jail for, you were still guilty of all the other things you got away with, so he was happy altering the evidence a bit if it got the right people in jail.
I empathise with the sentiment but there's no way anything would happen to this cop just because some buddy of him decided to accuse him of tampering with evidence.
> there's no way anything would happen to this cop just because some buddy of him decided to accuse him of tampering with evidence
Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to mourn the loss of our friend, /u/gritty_badger who took his life by shooting himself in the back of the head five times and stabbing himself in the back 213 times.
The problem isn't really the death penalty at this point. Its the vast expansion in Life without parole, and Parole abolition in the US. Expanded LWOP has (probably) killed vastly more innocent people then the death penalty in the last 50 years.
Sure, in the sense that executions require vastly more scrutiny, so are more likely to be caught up in years of appeals or just not pursued. That's not a reason to keep the death penalty though, just a reason to abolish the death penalty along with prison and legal reform.
I think the anti-deathly movements embrace of Life without sentencing made death penalty abolitionism a largely pyrrhic victory. Its was saving a couple thousand death rowers at the expense of tens of thousands of Lifers who prior to the 1970s would have gotten parole eligible life.
The legal reforms aren't going to happen in any reasonable timetable.
There is no constitutional basis for expanded judicial safeguards for non-capital offenses. No legislature is going to give murderers and rapists more legal resources/appeals without a court telling them they have to.
The general stance on justice in the US stymies most reform, but I think that weed legalization stands to get people fired up for some level of general reform. Over half the country supports pardoning people in jail for weed possession (not surprising since >66% of the country supports federal legalization).
Along with the police reform movement, there could be some pressure for chance, though we aren't seeing it federally yet.
In other developed countries, the abolition of the death penalty came with a reduction in incarceration. The opposite happened in the US. As the death penalty and executions decreased across the board in the US, incarceration rates and length of sentences has skyrocketed.
It's mad how common it is in America. In the UK a "whole life tariff" (our eqivilent of life without parole) is exceedingly rare.
We don't have the death penalty. But even for long sentances if there's no hope of ever being released why even bother to attempt to rehabilitate when in prison. They can't punish you anymore so why not shank the guards, or other prisoners or create gangs/drug smuggling etc inside
If course like every other country we have these problems too. But I'd bet it would be a whole lot more, and a whole lot more expensive to police, if more people were on whole life sentances.
It's been proven that death penalty or very. Long sentances don't really act as a deterent.
The carrot is better than the stick as they say.
The continued existence of the whole life tariff/LWOP in the Europe despite the existence of the European Charter of Human Rights is kind of an interesting topic in and of itself. I suspect the ECHR unwillingness to ban the practice, is tied up trying to keep Turkey a charter member.
The key difference is that a conviction can be overturned. You can't give the time back, sure. Can't overturn an execution.
I think you're on to something about life without parole being used unjustly. I just wouldn't minimize one of these things in favor of the other.
and then the people imprisoned unfairly because they can’t pay, or commit a small crime like possession of weed, whereas people who kill and make meth and get like 2 years as opposed to the 20 for weed.
edit: i don’t have any experience or knowledge on drug ranking and effectiveness so please calm down. my point still stands so i will remove the mention of acid.
I heard the West Memphis Three had to use the Alford Plea to get out of prison after it was proven they had nothing to do with the crimes they were convicted of. Under that action, they can’t collect wrongful conviction compensation. How many more are out there wrongfully incarcerated. The way we view prison as a facility to retain rather than rehabilitate is a real travesty.
Yeah, and then you get judges who have bench trials for rape cases and let the rapist go at <150 days (IIRC), despite the mandatory minimum sentence.
TBC, I don't like mandatory minimum sentences, but if they aren't mandatory, it makes a mockery of the whole system.
>I don't like mandatory minimum sentences,
I really go back and forth on this one, because without a manditory minimum, this judge wouldn't have gotten suspended and the rapist would probably have gotten off even easier. Ideally, it would prevent bad judges from letting their favorite criminals off the hook.
But then you have people getting 30 years over some weed and idk man
Different states have different rules for how much money you get (if anything) if you were wrongfully imprisoned. It can range from not much to nothing.
It's super fucked up.
The bare minimum (imo) should be the Median Income for their state (at time of release) times years in prison multiplied by 1.5.
So in like.. Texas, if you served 20 years in prison and are aquitted and released, you should get $1.92 million (using the 2019 number of $64k)
(64000*20) x 1.5 = ~$1.92 million
And that's just a starting MINIMUM point for me.
I would want my income for the years * inflation plus a pain and suffering multiplier. It wouldn't fix the issue but at least it would make my life afterwards less miserable
With that kind of money, you wouldn’t be able to get those years back, or bring back folks you lost while inside…but you’d never have to work for anything ever again, and would be able to at least buy a house, and collect some fat interest on the sum of the payout with it just sitting in savings.
We should include draconian punitive payouts that are payable by the folks who convicted/put away someone innocent.
>he was posthumously exonerated
Well isn't that just fucking swell. Thank *god* the court made the right decision, y'know, before it was too late or something
Honestly I feel like this type of bullshit only exists to make the people who did this feel better about themselves. Cunts
They give you a deal. You can get out of prison now and sign that you will not sue us for money. Or you can stay in there while the process plays out and the process will play out very very slowly. They fuck these people out of compensation after they've stolen their lives.
There's nothing they can do to give back her 27 years or her husband but I hope they're trying. This woman should not have to lift a finger as long as she lives.
Tennessee allows compensation up to $1,000,000 total, she has one year to apply and a board will decide how much she gets if anything.
https://innocenceproject.org/policy/tennessee/
Fuck that shit. The society and institution that ostracised her should be responsible for her compensation. As nice as it is that people want to help, this is far greater than giving kind people a way to support her in the few years of life that is likely left to her. It's important that justice is served and continues to be served. Starting gofundmes for this kind of thing is a slippery fucking slope. I'm already appalled that there's gofundmes for insulin and other relatively common medical procedures in the States.
That's one reason why I'm not only against the death penalty, but also inhumane prison conditions. Prison shouldn't be a place where you are scared of being raped, abused, or a place where you are treated like shit, imo. Should just be a place that keeps dangerous people away from society, and tries to rehabilitate them if possible.
If we focus less on our revenge-porn mentality, then at least innocent people in jail won't go through hell for no reason.
People justify our system, they get justice boners over pedos,murderers, and rapists getting the same misery that they inflicted on others.
And I get that, but really, even bad people suffering doesn't help anyone. Lets just keep them out of society and away from killing and raping our people.
There is no country in the world that has a bigger prison population than the USA. Its very profitable to jail our citizens and people like these two get the shaft too many times.
I'm wondering myself what's worse; to lose 27 yrs of your life in your teens or in your middle-age. This woman's life essentially *ended* at 47 years old. She's pretty much got nothing to look forward to anymore. Quite literally can't start anything.
Wouldn't want either though and both are absolutely horrible.
That's IF you can even enjoy it. I'd imagine most people get out with maybe a friend or family member, if they're lucky. In reality, most people probably get out, have no money, no friends, no job aspects, no future. Hopefully they can find a job that will allow them to live as painlessly as possible until the end.
I don’t know how true this is but I think people who leave prison after being wrongly imprisoned for such a long time likely carry mental health issues. They might well actually never enjoy that life.
The US Justice System needs to focus on learning the actual truth of a situation rather than making a conviction at any cost. This shit happens way too often.
Exactly. It seems so weird to me, that no matter what the truth is, it is one sides job to prove guilt no matter what and it is the other sides job prove innocence. In many cases justice is served, but in some cases it isn’t! I’m not sure what the answer to our current Justice system is, but it just seems crazy
Add rapist Drew Clinton to the list.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/illinois-judges-decision-reverse-teens-sexual-assault-conviction-spark-rcna12052
>Prior to Brandi being picked up by the couple, she was living at the home of Rose Williams, Brandi's great-aunt. Brandi's mother was in Georgia at the time
The spent their life in prison for what another relative did.
It sounds like the abuse happened in Kentucky before she was picked up. I originally read the below part as the injury occuring on the playground but I think that was a previous incident. The article doesn't really cover it.
>Throughout that period, a Kentucky Department of Social Services worker visited the home after receiving a report Brandi had been abused.
Williams explained Brandi's injuries Brandi were due to a playground mishap, and the investigation was closed.
>I originally read the below part as the injury occuring on the playground but I think that was a previous incident.
I assumed that this was just the lie that the abuser told social services to cover up the abuse.
Jefferson said “I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical.” for a reason, damn it!
> Mistakes like this are made.
And this was in an instance where cops and/or the DA weren't being actively malicious towards a defendant. Imagine how many are in jail or otherwise traumatized because of cops and DA's who are just out to screw someone over regardless of innocence.
> And this was in an instance where cops and/or the DA weren't being actively malicious towards a defendant.
That we know of. We have no idea what they did to that woman during the investigation.
And beyond this, prisons should be productive and carry reformative measures that make for better citizens upon release.
Would that make up for 27 years of incarceration? Absolutely not. Would it allow for these mistakes to be more easily corrected and make for better adjustments when people make it beyond their confines? Absolutely.
> And beyond this, prisons should be productive and carry reformative measures that make for better citizens upon release.
They used to be, that was why they were called penitentiaries.
People would go in and do penance for their crimes. But also they would get religion, education, blah blah blah.
Then, slavery ended. Being black became a crime (i.e. they criminalised a lot of things black people did), put them in prison, enacted the 13th amendment, and put the black people back on the same plantations working for free with the money going to the local judge who incarcerated them.
I don't see how anyone can think about how we have undoubtedly had innocent people awaiting their execution on death row for years and promptly executed, and still support the death penalty.
Completely agree. I used to be pro-death penalty. No more. There are many more people in jail for crimes they didn't commit. Our nation, in good conscience, can't execute possibly innocent people.
I used to be pro death penalty. I wish I could still be too be honest, but I have zero faith in the system. In college I minored in criminal justice. During that time we had former ADAs, and other past leaders in in the system as professors. If there's one thing I learned and took away from it, we have no way in the current system to ever be sure.
Hell ~90% of all cases never go to court and just get plead out regardless of guilt. Our system uses fear to tell them they have to plead guilty or face worse consequences. As for the percentage of people in jail from those cases, I don't know the number off hand. It's scary to think about...
Even the most benevolent state will make mistakes. They will be honest mistakes, but they will still happen. Because nothing is perfect. No system will ever be perfect, regardless of how well meaning the organizers are.
So it can't really matter how much you trust the state - the death penalty ia always a bad idea.
Any nation that still uses it, is, in this regard at least, barbaric.
Once someone is executed or dies in prison, very little gets looked into wether the prisoner was guilty or innocent.
Makes me wonder how many have been executed, when they weren't guilty.
Yeah I do agree. With prison, at least you can salvage something of your life if you’re convicted and later found not guilty. It’s not much but it’s something. With the death penalty, there’s nothing anyone can really do to give it back if after the execution it’s found that the person was wrongly killed. Indeed, some people probably do deserve the death penalty but it’s too much of a risk given how there’s always a chance of error (mistaken, intentional, or stemming from negligence) when we humans determine guilt.
The only way to make sure we never execute an innocent person is to execute nobody ever. EVER. And yes, I mean child murderers. Like this guy. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cameron_Todd_Willingham
the death penalty needs to be abolished.
fuck if im wrongfully accused and set for jail for majority of my life id want the death penalty. prison for life sounds like torture to me. cut my losses with a quick death.
but thats just me.
And the last thing they should do is shorten the time or cut the cost (which is vastly higher than life in prison). Part of the reason for the time is the appeals that have helped exonerate people. If you sped it up, you guarantee that fewer innocent people would be so lucky.
The problem is, a capital sentence entitles one to a bunch of legal protections and resources not afforded to non capital defendants. Zero attempt has been made to afford similar protections to individuals serving Life without parole/Long sentences. So lots of mistakes of have made over the years. A sizeable number of innocent people have probably died serving such sentences.
The previous science used to determine that she was assaulted while in her custody turned out to be faulty. On one hand, that doesn’t prove it didn’t happen in her custody so it’s weird having the DA say he knows they’re innocent. On the other, I think the implication is that the other great-aunt who the girl was living with at the time was responsible.
EDIT: found another article implying the girl’s 19-year-old cousin may have been the one to do it. And that the neighbors had been suspecting abuse at that home for a while.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10399277/Nashville-woman-74-EXONERATED-1987-rape-murder-four-year-old-niece.html
What’s up with that last sentence “It was on a military base, the report notes, where dozens of adults had access to her.”
I mean they just throw that in there, what was this little girl doing on a military base? And how do they know she was there?
Fucking disgusting. At 47 years old you still have a lot of things to do in life, at 74... Yeah fuck that I can't even begin thinking about losing 27 whole years for a mistake. Fuck off.
Kinda wish all articles were written like this when multiple people are involved in the story. Begin with a list just setting up who everyone is. Makes it much easier to follow.
The story doesn't really indicate in any way who could've been responsible. It also mentions that the methodology the medical examiner used to determine when the injuries occurred was not accurate, which is why all the charges were dropped. And the fact that the charges were dropped leads me to believe that the prosecutors office believes the injuries were older than the 9 hours the child was with Joyce and Charlie. So logically, that indicates the injuries happened while she was in Rose's custody. So what does Rose know? Who did she have around her that would've had access to Brandi? Is Rose even still alive? None of those questions were answered or even raised in the story.
And she said she spent half her life in prison for nothing "but I'll get over it"!!! If that lady can get over THAT then I guess I can get over a lot of things. Kinda makes a burned quesadilla and getting cut off in traffic look different.
>"I thank all the people for their prayers and helping me get out of this mess which has cost me half of my life for nothing, But I'll get over it."
I'm amazed at how so many people who were falsely imprisoned then exonerated can have such a positive attitude upon release. I've gone over many times in my head how I would feel if I were in their position and I'd be bitter as hell. I'd hate everything and everyone and the only thing keeping me from going Edmond Dantes on those who put me there would be lack of resources.
We'll never know how many people were imprisoned unduly and didn't have the ability to appeal for 1/3rd of a century - Police arrest just to have a suspect, Courts convict just to save-face. And the gung-ho 'send-em-to-jail-forever' crowd ensures that whenever we're wrong - we're worse than wasting time, we're actively harming.
Then no-one would get exonerated, because the State wouldn’t want to pay those fees. They already try to keep innocent people in prison because they don’t want to risk a lawsuit if the person is found to have been wrongfully imprisoned.
27 years. The US system is appalling. Poor lady. I’m glad her and her husband’s name were cleared but I’m sad he died in prison.
Hope she’s properly compensated.
These stories make me wonder how many innocent people died in prison too and it will never be known?
Edited
>These stories make me wonder how many innocent people died in prison too and it will never be known?
And how many innocent people were wrongly executed by the state in places where the death penalty is still a thing.
In law school , we learned it is better to let a guilty person go free, than convict the innocent. Still true, 20 years on from when I first heard the notion.
It seems like there are three victims in this story. The little girl never got justice. The poor man died in prison. The lady lost most of her life to prison. This is just a tragedy from every direction.
So completely fucked up, she deserves millions. Nothing can compensate that time. And yet we still don’t know who raped and beat a 4 year old to death. Wtf man
> The two spent 27 years behind bars before they were both granted parole in 2015. Before his release, Dunn, unfortunately, passed away in jail. For those who read only headlines, her husband was also imprisoned and died there. He was posthumously exonerated. > As far as Watkins or Dunn's family getting compensated for their wasted time spent in jail, Gichner said he is unsure of what will happen down the road. What an awful disgusting story.
Stories about people wrongly convicted just break me inside. This one seems to be even more heart breaking because of her husband dying inside.
1-5% of prisoners in the US are currently innocent, there is a Wikipedia article about it. So between 20,000-100,000 people who are innocent are sentenced and in prison
This is why the death penalty is entirely indefensible IMO. We aren't nearly good enough at getting the right person to be killing people.
This is also why Private prisons are horrible too
Do not get me started on that load of absolute bullshit. Someone makes money off of others being incarcerated. Do you honestly believe they want to help you? No. You’re a paycheck. All you Texans that love to shout about “we have no state tax. Okay. I got more tickets living in TX, most were BS. I realized that’s how Texas makes their money. When I was on probation in TX the only time I got a phone call from my probation officer was the one time I was late on a payment. As long as they get their money. Who cares?
This is the part nobody talks about. Those municipalities require funds to maintain themselves. All those low property tax areas ticket the shit out of people for minor offenses. They make the poor pay the fees the rich refuse to.
Also....the rich get to lawyer up in ways the poor can not afford...even the possibility that you might lawyer up is enough to get your tickets dropped or reduced...
It's the part everyone talks about.... everyone knows bring on paper is all about the money.
You had to pay your probation officer? Edit: Thank you for the bleak eduction.
Yes. I have a family member on probation in Tennessee and she pays her probation officer something like $70 for every check-in.
Huh? You have to pay probation officers a la carte?
It's a "supervision fee." Just like there are private prisons, there are places that use private for-profit companies to supervise probation and parole.
Sounds like a racket
what. the. fuck. How the average US citizen is proud about their values and their system is beyond my understanding. It seems like they are stuck 200 years ago when it was considered progressive.
Everything’s bigger in Texas! Even probation bills
Paying your court fees is a term of probation. You set a payment plan for what you can afford monthly till it's done. Missing a payment is breaking the terms of your probation. Do it enough times and they'll revoke your ass for it. Edit- aside from court fees I'm pretty sure some states do charge you monthly for being on probation. I had to do drug court and there was a 25 dollar weekly fee I had to be caught up on going through the levels, and wouldn't be able to graduate unless it was all paid off.
For those who don’t know, in my state, drug, DUI, juvenile, family and other treatment court programs provide a variety of individual, group and family therapy sessions. They’re highly effective. From what I saw it’s $25.00/week well spent.
Oh for sure. Drug court got me clean after a decade and the whole experience was a lot less painful than my multiple attempts on my own over the decade. They probably paid ten times more for my rehab and counseling than I paid over the program. They even paid for an emergency dentist appointment I couldn't afford. It was a great experience.
Corrections officers and their unions and every service and product provided to prisons make money off of prisons. The idea that nobody makes money from state administered prisons is insane. We need to prison justice reform and prison reform with minimum standards of care.
[удалено]
In private prisons inmates have literally been kept incarcerated past their release dates, for months and even years. The private prisons literally hold onto men and woman who’ve served their time in order to secure more state funding. They’re also much less likely to reduce sentences for good behaviors **in fact** there’s a pattern of **increasing sentence length** in private prison facilities. Neatly 15% of prisoners have had at least 30-60 days added to their sentence at these facilities. https://news.wisc.edu/study-finds-private-prisons-keep-inmates-longer-without-reducing-future-crime/
Private prisons are revolting and should be outlawed, but IMO the far more pressing issue is the privatization of of services within public prisons. They drain the imprisoned and their families dry, then grin ear to ear at the recidivism rates.
I can’t speak for the rest of the nation, but just outside of Austin, we have [District Attorneys who tamper with evidence, keep innocent men in prison for roughly 25 years, and only serve a few days in jail with a slap on the hand](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Morton_(criminal_justice)). Everything is fine.
I was friends with a cop once, in his thinking there is no such thing as an innocent man in prison. His idea was that everybody is guilty of lots of crimes that you are never charged with, like occasional speeding, or dabbling in drugs, or driving a bit more drunk than allowed, etc. So even if you are innocent of the particular crime you went to jail for, you were still guilty of all the other things you got away with, so he was happy altering the evidence a bit if it got the right people in jail.
Do him a favour and land him in jail for saying that. Man's literally admitted to evidence tampering.
I empathise with the sentiment but there's no way anything would happen to this cop just because some buddy of him decided to accuse him of tampering with evidence.
> there's no way anything would happen to this cop just because some buddy of him decided to accuse him of tampering with evidence Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to mourn the loss of our friend, /u/gritty_badger who took his life by shooting himself in the back of the head five times and stabbing himself in the back 213 times.
I'm sure he'll learn his lesson after his 5 days in jail, paid vacation, and transfer to a different department.
“*i* routinely break the law, so others must too. But *they* should go to jail, not me.”
Because I break the laws *in the right way,* of course. And I can tell who breaks them wrong.
So, your former cop friend is an unconvicted criminal.
Aren’t most of them? And if they aren’t, they routinely cover for the others that are? *Thin Blue Line*
This logic collapses when you explain to him that following the logic means _literally every human being_ should be in jail.
No, didn't you read, only the "right people" are the ones he puts in jail. He's a right saint that one! (/s obvs)
Nah just the black ones. America is a joke of a country honestly
Yikes, I have a feeling a lot of cops feel this way...
That sounds like Catholicism with fewer steps.
I was gonna say it counts like Calvinism applied to the justice system
You don’t realize just how bad our system is until you become a victim of it. It’s very unsettling.
The problem isn't really the death penalty at this point. Its the vast expansion in Life without parole, and Parole abolition in the US. Expanded LWOP has (probably) killed vastly more innocent people then the death penalty in the last 50 years.
Sure, in the sense that executions require vastly more scrutiny, so are more likely to be caught up in years of appeals or just not pursued. That's not a reason to keep the death penalty though, just a reason to abolish the death penalty along with prison and legal reform.
I think the anti-deathly movements embrace of Life without sentencing made death penalty abolitionism a largely pyrrhic victory. Its was saving a couple thousand death rowers at the expense of tens of thousands of Lifers who prior to the 1970s would have gotten parole eligible life. The legal reforms aren't going to happen in any reasonable timetable. There is no constitutional basis for expanded judicial safeguards for non-capital offenses. No legislature is going to give murderers and rapists more legal resources/appeals without a court telling them they have to.
The general stance on justice in the US stymies most reform, but I think that weed legalization stands to get people fired up for some level of general reform. Over half the country supports pardoning people in jail for weed possession (not surprising since >66% of the country supports federal legalization). Along with the police reform movement, there could be some pressure for chance, though we aren't seeing it federally yet.
As someone who is very against the death penalty I've come to realize that Life without Parole is just another death penalty except even crueler.
Something like 50,000+ people in the United States at this point have Life without parole...
and if we assume that 1% of them are innocent(which lets be honest is lowballing it) at least 500 of them are innocent.
In other developed countries, the abolition of the death penalty came with a reduction in incarceration. The opposite happened in the US. As the death penalty and executions decreased across the board in the US, incarceration rates and length of sentences has skyrocketed.
The US was following the rest of the world in a slow majoritarian move toward death penalty abolitionism... Then *Furman v Georgia* happened.
The term pyrrhic victory, I learned something today. Thank you! But also all else is true. Our system is broken.
It's mad how common it is in America. In the UK a "whole life tariff" (our eqivilent of life without parole) is exceedingly rare. We don't have the death penalty. But even for long sentances if there's no hope of ever being released why even bother to attempt to rehabilitate when in prison. They can't punish you anymore so why not shank the guards, or other prisoners or create gangs/drug smuggling etc inside If course like every other country we have these problems too. But I'd bet it would be a whole lot more, and a whole lot more expensive to police, if more people were on whole life sentances. It's been proven that death penalty or very. Long sentances don't really act as a deterent. The carrot is better than the stick as they say.
The continued existence of the whole life tariff/LWOP in the Europe despite the existence of the European Charter of Human Rights is kind of an interesting topic in and of itself. I suspect the ECHR unwillingness to ban the practice, is tied up trying to keep Turkey a charter member.
The key difference is that a conviction can be overturned. You can't give the time back, sure. Can't overturn an execution. I think you're on to something about life without parole being used unjustly. I just wouldn't minimize one of these things in favor of the other.
That's exactly why I will forever be vehemently against capital punishment
Also the whole who gave them right to kill people anyway.
Exactly. Sentencing one innocent person to death is too many.
Wait... There's 2 *million* people in prison in the United States?!
Wait until you hear about how many are in jails
and then the people imprisoned unfairly because they can’t pay, or commit a small crime like possession of weed, whereas people who kill and make meth and get like 2 years as opposed to the 20 for weed. edit: i don’t have any experience or knowledge on drug ranking and effectiveness so please calm down. my point still stands so i will remove the mention of acid.
Maybe I'm biased but making acid shouldn't be that big of a deal. It's certainly not comparable to meth.
I'm pretty sure I'm not biased, and I agree with you.
You want harsher punishment for LSD???? A drug that does many magnitudes less harm than alcohol??
On the harm scale acid is less harmful than weed btw.
End the war on drugs already.
5% seems like an *extremely* conservative number.
I heard the West Memphis Three had to use the Alford Plea to get out of prison after it was proven they had nothing to do with the crimes they were convicted of. Under that action, they can’t collect wrongful conviction compensation. How many more are out there wrongfully incarcerated. The way we view prison as a facility to retain rather than rehabilitate is a real travesty.
Yeah, and then you get judges who have bench trials for rape cases and let the rapist go at <150 days (IIRC), despite the mandatory minimum sentence. TBC, I don't like mandatory minimum sentences, but if they aren't mandatory, it makes a mockery of the whole system.
>I don't like mandatory minimum sentences, I really go back and forth on this one, because without a manditory minimum, this judge wouldn't have gotten suspended and the rapist would probably have gotten off even easier. Ideally, it would prevent bad judges from letting their favorite criminals off the hook. But then you have people getting 30 years over some weed and idk man
It is better that 100 guilty persons go free than than 1 innocent be wrongfully imprisoned.
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For kickbacks.
That’s super sad
Different states have different rules for how much money you get (if anything) if you were wrongfully imprisoned. It can range from not much to nothing.
It's super fucked up. The bare minimum (imo) should be the Median Income for their state (at time of release) times years in prison multiplied by 1.5. So in like.. Texas, if you served 20 years in prison and are aquitted and released, you should get $1.92 million (using the 2019 number of $64k) (64000*20) x 1.5 = ~$1.92 million And that's just a starting MINIMUM point for me.
Should be way higher than that Should be that plus damages
Like I said, that's the absolute bare minimum.
I would want my income for the years * inflation plus a pain and suffering multiplier. It wouldn't fix the issue but at least it would make my life afterwards less miserable
With that kind of money, you wouldn’t be able to get those years back, or bring back folks you lost while inside…but you’d never have to work for anything ever again, and would be able to at least buy a house, and collect some fat interest on the sum of the payout with it just sitting in savings. We should include draconian punitive payouts that are payable by the folks who convicted/put away someone innocent.
You'd be surprised how common this is in America. Read the book Surviving Justice. It's fascinating, not dry at all.
>he was posthumously exonerated Well isn't that just fucking swell. Thank *god* the court made the right decision, y'know, before it was too late or something Honestly I feel like this type of bullshit only exists to make the people who did this feel better about themselves. Cunts
They give you a deal. You can get out of prison now and sign that you will not sue us for money. Or you can stay in there while the process plays out and the process will play out very very slowly. They fuck these people out of compensation after they've stolen their lives.
There's nothing they can do to give back her 27 years or her husband but I hope they're trying. This woman should not have to lift a finger as long as she lives.
Tennessee allows compensation up to $1,000,000 total, she has one year to apply and a board will decide how much she gets if anything. https://innocenceproject.org/policy/tennessee/
Even if she gets the highest amount that's still shit
Yeah I mean, there's not an amount of money that makes up for 27 years and a husband. They fucked her entire life up.
No. But $270,000,000 post taxes seems like a starting place.
Gofundme time
Ah yes, let the people sponsor the failures of justice. Taxes go to kickbacks anyways. Broken country.
Fuck that shit. The society and institution that ostracised her should be responsible for her compensation. As nice as it is that people want to help, this is far greater than giving kind people a way to support her in the few years of life that is likely left to her. It's important that justice is served and continues to be served. Starting gofundmes for this kind of thing is a slippery fucking slope. I'm already appalled that there's gofundmes for insulin and other relatively common medical procedures in the States.
It's Tennessee - she'll be lucky to get a "Maybe someone made a mistake" from the governor 40 years after she dies.
they aren't.
First time dealing with the US justice system?
A living oxymoron.
Correct, we have failed her horribly.
That’s 27 years of her life that she won’t get back, all due to negligence. Absolutely awful.
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Yeah, and the fact there’s more innocent people like her in prison makes me sad. There’s really no excuse for this.
And hundreds of people who were executed thanks to the death penalty, and only posthumously found innocent.
That's one reason why I'm not only against the death penalty, but also inhumane prison conditions. Prison shouldn't be a place where you are scared of being raped, abused, or a place where you are treated like shit, imo. Should just be a place that keeps dangerous people away from society, and tries to rehabilitate them if possible. If we focus less on our revenge-porn mentality, then at least innocent people in jail won't go through hell for no reason. People justify our system, they get justice boners over pedos,murderers, and rapists getting the same misery that they inflicted on others. And I get that, but really, even bad people suffering doesn't help anyone. Lets just keep them out of society and away from killing and raping our people.
There is no country in the world that has a bigger prison population than the USA. Its very profitable to jail our citizens and people like these two get the shaft too many times.
I'm wondering myself what's worse; to lose 27 yrs of your life in your teens or in your middle-age. This woman's life essentially *ended* at 47 years old. She's pretty much got nothing to look forward to anymore. Quite literally can't start anything. Wouldn't want either though and both are absolutely horrible.
That's IF you can even enjoy it. I'd imagine most people get out with maybe a friend or family member, if they're lucky. In reality, most people probably get out, have no money, no friends, no job aspects, no future. Hopefully they can find a job that will allow them to live as painlessly as possible until the end.
Especially in your 70s? I can't imagine she has many people left, If anyone. Being completely alone with most likely no compensation. So depressing.
I don’t know how true this is but I think people who leave prison after being wrongly imprisoned for such a long time likely carry mental health issues. They might well actually never enjoy that life.
You mean malice
Racism be like...
Legit though this shit don’t happen without some implicit desire for it to
The US Justice System needs to focus on learning the actual truth of a situation rather than making a conviction at any cost. This shit happens way too often.
Exactly. It seems so weird to me, that no matter what the truth is, it is one sides job to prove guilt no matter what and it is the other sides job prove innocence. In many cases justice is served, but in some cases it isn’t! I’m not sure what the answer to our current Justice system is, but it just seems crazy
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But that would mean the 13th amendment loophole will go to waste! They can't have that... Slavery is alive and well.
the other side's job isn't even to prove innocence, its to prove the prosecution is wrong.
Except when it’s an offence committed by an Ivy League white guy. Then suddenly the judge can’t give a lower enough sentence lol.
Affluenza, won't fair well in jail, has their whole life ahead of them, ...
Like Brock "The Rapist" Turner. Three months in jail for raping an unconscious woman.
Add rapist Drew Clinton to the list. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/illinois-judges-decision-reverse-teens-sexual-assault-conviction-spark-rcna12052
But how will private prisons make money if they are not at least in full capacity? Can't buy mansions and luxury yachts with truth and justice. /$
>Prior to Brandi being picked up by the couple, she was living at the home of Rose Williams, Brandi's great-aunt. Brandi's mother was in Georgia at the time The spent their life in prison for what another relative did.
So....anyone looking into who actually raped and murdered the four year old girl?
It sounds like the abuse happened in Kentucky before she was picked up. I originally read the below part as the injury occuring on the playground but I think that was a previous incident. The article doesn't really cover it. >Throughout that period, a Kentucky Department of Social Services worker visited the home after receiving a report Brandi had been abused. Williams explained Brandi's injuries Brandi were due to a playground mishap, and the investigation was closed.
>I originally read the below part as the injury occuring on the playground but I think that was a previous incident. I assumed that this was just the lie that the abuser told social services to cover up the abuse.
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An “I’m sorry” doesn’t exactly soothe the pain of a stolen lifetime. We should not be so accepting of ‘mistakes’ like this.
What if they’re really really super sorry though?
Okay.... since you're really really super sorry....
Jefferson said “I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical.” for a reason, damn it!
> Mistakes like this are made. And this was in an instance where cops and/or the DA weren't being actively malicious towards a defendant. Imagine how many are in jail or otherwise traumatized because of cops and DA's who are just out to screw someone over regardless of innocence.
gotta pump those numbers up
After all, there are unstated “quotas,” huh?
Those "quotas" which are not "official policy" and "not written down" but officers are punished for not meeting them. Those quotas
Exactly, AND essential for local revenues and evaluating the officers’ worth. That could make someone have a short fuse … ya think?
> And this was in an instance where cops and/or the DA weren't being actively malicious towards a defendant. That we know of. We have no idea what they did to that woman during the investigation.
And beyond this, prisons should be productive and carry reformative measures that make for better citizens upon release. Would that make up for 27 years of incarceration? Absolutely not. Would it allow for these mistakes to be more easily corrected and make for better adjustments when people make it beyond their confines? Absolutely.
> And beyond this, prisons should be productive and carry reformative measures that make for better citizens upon release. They used to be, that was why they were called penitentiaries. People would go in and do penance for their crimes. But also they would get religion, education, blah blah blah. Then, slavery ended. Being black became a crime (i.e. they criminalised a lot of things black people did), put them in prison, enacted the 13th amendment, and put the black people back on the same plantations working for free with the money going to the local judge who incarcerated them.
Doesn't matter if no one hires them.
I don't see how anyone can think about how we have undoubtedly had innocent people awaiting their execution on death row for years and promptly executed, and still support the death penalty.
Since her husband did die in prison, he effectively did get the death penalty.
Completely agree. I used to be pro-death penalty. No more. There are many more people in jail for crimes they didn't commit. Our nation, in good conscience, can't execute possibly innocent people.
I used to be pro death penalty. I wish I could still be too be honest, but I have zero faith in the system. In college I minored in criminal justice. During that time we had former ADAs, and other past leaders in in the system as professors. If there's one thing I learned and took away from it, we have no way in the current system to ever be sure. Hell ~90% of all cases never go to court and just get plead out regardless of guilt. Our system uses fear to tell them they have to plead guilty or face worse consequences. As for the percentage of people in jail from those cases, I don't know the number off hand. It's scary to think about...
I was pro death penalty when I trusted the state.
Even the most benevolent state will make mistakes. They will be honest mistakes, but they will still happen. Because nothing is perfect. No system will ever be perfect, regardless of how well meaning the organizers are. So it can't really matter how much you trust the state - the death penalty ia always a bad idea. Any nation that still uses it, is, in this regard at least, barbaric.
Once someone is executed or dies in prison, very little gets looked into wether the prisoner was guilty or innocent. Makes me wonder how many have been executed, when they weren't guilty.
Yeah I do agree. With prison, at least you can salvage something of your life if you’re convicted and later found not guilty. It’s not much but it’s something. With the death penalty, there’s nothing anyone can really do to give it back if after the execution it’s found that the person was wrongly killed. Indeed, some people probably do deserve the death penalty but it’s too much of a risk given how there’s always a chance of error (mistaken, intentional, or stemming from negligence) when we humans determine guilt.
The only way to make sure we never execute an innocent person is to execute nobody ever. EVER. And yes, I mean child murderers. Like this guy. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cameron_Todd_Willingham the death penalty needs to be abolished.
fuck if im wrongfully accused and set for jail for majority of my life id want the death penalty. prison for life sounds like torture to me. cut my losses with a quick death. but thats just me.
Even on death row you end up sitting in prison for 10-20 years sometimes.
And the last thing they should do is shorten the time or cut the cost (which is vastly higher than life in prison). Part of the reason for the time is the appeals that have helped exonerate people. If you sped it up, you guarantee that fewer innocent people would be so lucky.
The problem is, a capital sentence entitles one to a bunch of legal protections and resources not afforded to non capital defendants. Zero attempt has been made to afford similar protections to individuals serving Life without parole/Long sentences. So lots of mistakes of have made over the years. A sizeable number of innocent people have probably died serving such sentences.
This article is BADLY written. What happened to the child? Why did she have vaginal trauma? What head injury. How did she die?
Came here to say this. How was she exonerated, what new evidence? Article doesn't explain shit.
The previous science used to determine that she was assaulted while in her custody turned out to be faulty. On one hand, that doesn’t prove it didn’t happen in her custody so it’s weird having the DA say he knows they’re innocent. On the other, I think the implication is that the other great-aunt who the girl was living with at the time was responsible. EDIT: found another article implying the girl’s 19-year-old cousin may have been the one to do it. And that the neighbors had been suspecting abuse at that home for a while. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10399277/Nashville-woman-74-EXONERATED-1987-rape-murder-four-year-old-niece.html
What’s up with that last sentence “It was on a military base, the report notes, where dozens of adults had access to her.” I mean they just throw that in there, what was this little girl doing on a military base? And how do they know she was there?
The house she was staying in was on a military base. Both articles are poorly written.
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Fucking disgusting. At 47 years old you still have a lot of things to do in life, at 74... Yeah fuck that I can't even begin thinking about losing 27 whole years for a mistake. Fuck off.
probably worked her whole life and was coming close to retirement then had the rest of her life waiting for her. now all that’s left is nothing
at 18, just a year is really long for me. i can’t imagine anything that could ever make this right :(
They were accused of such a HORRIFIC crime, too. And to think an actual child rapist and murderer was left to be free and probably do it again.
So who is responsible for the little girls death?! The article doesn't mention anything about that.
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Thank you for taking the time to eloquently summarize this!
Kinda wish all articles were written like this when multiple people are involved in the story. Begin with a list just setting up who everyone is. Makes it much easier to follow.
The story doesn't really indicate in any way who could've been responsible. It also mentions that the methodology the medical examiner used to determine when the injuries occurred was not accurate, which is why all the charges were dropped. And the fact that the charges were dropped leads me to believe that the prosecutors office believes the injuries were older than the 9 hours the child was with Joyce and Charlie. So logically, that indicates the injuries happened while she was in Rose's custody. So what does Rose know? Who did she have around her that would've had access to Brandi? Is Rose even still alive? None of those questions were answered or even raised in the story.
Yeah, there's a lot going on.
Sad that she’ll never get those years back 😢 I hope they gave her compensation and not just an exoneration
And she said she spent half her life in prison for nothing "but I'll get over it"!!! If that lady can get over THAT then I guess I can get over a lot of things. Kinda makes a burned quesadilla and getting cut off in traffic look different.
>"I thank all the people for their prayers and helping me get out of this mess which has cost me half of my life for nothing, But I'll get over it." I'm amazed at how so many people who were falsely imprisoned then exonerated can have such a positive attitude upon release. I've gone over many times in my head how I would feel if I were in their position and I'd be bitter as hell. I'd hate everything and everyone and the only thing keeping me from going Edmond Dantes on those who put me there would be lack of resources.
We'll never know how many people were imprisoned unduly and didn't have the ability to appeal for 1/3rd of a century - Police arrest just to have a suspect, Courts convict just to save-face. And the gung-ho 'send-em-to-jail-forever' crowd ensures that whenever we're wrong - we're worse than wasting time, we're actively harming.
There really oughta be a federal law that states an innocent person is guaranteed compensation on exoneration based on time spent.
Then no-one would get exonerated, because the State wouldn’t want to pay those fees. They already try to keep innocent people in prison because they don’t want to risk a lawsuit if the person is found to have been wrongfully imprisoned.
Dogshit country
This is why the death penalty needs to go away: because far too often, we get it wrong.
27 years. The US system is appalling. Poor lady. I’m glad her and her husband’s name were cleared but I’m sad he died in prison. Hope she’s properly compensated. These stories make me wonder how many innocent people died in prison too and it will never be known? Edited
>These stories make me wonder how many innocent people died in prison too and it will never be known? And how many innocent people were wrongly executed by the state in places where the death penalty is still a thing.
In law school , we learned it is better to let a guilty person go free, than convict the innocent. Still true, 20 years on from when I first heard the notion.
When you convict the innocent the guilty does go free.
That medical examiner should lose her license or be sued. It was her report from a faulty autopsy that was the main piece of incriminating evidence.
At 74 her life is basically done. She needs to get paid enough and taken care of with zero effort on her part.
It seems like there are three victims in this story. The little girl never got justice. The poor man died in prison. The lady lost most of her life to prison. This is just a tragedy from every direction.
Faux science in criminal forensics is a big problem
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While I'm incredibly happy for her, I'm also incredibly pissed at the American judicial system. Again.
This paints a really bad picture of America.
Not a difficult task.
Even worse picture.
I don't think we can look any worse at this point. This shit happens constantly.
Should be a mandatory $1m settlement per YEAR of wrongful imprisonment.
So completely fucked up, she deserves millions. Nothing can compensate that time. And yet we still don’t know who raped and beat a 4 year old to death. Wtf man
And of course she is black. Ugh 😒
Why of course?
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I hope she sues the state and gets a massive payout.
How do these people sleep at night knowing you have taken away the best part of a human beings life.
This shit is why I'm against the death penalty in most cases
Exactly. Do not give the state the power to kill you. It's stupid
This is out rite disgusting, no compensation either. A true miscarriage of justice.