Huddy Ledbetter
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Aug 30, 2024
I didn't say it should have been commuted because he was black. Admittedly I did conflate his execution with Clinton's pandering to the black community, but in fairness this is all just shitposting, so I didn't really put as much thought into my argument as I could have.I have to be honest, this line of attack is very bizarre. Ricky Ray Rector was a murderer. It wasn't manslaughter. He knew what he was doing. He wasn't born a retard, he had brain damage from a botched suicide attempt after the fact. I don't see any reason why his death sentence should've been commuted just because he's black.
The Rector case honestly comes down to a philosophical argument. He unquestionably knew what he was doing at the time he committed the crime. But he wasn't competent to understand what was happening in his trial and to assist in his defense. How he became incompetent is irrelevant in the eyes of the law. The right to a fair trial includes the ability to understand the charges against you and the consequences of being convicted. And the question of whether the defendant feels remorse for their actions can't be considered if the defendant doesn't even know what they did.
If you disagree with that, I'm not going to try to convince you otherwise. Agree to disagree and all that.
Personally I used to be pro-death penalty, but I've changed my view on the issue in recent years. Not out of sympathy for the condemned, but because I don't trust politicians to have that kind of power over life and death. Clinton is a good example of why: he could have saved Rector's life. Society would not have suffered in any significant way by letting Rector spend the rest of his life in prison watching cartoons and eating pudding. He was no longer a threat to anyone. The kind of people who would vote for Clinton, and the kind of person that Clinton pretended to be, would not have let him die. My point is that Clinton decided this man's fate not because of any moral or ethical principles, but because commuting his sentence would have opened Clinton up to criticism that he was "soft on crime." Rector is just one example of the many people who died or had their lives ruined in the service of Clinton's approval rating.
Last edited: