• KillingTimeItself
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    018 minutes ago

    ok so technically, this wouldn’t be the US regime, this wouldn’t even be a regime at all judging by modern contemporary definitions.

    The dude was executed under state law. In the united states.

    Can we stop referring to the US like this? I get that we have problems but jesus christ it feels loaded calling us a “regime” we’re not all that oppressive, and we’re not all that anti-democratic. Calling it a regime probably makes it more of a regime than it is by itself.

    we could’ve had a productive discussion on the problems with capital punishment, but nope. here we are, not even talking about it at all (aside from the comment threads)

  • @[email protected]
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    23 hours ago

    He wasn’t executed by federal order, it was a state AG being a total murder-hungry dick head. Calling it “the US regime” is some tankie bullshit

  • Philo
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    24 hours ago

    The last thing I will say on this topic is that the US is divided on abortion rights. Only 14 states have total abortion bans since Roe vs Wade was overturned and I doubt anyone here would be foolish enough to claim that those states speak for the entire population of the US. Yet when it comes to the execution by the state of Missouri of a black man, suddenly, that lone state speaks for an entire population of 330 million people.

  • @[email protected]
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    14 hours ago

    Reading about it I am not completly convinced that he is innocent, but I think that there is 100% plausible reason to doubt that he is guilty. This should defintly be enough to stop an execution.

    Edit: Maybe read the whole statement before getting a rage fit? I said he shouldn’t have been killed. I am also not moderate and (according to US standards) I am apparently not white as a muslim turkish person.

    • @[email protected]
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      1021 hours ago

      It doesn’t matter if he did it or not, honestly. If the state can’t be 10000% certain the person they are about to murder is guilty of a heinous crime then it shouldn’t be possible to fucking murder them.

      This isnt about innocence. This is about the state denying this Black Muslim man due process and constitutional protections.

      And on that note, its impossible to prove guilt in these cases, which is why the death penalty needs to be abolished. Are you comfortable with the idea of bring executed for a crime because you were in the wrong place at the wrong time? Because I’m sure fucking not.

    • @Linkerbaan
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      91 day ago

      I’m convinced he is innocent. If he was not they would have evidence instead of paid testimonies against him.

    • @Maggoty
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      524 hours ago

      That’s fine with a sentence of a couple years. But for how hard we’ve seen it become to commute a sentence, we need to be 100% sure for the death penalty.

      • @[email protected]
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        38 hours ago

        I basically said that it is not okay, maybe you should have read the second sentence as well. But even with a “sentence of a couple years”, guilt has to be profen, not innocence. If there is plausible doubt of guilt, there shouldn’t be a guilty sentence.

        • @Maggoty
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          14 hours ago

          Yeah, sorry it’s just worded weirdly and I didn’t get that you were referencing the reasonable doubt standard.

      • @Mango
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        41 day ago

        Is “almost” anywhere in your definition of conviction? If so, you lack conviction.

  • @breadsmasher
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    551 day ago
    • Be an advanced, developed nation
    • Maintain the death penalty

    Pick one.

    • @Mango
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      -81 day ago

      No.

      Death > imprisonment

      You can’t suffer while dead, and you certainly can’t be a prison pimped slave worker while dead. There’s also no way to profit from an execution so far as I can tell.

      Some people need to be gotten rid of instead of being made to suffer on my dime. This is especially true depending on your views on free will. It’s triple true when you consider how much crime is just a result of unnatural financial pressures that none of us evolved to deal with.

      • Juniper (she/her) 🫐
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        91 day ago

        That is frankly a disgusting point of view. Death and non-rehabilitory imprisonment are both wrong but not because it “costs money”.

        This is clearly from an incredibly privileged person, because if you understood how minoritized people are treated by the legal system you wouldn’t be arguing for more executions.

        • @Mango
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          -61 day ago

          Removed by mod

          • @[email protected]
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            724 hours ago

            I’d rather be dead

            hey cool, then you can request the judge for the death penalty instead of life (people have done that before). But you don’t get to make that decision for other people. And to do it over your tax money? (which by the way, is a fraction that your employer steals from the value you produce for them every day)? it’s a misanthropic and myopic selfish callousness; whether or not you have struggled it is a sign of insularity to ascribe your experiences to others and how it “should be”, and to do it in such a transactional way is even more disturbing.

            I’d like to know how much you can cope with…

            unclench your jaw and breathe friend, this is unreasonable

            • @Mango
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              -224 hours ago

              I can see that you haven’t been through pain and helplessness at the whim of government, and that’s how you think death is worse. Looks like you also believe they give us options and rights the way they tell you in school.

              • @thrawn
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                134 minutes ago

                You completely ignored the most important part to continue harping on your personal qualms.

                hey cool, then you can request the judge for the death penalty instead of life (people have done that before). But you don’t get to make that decision for other people.

                That is a perfectly reasonable compromise. I too feel that life imprisonment is worse than death, but most people being wrongfully executed do not. You can acknowledge the superior solution then continue on your personal experience.

                I can see that you haven’t been through pain and helplessness at the whim of government, and that’s how you think death is worse.

                Not to diminish your experience, but Marcellus Williams went through far, far more than you have. He disagreed. So since you haven’t been through pain and helplessness at the whim of government as he had, is your opinion worth nothing next to his?

                Of course not. Everyone can have an opinion on the death sentence. I’m sorry for what happened to you, but it doesn’t automatically make you right.

                • @Mango
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                  114 minutes ago

                  I directly addressed that first point, so I’m gonna leave that one alone. You also think it’s like they tell you in school and news.

              • Juniper (she/her) 🫐
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                522 hours ago

                There are fates worse than death, you’re right. But I think you would be one of the few who would prefer it to prison as it currently exists. But I think a sub point you have made is that prison is tantamount to torture, and I in some ways agree with that, which is why I say that non-rehabilitory prisons are unethical. It’s also the model in the entire US.

                • @Mango
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                  022 hours ago

                  Trapping people is evil.

      • @Warl0k3
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        31 day ago

        And the huge list of people executed by the state despite it being reasonably likely they’re actually innocent is… cheaper (it’s not), and therefore acceptable?

        • @Mango
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          -21 day ago

          Absolutely not. I’ve been bullied into a false conviction myself. The reason why is that they absolutely do not give a single fuck about the people they’re ruining. Even the slightest bit of interest in being right from the court system and police would be a massive improvement for everyone. If suggest training if the problem was stupidity, but it’s malice. They know what the fuck they’re doing.

          • @Warl0k3
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            24 hours ago

            Which is why you… support the death penalty? Am I misunderstanding something here?

            • @Mango
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              -224 hours ago

              I’m just putting it above imprisonment. I think that if you believe someone needs punished so badly, you should have the conviction to kill them because otherwise you’re just making things worse for everyone. The issue at hand is that nobody has conviction anymore. What they have is blind rage and not enough time or resources to figure out where to put that because we’re all kept busy by the people farming us and controlling the story. Things like petty theft wouldn’t matter if our economic value weren’t skimmed by employers so ridiculously.

    • @[email protected]
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      -131 day ago

      Capital punishment is a state level policy. The USA has almost 400 million people and has never been a monolith of culture, thought, beliefs, or values. Missouri is a shit state with shit policies.

      • TheTechnician27
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        1 day ago
        • The US federal government has the authority to, at any time, outlaw state-sanctioned murder across the country either via Supreme Court ruling or via constitutional amendment and tell states to kick rocks. It chooses not to do this. I don’t care that an amendment is “hard”; if it’s possible to do but it fails to do this, then it’s the federal government’s fault. The votes of about 355 legislators and the signature of Joe Biden 5 SCOTUS justices could end this today; it’s the stroke of a pen, and they simply don’t do it.
        • This case went before the SCOTUS requesting an emergency block, where it was voted against 6–3. The SCOTUS had the power to trivially prevent this and decided not to.
        • The majority of US states (27) as well as the federal government have state-sanctioned murder on the books as a legal criminal punishment. 12 states and the federal government have carried it out in the last 10 years.
        • This is incidental to your overall point, but the current US population is ~337 million; “almost” 400 million is doing so much lifting there.

        Edit: I accidentally became so sleep-deprived that I forgot a constitutional amendment has a separate proposal and ratification process. The SCOTUS method would 100% work, though, and it hasn’t yet been banned at the federal level which is a simple majority of Congress and a presidential signature, so they do overall endorse it.

          • TheTechnician27
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            1 day ago

            Ah, yep, I was too sleep-deprived to remember that proposal and ratification are separate processes. Still objectively represents a failure of the United States that they can’t push this through. And of course that Congress could actually at any time ban it at the federal level with just a majority vote and haven’t done so. Or that the SCOTUS could actually ban it unilaterally. Or that even just a successfully proposed constitutional amendment would represent taking a stand against it, but they haven’t even done that.

            • TrenchcoatFullOfBats
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              11 day ago

              Roe v. Wade worked, until it didn’t. Legalizing something via SCOTUS has lately proven to be as permanent as the political views of a majority of the justices on that bench.

              The only correct way to fix this problem is via a Constitutional amendment, and that’s never going to happen because Republicans have rage boners for state-sponsored killing, or in this case, murder.

        • P03 Locke
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          1 day ago

          The votes of about 355 legislators and the signature of Joe Biden could end this today; it’s the stroke of a pen, and they simply don’t do it.

          And 269 of those legislators are Republicans, most of which are uncaring sociopathic individuals who were voted in by a party of spiteful, hateful, racist voters.

          The best way to change that situation is to vote. Don’t bitch about it. Vote.

          This case went before the SCOTUS requesting an emergency block, where it was voted against 6–3. The SCOTUS had the power to trivially prevent this and decided not to.

          Wow… 6-3, I wonder where I’ve heard that split before? Oh, right, it’s the same SCOTUS split that has been going on ever since Trump put three immoral and corruptible judges unto the Supreme Court, voted in by Republicans in the Senate, who were in turn, voted in by Republicans.

          The best way to change that situation is to vote. Don’t bitch about it. Vote.

          The majority of US states (27) as well as the federal government have state-sanctioned murder on the books as a legal criminal punishment. 12 states and the federal government have carried it out in the last 10 years.

          And most of those states are red states… you know, the states filled to the brim with Republicans.

          Are you starting to see a pattern here?

          • TheTechnician27
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            1 day ago

            And 269 of those legislators are Republicans

            I 100% agree with you that they’re vermin. My point is that they nonetheless are members of the federal government which could otherwise ban this.

            Don’t bitch about it. Vote.

            I’m quite content to do both actually, thank you very much.

            I wonder where I’ve heard that split before?

            Yes, and I’ve mentioned that split elsewhere in this thread; doesn’t mean that these traitorous fucks don’t have control over the entire US through essentially unchecked authority and that that is – say it with me – inherently the fault of the United States.

            Most of those states are red states.

            Nobody’s disputing that. See the first portion of this response.

            I think you think what I’m saying is some kind of weird both-sidesism (it’s not; the world would be a markedly better place if every Republican were replaced by a Democrat counterpart), but the fact is that a ban on capital punishment can’t happen because the US is backward enough to have too many of these Republicans representing it.

            • P03 Locke
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              01 day ago

              It’s not about voting for Obama that one time in 2008, and crying that he didn’t single-handedly fix all of your problems with his powers as a king.

      • @breadsmasher
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        51 day ago

        Is the death penalty illegal at the federal level?

        • TheTechnician27
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          21 day ago

          No, it is not, and it was carried out under Trump.

  • Don Escobar
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    211 day ago

    For the record, the super majority of pro-life Christian, patriotic judges in SCOTUS voted against stopping this on a 6-3 ruling.

  • Christian
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    171 day ago

    This kind of thing makes me go into denial. I hate my country, but this absolutely cannot be real. It’s horrible clickbait, or propaganda supporting my existing beliefs about how inhumane it is here.

    I struggle to imagine someone administering a needle for an innocent man to die, rather than quitting on the spot. I struggle to imagine someone certifying paperwork to appove this to happen. But I am entirely incapable of imagining the number of human cogs that would need to be similarly compliant for this to be followed through to completion. I am not interested in trying to imagine. This story is fiction because admitting otherwise will break what’s left of my sanity.

    You can show me horrors and get me to admit and speak of them as reality, but you can’t get me to believe them.

    • DessalinesOP
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      151 day ago

      A stunning number of people in the links of that chain could’ve stopped it, and none of them cared to risk their employment over it.

      I’ve seen it said that if you live in the US, you can ask yourself a question: “If you lived in Nazi Germany, what would you have done to oppose that state?”

      The answer: You’re doing it right now. Nazi Germany’s leaders explicitly stated that its model of colonialism and expansionism in eastern europe, eugenics practices, and its racial state, were all based on the US model, which nearly successfully carried out everything Nazi Germany failed to do: eviction and genocide of its indigenous inhabitants, stealing a continent, and erecting a white-supremacist state on top of it.

    • @[email protected]
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      1 day ago

      The Innocence project is real and they do incredible work. They rarely take cases that don’t have new DNA evidence due to the difficulty in overturning a conviction. They could probably use your financial support.

      –The site which we don’t speak of had a mainstream news article to this story monday night explaining that the state was already refusing to grant a stay of execution even with prosecuting attornies new doubts.

    • @[email protected]
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      I’ve come to realize that a significant portion of people just think other people should die and that’s fair and they’re OK with being the ones to do it.

      I saw an Instagram reel the other day of someone in the military describing the best way to decide who to kill and who not to as you storm a civilian building, plus the latest Behind the Bastards about Yarvin’s affect on JD Vance and their belief that violence / killing and enforced poverty / slavery is not only a necessary but desirable method of governmental change - not as a reaction to oppression but as administrative.

      • @[email protected]
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        23 hours ago

        I’ve come to realize that a significant portion of people just think other people should die and that’s fair and they’re OK with being the ones to do it.

        It has always been this way. Particularly because there are people and groups who actively materially benefit from the enforced poverty/slavery and oppression of other people and groups within the social organization of our societies. The enforced poverty/slavery will never stop without sufficient and sufficiently organized, centralized, disciplined violence to overcome those who actively benefit from the enforced poverty/slavery by means of the same; and then maintaining that authority over the exploiters until their interest and strength are no more.

        It’s the same reason why there’s never been a “peaceful bloodless decolonization.” Why would the colonizer ever willingly permit that? They would be, from a standpoint of their own material interest as a societal class, complete morons to do so and make such a willing choice. Which is why (and this is historically borne out) they must be not given a choice by an organized militant anti-colonial resistance. This is also why the “authoritarianism” criticism of the doctrine and practice of revolutionary groups like Castro’s revolutionaries or Lenin’s Bolsheviks is laughable; the liberal peanut gallery can only have that criticism because they succeeded and survived to be criticized; having overcome the oppressors who, in the event of the revolutionaries’ failure (historically borne out in how every failed revolution played out including the previous ones in those countries); would show the truth of themselves as 1000x more vicious, having honed that capability for 100x longer.

        Look up any countries’ “Red Terror” in history, then look up their corresponding “White Terror.” You will see [wiki:NSFW images if you click on them]. Or read about any decolonization struggle. Like in Algeria, where every uprising that killed 10 Frenchmen resulted in a colonial reprisal with hundreds of butchered Algerians.

        We live in a material reality with material interests which are enforced by people who will use your pacifism as a means to exploit you easier, and kill you easier if you even are seen as inconvenient or ‘in the way’ of those interests, let alone if you resist and struggle against them. And that argument has been happening since Marx and Engels’ time in the framework of materialism; and was exactly the realm of rationale behind the policy of terror with the Jacobins before that in the French Revolution; from which many later revolutionaries took lessons and learned from the mistakes and refined within their contemporary material conditions and circumstances.

      • @shalafi
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        31 day ago

        someone in the military describing the best way to decide who to kill

        Read a book by a Navy SEAL who was in Afghanistan. He said if they were wearing black Reeboks they were fighters, shoot to kill on sight.

        I’m betting he was right! But Jesus, using that as a hard criteria to execute someone?!

  • @NotAnotherLemmyUser
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    111 day ago

    Misleading title, this was a Missouri State case, not a federal one.

    That being said, there are way too many innocent people getting killed for crimes they did not commit.

    The only purpose of the death penalty is revenge. It has no place in a modern society.

    • DessalinesOP
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      81 day ago

      Both the death penalty, and a system of slave labor camps, are allowed at the federal level:

      • The US currently operates a system of slave labor camps, including at least 54 prison farms involved in agricultural slave labor. Outside of agricultural slavery, Federal Prison Industries operates a multi-billion dollar industry with ~ 52 prison factories , where prisoners produce furniture, clothing, circuit boards, products for the military, computer aided design services, call center support for private companies. 1, 2, 3
    • TheTechnician27
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      How is this a misleading title? On the one hand, yes, the fed can carry out state-sanctioned murder too (and it’s something Trump resumed), but 1) it’s absolutely the case that the “death penalty” should and could be banned nation-wide but isn’t, and 2) this went before the SCOTUS for an emergency block, but it was voted 6–3 not to block (I’m guessing you know that all of the six were the treasonous fuckwits nominated by Republicans and all three were sensible jurists nominated by Democrats).

      What happened here is absolutely still the fault of the federal government. Of course I still agree with the rest of your comment. I just mean to say that even if you somehow totally divorce a US state from the US itself, it’s still the US’ fault.

      • Philo
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        -121 day ago

        Like a book can be judged by its cover cause its all the same book?

    • @[email protected]
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      61 day ago

      Sure, we’ll pretend that this hasn’t been happening here for hundreds of years across all 50 states.

    • TheTechnician27
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      The fact that the US federal government has the power to outlaw this but doesn’t, that this specific execution was brought before the Supreme Court and they voted against blocking it 6–3, and the fact that the majority of US states (27) and the federal government have this on the books speak for the US now, yes.

      Taken to an absurd extreme, let’s imagine that the US federal government and 27 of its states explicitly had statutes on the books stating “you can legally rape puppies”, and you stepping in and saying “Well that doesn’t speak for the entire US! Stop trying to make it sound like everyone condones puppy rape just because Missouri allows it!” Would you say that then? Because I feel like any rational person would be asking “Why does the US allow this to happen?” If not, why would you say it here? The US is simply backwards in this regard.

      • Philo
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        -81 day ago

        Puppy rape? Is that supposed to be an argument?

        • TheTechnician27
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          51 day ago

          Would you come to the US’ defense in the same way that you are right now over state-sanctioned murder in the situation I outlined? It’s a very simple yes/no question that you’re tiptoeing around for seemingly no reason.

          • Philo
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            -61 day ago

            In saying that one state doesn’t speak for the entire country, YES. That was said in my first comment, maybe you should reread it.

            • TheTechnician27
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              31 day ago

              Damn, last I checked, 27 plus the federal government was more than 1. Maybe the federal government expressed as an integer actually comes out to negative 26 and makes your ridiculous defense make any sense.

              • Philo
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                -71 day ago

                I didn’t mention numbers but you mentioned puppy rape. Stop drinking so early, it’ll rot your liver.

                • TheTechnician27
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                  61 day ago

                  I didn’t mention numbers

                  One state

                  I think you got lost on the way to /c/preschool where they teach you what numbers are.

  • @[email protected]
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    -21 day ago

    Some context:

    Williams had an extensive criminal record.

    Lara Asaro, the girlfriend of Williams at the time of the crime, gave testimony that Williams had confessed to her and detailed what had happened. This is after she discovered evidence from the crime scene in Williams’ car.

    Unlike Cole’s deposition, which was compatible with news reports, she is said to have provided details that had not been mentioned in the public accounts of the crime,[13][14] a point contested by the Innocence Project.[2][15]

    A witness testified that Williams had sold the victim’s laptop to him.[16]

    • @Ultraviolet
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      11 day ago

      That’s not evidence beyond a reasonable doubt. It’s suspicion at best.

    • TheTechnician27
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      41 day ago

      Just casually blaming a victim of lynching for being lynched. I bet you’re the type that peddled the George Floyd overdose conspiracy too. 🙄

      • @[email protected]
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        -11 day ago

        I’m only posting some context from Wikipedia, I didn’t make a comment in either direction