this post was submitted on 01 Feb 2025

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117

South Carolina executes Marion Bowman as he proclaims his innocence (www.theguardian.com)

submitted 1 week ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (2 children)

Best Carolina executed the youngest person in the US*, 14yo George Stinney after a trial that lasted one day. The trial was May, he was killed in June. He only had one visit with his parents in that time and had no other support. His representation didn't call witnesses or cross examine the State's witnesses. He was propped up in the electric chair by a book because his limbs couldn't reach the restraints.

I oppose Capital punishment, but not on moral grounds. I'm glad they killed Tim McVegh. I was relieved when Biden kept Dylan Roof on Federal Death Row. I wish Susan Smith could have rode the same chair that killed Stinney. I just don't think our legal system is competent to separate the Dylan Roofs from the Marion Bowmans.

*is disputed, Georgia may have killed a 12yo

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 days ago

I have the same stance. Death is absolutely a just punishment for some crimes. But we can't have nice things because humans have proven terrible at separating guilt and innocent.

Innocence Project has helped free literally hundreds of people.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 days ago

I just don’t think our legal system is competent to separate the Dylan Roofs from the Marion Bowmans.

Even if our legal system was, that wouldn't stop a fascist government from using the death penalty to kill its targeted out-groups indiscriminately. Also, the death penalty isn't a useful tool because it doesn't fundamentally correct the underlining social and economic conditions that lead to the kind of violence it fails to deter.

Under some subjective moral systems the death penalty aligns with an ideal of justice. However all it does is kill more people. An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind. That is to say, no one learns anything of value from this process and dead people cannot learn. Justice does not demand punishment equal to that of the crime. In other words, justice can be obtained without necessitating us commit the very actions we have deemed to be unacceptable.

We should want to live under a system that is more humane than the criminals it prosecutes. Our punishment for failing to do this will be to be subjugated by our own flawed system and to have no one to blame but ourselves.

[–] [email protected] 40 points 1 week ago

This is tragic. We can expect more of this over the next four years at least.

[–] [email protected] 29 points 1 week ago

For those who wish to know the salient details of this clear miscarriage of justice:

Bowman, imprisoned for more than half his life, was convicted of the 2001 killing of Kandee Martin, a 21-year-old childhood friend. He has said he did not kill her and that he refused to accept a plea deal because of his innocence. His attorneys said the evidence used against him was not reliable: the primary witnesses implicating him were two men also charged in the crime who received reduced sentences, and a third man who had pending charges in a separate case, which were subsequently dropped.

His lawyers also argued that the state had withheld evidence casting doubt on the witnesses, including a memo outlining a claim that one of the witnesses had confessed to the shooting.

Bowman’s legal team also argued in a recent petition that the lawyer who represented him at trial had been “infected by his own racism”, writing that the lawyer pressured him to plead guilty because he was Black and his victim was white.

Even if he was 100% guilty of the crime, he did not in any way get a fair trial. By any measure, this was a miscarriage of justice and he should be alive today.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 week ago

He refused a plea agreement because he maintained he was innocent

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 week ago

Reading this really broke my heart...what a tragedy...