Death penalty with zero physical evidence. With one witness testimony. Testimony obtained in exchange for leniency, and thus questionable at best. Fucking insane. SC again showing they are an ass backwards place.
There’s never a good justification for the death penalty. Executions are never justice. It’s always vengeance. Guilt is preferred, but not required.
We are all of us complicit in the death of innocent people. I don’t know if this man was innocent or guilty, but I do know for certain that we have executed innocent people. There is no support for the death penalty without acknowledging that it requires killing innocent people.
He was innocent. The guy who implicated him even said so.
It’s actually common for witnesses in a death penalty trial to recant years later. Often courts will ignore the change of heart, chalking it up to empathy and guilt for being a part of another human’s execution. The more obvious explanation is that ee execute a lot of innocent people.
You would think that in a civilized, first-world country, that it being a human life , they would take all new information (no matter how unlikely) seriously in the possible event the guy might actually be innocent.
But then again, this is South Carolina we’re talking about…
But that’s my point. It’s not about determining if the person being killed deserves to be killed. That’s not ever the point. The point is to foist all of the bad feelings and sadness and anger onto one single person and then kill them like an effigy. The “guilty” person becomes a literal scapegoat.
How are they vengeful against an innocent? This is just a systemic failure and all involved needs to be audited.
Vengeance is an inherently selfish act. It’s about making yourself feel better by taking your anger out on someone else. It’s easier to take vengeance when the target of your anger is guilty, but people are pretty good at transferring their feelings of sadness and rage onto any target they can fix upon.
