A Texas man who said his death sentence was based on false and unscientific expert testimony was executed Thursday evening for killing a man during a robbery decades ago.
Brent Ray Brewer, 53, received a lethal injection at the state penitentiary in Huntsville for the April 1990 death of Robert Laminack. The inmate was pronounced dead at 6:39 p.m. local time, 15 minutes after the chemicals began flowing.
Prosecutors had said Laminack, 66, gave Brewer and his girlfriend a ride to a Salvation Army location in Amarillo when he was stabbed in the neck and robbed of $140.
Brewer’s execution came hours after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to step in over the inmate’s claims that prosecutors had relied on false and discredited expert testimony at his 2009 resentencing trial.
If that’s how you interpret “pro life” then you must be okay with this execution if you’re “pro choice”. The state “choose” to execute this man after all.
That’s the worst attempt at a gotcha I’ve ever seen.
Ya. It doesn’t make sense at all. That’s like saying anti abortion legislators are Pro choice because they are choosing to force you to have that rapist’s baby.
I mean, the original comment was pretty shit too. That was kinda the point. Knowingly taking words out of context as a gotcha does absolutely nothing useful and only serves to annoy literally everyone involved. You’re not clever
Maybe it wasn’t a “gotcha”?
Okay, then what on Earth was your point?
That using political slogans outside their intended context and reading them literally is a bad idea.
Also that partisans will only notice when you do that for one side’s slogan and not the other.
I’m pretty sure the context that “all life is precious” applies here. That’s what pro-lifers claim. But apparently someone who may be innocent still deserves to be executed according to the people pro-lifers knowingly vote for.
He did not dispute the guilty verdict. He is guilty. He admitted guilt. He has not claimed innocence. Quite the contrary, he explicitly claimed to have committed the murder.
He disputed the expert testimony of a witness at his sentencing hearing who claimed he would forever remain a danger.
Nobody is claiming he is innocent in the article that I read.
But you don’t think that somebody can believe that life is precious but also that some people don’t deserve to live?
Yes, people can believe all kinds of contradictory things. That doesn’t make them any less hypocritical.
Do you think people should be free except when they have committed crimes?
If that’s how you interpret “pro choice” no wonder you want control over women’s bodies…?
This seems like a poor choice of articles to discuss abortion in though. And yes, I know you didn’t start it.
Do you mean to say it’s a bad idea to interpret a political slogan literally and in a different context from where it is meant to be used?
I mean, did you make it past the first sentence in my comment?
… Yes? Not sure how the second sentence is relevant though.
Then exactly what fucking point were you trying to make. If you understood the words I wrote, how did I misinterpret yours? I clearly must have…
All I know is I’m confused. 🙂
I was being too clever, perhaps, for lemmy.
Let me spell it out for you why this is a ridiculous argument.
A person who is “pro-choice” believes that the law should give each affected individual the choice of what to do. It is about individual liberty, and definitely not about a government having a choice. There is simply no way to extend this to mean what you’re saying.
If that’s not enough for you, a person who is “pro-life” believes that the law should not allow an individual to decide what to do. They believe that this individual liberty is not as important as the life of a fetus. So, it’s rather easy to extend this one. In fact, when you hear a pro-life person trying to explain why they are right, virtually all of their rationale also works for people after they are born. But then when you try to show the ramifications of their arguments, they simply don’t accept them.
The problem is that these are not two equal sides. Pro-choice people can actually argue consistently and with conviction. But pro-life people cannot, unless they throw in all this other stuff. So, when people mock “pro-life” in this situation, they are actually mocking the idiotic actual views that these people hold, and contrasting them against an ideal pro-lifer who actually believes what they say.
Disregarding my personal views on this subject, this is a straw man argument.
You have very noticably left out that pro-lifers view the fetus as one of these individuals you say the Pro-choice regard so highly. The Pro life argument is that it should be systemically illegal to end the life of what they view as innocent individuals.
Which… yes, is kind of similar to the general take on this article, regardless of your views on the individuality of fetuses
While I can appreciate what you’re going for here and will even relent that your argument is topical to the discussion at hand. I do feel the need to point out that a fetus is, by deffinition, objectively, not a human being.
I get where you’re coming from and I respect that you believe these 2 things are equitable. But, feelings aside, capital punishment for a human being is very very very different from removing a small collection of half formed cells. Its like comparing the death of an animal to that of a tumor that was removed in a surgical procedure. The tumor died, but it’s not the same thing as killing an actually sentient aninal
(By the way, that downvote didn’t come from me. I upvoted you just to counteract it.)
I don’t understand what you are saying at all. I don’t mean that the argument is unclear. I mean that your sentences don’t make enough sense to me to convey the information to me that you clearly want to convey.
I think you have to be extremely clear when you say that somebody is making a straw man argument. What exactly did I say that was a mischaracterization, and why does it make it easier for me to argue against their point?
I was mocking the shitty logic of the post I replied to. So yes. It is a ridiculous argument. 👍
Congratulations. You’ve managed to read the first sentence without reading anything else. Let me TL;DR it for you. The “shitty logic” you’re referring to is actually pro-choicers giving pro-lifers the best possible interpretation of their own logic. But on the other hand, there is no way to do the same thing to the pro-choice side, because the pro-choicers already believe in the best version of their argument.
To be fair, I wouldn’t read a post that starts with “let me spell it out for you” even if you’re completely right.
I’m guessing you don’t require a particularly compelling reason to avoid reading something.
It’s more like if that’s the tone of your first sentence, I wouldn’t want to be subjected to more condescension.
No, you only like to dish out condescension with phrases like, “I wouldn’t read a post that starts with ‘let me spell it out for you’ even if you’re completely right.”
Sorry for the confusion but I’m not the guy you were talking with. I’m completely on your side I was just critiquing the messaging.
Thanks - being brigaded by libs means I’m kinda skimming responses at this point.
I’m saying maybe use the interpretation of their argument that they use and not the one you wish to shoe-horn onto it. Whenever I’ve listened to pro-lifers (at least the better versed ones) they clearly only intend to stop what they view as “actively killing an unborn child.” Their logic, taken from that POV (and assuming a BUNCH of their premises are true) seems to be reasonably consistent and would have no bearing on the death of a convicted murderer.
It doesn’t matter where they intend to stop.
If I say, “one apple plus one apple is two apples,” and my stated justification is “1+1=2”. And then later, I say, “one orange plus one orange is three oranges,” you would be right to say, “Your justification 1+1=2 also works for oranges, so somewhere in your arguments you’re incorrect.” But here, you’re saying that I can respond, “I only intend to stop at apples,” and that this is “reasonably consistent.”
This is some sort of cognitive dissonance sophistry that simply doesn’t work. It’s not reasonably consistent.
It’s their argument - so yes it does?
Do you believe people should be free? Well how about criminals? Does it matter now “where you intend to stop”?
If I stated that all people deserve to be free, but I actually meant except for criminals, then that is something that I can be challenged about and I can revise my statement, and I could say, “All people except criminals deserve to be free.” But we’re not talking about that. We’re talking about people who believe in absolutes, but never defend the actual ramifications of those beliefs.
I mean… They do.
https://www.focusonthefamily.com/family-qa/pro-life-perspective-on-the-death-penalty/
You may not like the explanation (i don’t). But they do discuss it and have justifications of sorts for their beliefs.
Pro-choice is for bodily autonomy. The death penalty is very much against bodily autonomy.
And “pro life” is for fetuses not convicted murderers.
It’s interesting how partisans view the world though. Anything I post pointing out this discrepancy is voted way down. But the “hurr pro life” post is voted up.
Tribalism is a hell of a drug. 😆
Did you miss the part where he could have been innocent?
Apparently. Can you point that out to me? What I read said he was convicted and twice sentenced to death. And the defence only challenged the death penalty claiming “Richard Coons, falsely claimed Brewer would be a future danger” without any details about what that means (the article seems to be taking their word for it).
And I see a letter from him apologizing for the murder.
Nowhere do I see anybody claiming he is innocent.
The typical pro life position is that a fetus is a person and therefore has a right to live.
Yes, I used “fetus” here to avoid the inevitable “fetuses aren’t people” response.
He didn’t really get to chose. It seems others chose for him…
He chose when he killed his victim.
You’re right. That’s why every aborting woman should be sent to death row /s
I’m against capital punishment because convictions can be overturned, but executions cannot.
That said, your crimes against logic are clear and convincing. Ironically, they’ve also convinced me to change my mind. You, definitely deserve to be executed for this clear case of language perversion and aggregated rhetorical idiocy.
Sooo - my “crime against logic” was a mockery of how bad the logic the person I was responding to was.
I used the same tactic they did. Misunderstanding “the other side” and assuming my straw-man version of their point was valid.
Subtlety doesn’t work on Lemmy or with partisans.
It’s your misunderstanding, not theirs. The origins of the pro-life movement is Catholic and absolutely includes opposition to capital punishment, as well as abortion.
The Democrat party once accepted slavery. Things change.
A pig’s orgasm can last up to 30 minutes!
Figured you’d like to know, as we’re now clearly in the sharing irrelevant facts stage of conversation.
I was too subtle. The Catholics who started it are not the fundies chapioning it today.
No, I understood what you were saying. But the Christian fundamentalists hypocrisy doesn’t invalidate the critique that being pro capital punishment is antithetical to being pro-life.
I mean… If the person making the argument tells you that they only believe in death penalties for people who have been convicted of a heinous crime… You’re telling me that contradicts their belief that an innocent child should not be killed before birth (their believe - not mine)?
I honestly don’t see that as hypocritical.
Lol, good point.