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.
Abolish capital punishment
I’m so tired of being a part of the murder of innocents on a systemic level.
I’m tired of being part of the murder of the guilty on a systemic level. No crime is heinous enough for me to say “Yeah, government, go ahead and murder us”.
There are absolutely crimes worthy of removing you from the species, permanently.
But until we have a system that can do it with 100% accuracy it shouldnt be an option.
Blackstone’s Ratio is very relevant here, “It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer”
I don’t disagree. There are some sick people in this world that create chaos and torture people for the remaining time here. I don’t believe they deserve life.
However being framed for that is the problem. And I think it’s a very hard teeter totter to walk without problems or mistakes.
Which is why I said that until we have a system that can dispense that justice with 100% accuracy and no error, it shouldnt be an option.
This guy wasn’t an innocent. The testimony that they were trying to challenge was about him being a future risk to the public. He wasn’t trying to say that there was evidence he didn’t do it.
Hey, hi. Not what I’m talking about, thanks. People who are innocent of crimes are killed by capital punishment and I’m really tired of being involved in that against my will.
“Pro-Life”
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.
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.
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?
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
(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?
Because as I read this, you are setting up the argument to be:
Pro choice believes in protecting individual autonomy, as opposed to Pro life, which believes in telling people what to do, because of insert any number of reasons here
This is pretty true of a lot of the pro life apologists and political campaigners, but I feel is a pretty ineffectual argument against the people who truely believe this as an ideology.
The people that truely believe in pro life genuinely don’t see a difference in values about protecting individual autonomy- they believe that’s what they are doing by banning both murder and abortion (something that they don’t differentiate between)
Plenty of these would agree with you that this execution was in fact a murder.
Let me spell it out for you why this is a ridiculous argument.
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.
Congratulations. You’ve managed to read the first sentence without reading anything else. Let me TL;DR it for you.
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.
they clearly only intend to stop what they view as “actively killing an unborn child.”
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 doesn’t matter where they intend to stop.
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”?
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…
Lol, good point.
“Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. For even the very wise cannot see all ends.”
Brewer has long expressed remorse for the killing and a desire to apologize to Laminack’s family.
“I will never be able to repay or replace the hurt (and) worry (and) pain I caused you. I come to you in true humility and honest heart and ask for your forgiveness,” Brewer wrote in a letter to Laminack’s family that was included in his clemency application to the parole board.
So did he do it then? Because it sounds like they were trying to get him off on a technicality, rather than because he didn’t do it and was falsely accused.
You have to show sympathy and remorse to qualify for clemency or parole, so you say you’re sorry for the situation and their loss but never that you’re at fault.
Absolutely, I can understand why he would say he felt sorry for the family. But saying sorry for the pain he caused is an admission of guilt.
I think the timeline went like this:
- 1990 Brewer (then 19) and his girlfriend attack Laminack, killing him.
- 1991 Brewer is convicted and sentenced to death.
- 2007 Supreme Court overturns the decision because of a technicality on the jurors’ instructions.
- 2009 Brewer is re-tried, and again convicted, in part due to expert testimony from Coons.
- 2010 In another trial, Coons’ testimony was ruled as “insufficiently reliable”.
- Brewer’s lawyer then raises an appeal in Texas over Coons’ testimony in 2009. Appeals court says “you should’ve said that in 2009”.
- Brewer’s lawyers escalate to the Supreme Court, however they decline to hear the case, deferring to the Texas Appeals Court’s judgement.
Presumably, Coons’ testimony could have been challenged in 2009 in exactly the same way as it was in 2010, but they didn’t do this. I’m sure Coons is now seen as an unreliable witness, but he was considered reliable up until 2010.
It was actually the Texas Appeals Court that ruled that Coons was unreliable, however presumably the appeal in which they established that was granted for other reasons than his statement alone. Indeed, this is the 2010 case, there were 25 points in question. While the court ruled that Coons’ testimony was unreliable, they still reaffirmed the conviction.
It’s something they must do, read clemency pleas they’re basically all the same because boards want to see the same thing. Factually not guilty people have said the same thing in clemency letters.
I dunno who exactly is at fault nor did I read that much into it, what I am saying is don’t particularly base anything on clemency or parole letters, they’re intentionally flawed so they can be used against the subject later, it’s holdover slave shit that persists.
American justice in a nutshell.
“I didn’t do it!”
“We know, but if you decide to go to trial, chances are you will spend the rest of your natural life in the salt mines. So just sign here and you’ll spend only half your life in the salt mines, guaranteed.”
Yep iirc is somewhere over 60% of all criminal charges are disposed of by plea I think it’s actually 90ish% but I’m not certain.
deleted by creator
This is the 2010 trial in which Coons was declared unreliable: https://law.justia.com/cases/texas/court-of-criminal-appeals/2010/20229.html
In that appeal, they considered 25 points. While they agreed with points 3 and 4 regarding Coons’ testimony, they still upheld the conviction and death sentence. It was the same Texas Court of Appeals that considered that hearing as well as Brewer’s request for appeal.
Brewer and his lawyer were trying to get an appeal based on Coons’ statement, but this almost certainly wouldn’t be enough to change the sentencing, based on their 2010 ruling. I haven’t dug up Brewer’s appeal to see if there were any other reasons, but the fact that they were focusing on this one suggests that there wasn’t much else they could have argued.
No, he was trying to say he would have been sentenced to life instead of death if the jury hadn’t heard certain expert testimony.
I would guess the testimony would be along the lines of blood splatter or some other pseudoscientific forensics where the expert might say the crime was particularly vicious.
That didn’t matter in the death sentence appeal where the court ruled the testimony as unreliable: https://law.justia.com/cases/texas/court-of-criminal-appeals/2010/20229.html
They ruled that the testimony was unreliable, but still let the sentence stand. If all Brewer was arguing was the testimony, then the court would have reached the same conclusion.
Barbaric
The thumbnail looks like a set from a Victorian horror film
Not as barbaric as the murder he committed.
most executions are surprisingly brutal and painful. it probably was worse than being stabbed in the neck
The notions that modern executions by lethal injection are extremely painful are all conjecture. There’s no proof one way or the other. You have no idea which person suffered more, so don’t pretend you do. We know being stabbed in the neck and bleeding out is incredibly painful.
Stop pleading for sympathy for this shithead. I can get behind a ban on the death penalty, but too many people talk about it like the criminals who get executed are poor, unfortunate victims. They’re not. Most of them are assholes who ended someone else’s life. There are plenty of reasons to be against the death penalty, but the notion that cold-blooded murderers don’t deserve death is not one of them.
They’re still human beings and some non-zero percentage of executions are due to wrongful convictions. So, how can you be certain this person was a “shithead” deserving of a prolonged, if not painful, death?
No judgment is 100% certain and I don’t know the details of this case, but I’m also not in favor of the death penalty for this very reason. However, I do get sick of hearing other people claim those executed by the state don’t deserve their executions, because those people don’t know either. In my opinion, from a moral perspective, if you did commit premeditated murder, I do not think you should be allowed to live. So, for me, the problem with the death penalty is that our human justice systems can’t achieve enough certainty to be doling out punishments we can’t take back or ameliorate, but that’s not to say some of if not likely the majority of those who receive death sentences don’t deserve them.
“I don’t know the specifics, but this guy absolutely deserved a painful death. Stop defending him and acting like he deserved to live!”
Now I’m waiting for the ones who don’t like the death penalty because it’s not cruel enough to chime in.
Oh, they’re over on reddit. That place is a cesspool when it comes to posts like this one.
While I’m sure such people exist, I wouldn’t hold your breath waiting for them here.
By why stoop to that level?
I’m not saying we should. I just get irked when people gripe about the death penalty without acknowledging that a lot of the people who receive it deserve it.
deserve it.
Wow what an insightful, well-researched reason.
The dark ages called, they want to know if you’re going to be home for dinner.
You’re that person in your friend group who thinks they’re really funny, but just tells mediocre jokes that a dime-store joke book features, right?
You’re that person who everyone hates and want nothing to do with, who sits at home stewing and planning to shoot up a mall to prove them wrong, right?
Shh… Adults are talking.
The inmate was pronounced dead at 6:39 p.m. local time, 15 minutes after the chemicals began flowing.
15 MINUTES?!
A run of the mill school shooter could kill a whole high school in that time and with less agony.
Surely, the life begins at birth people will mourne say this is a travesty
Anyone who believes in the death penalty is a moron. That’s my final answer.
