Summary
Stephanie Diane Dowells, 62, was strangled during an overnight visit with her husband, David Brinson, at Mule Creek state prison in California.
Brinson, serving life without parole for four murders, claimed Dowells passed out, but authorities ruled her death a homicide.
This marks the second strangulation death during a family visit at the prison in a year; Tania Thomas was killed in July 2024 while visiting inmate Anthony Curry. Investigations are ongoing.
California is one of four states allowing family visits to maintain positive relationships.
Which begs the question, at what point is the death penalty a reasonable option?
People here love to talk about killing billionaires, who kill with paper.
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Yeah, this is the right answer.
Also, maybe in 30 years we’ll find a better way to reach out to people and help them.
If you kill that person, you’ll never have a chance.
What about the wife he just killed?
How will killing the husband help the dead wife?
Even among victim families whose perpetrator do receive the death penalty, it doesn’t usually help, and often, it makes it worse for victim families.
Freedom to choose. You dislike freedom?
As written, that’s meaningless. Whose freedom? If you have a point, lay it out clearly.
This is meaningless. You’re disingenuous. If you think everyone in that interaction didn’t make thier own choices you’re an authoritarian coward.
People jump over tiger cages all the time.
Seek help.
Same you’re authoritarian. Straight coward way of thinking. If you need daddy to tell you what’s right and wrong you clearly are an npc.
But we can trust them to imprison people for life? 🤔
The “logic” among you people is really a sight to behold. I can tell you’re just saying what you think will make you look good in front of your peers.
The thing about a life sentence is it can be reversed.
Death can’t.
It can’t be reversed after they’re dead.
You also can’t give them back the time that they lost.
You can give them compensation, at least.
If they’re dead you can’t make them whole.
How do you give them compensation after they’ve died in prison?
Compensate their families or other next of kin.
I’ll be honest, I believe in prison abolition. I don’t really want to defend the concept of life in prison. We don’t need to lock people up.
But it’s clearly better than killing people.
Do families get compensated after their relatives die in prison? That’s a new one to me.
I guess the families could be compensated if their relatives get the death penalty? Then that would make it “ok” by your “logic.”
Yeah, it’d be nice if people didn’t commit crimes. Unfortunately that’s not the world we live in.
You should focus on reality instead of your fantasies more often.
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??? What the fuck? Where do life sentences come from then? The fairy-godmother?
This is why I don’t take you people seriously, lmao.
So it’s acceptable to imprison innocent people for life but not kill them? Or, maybe, your “we can’t trust them” argument was always stupid and you’re just having trouble reconciling that fact.
Did you not read the story? He just killed his own wife, while in prison. It’s not like there’s a chance he was set up by the police. How do you say never?
We’re more than capable of preventing a single individual from causing harm to others without having to kill them. Failing to do so here isn’t justification for introducing the idea to kill them instead.
If we actually had a well run justice system, I don’t think executions would even seem remotely necessary.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1993_Long_Island_Rail_Road_shooting
Here’s a pretty famous case where there were numerous witnesses who survived the attack.
I have to go now.
What’s your point?
There are a lot of examples on this planet that say “never” without devolving into a cesspool of violence. Maybe take some inspiration from those places.
https://cdn.statcdn.com/Infographic/images/normal/25211.jpeg
Yeah, obviously the only two options are allowing overnight conjugal visits, or straight up killing them. Nothing in between.
What a fucking ridiculous thing to say.
people are getting caught up in semantics instead of answering your question, so ill give an opinion as to why its different.
wealthy people are not subject to the same laws and punishments, based souly on their wealth and power getting in the way of the “normal” judiciary process. compared to similar crimes and punishments done by someone who is not in the same class.
the death penalty is also used as a tool to silence political enemies and dissidents, especially in political systems that align with fascism, authoritarianism, etc. (itll start becoming more common in the states, they will just label political rivals and dissidents as “terrorists” more often) whether they commited the crime or not.
essentially, why we may want to redistribute the wealth or “call for the death” of billionaires, its more so that out of everyone, even lowly murderers, their very existence, at the moment they HOARD 1 billion dollars, kills roughly 13,000 people who could have been lifted out of extreme poverty, by that same amount of money, per year, but instead succumb to poverty related deaths.
someone like elon musk as an example, just holding on to a (volatile) 348 billion, causes ROUGHLY 1,000 deaths per day, of people living in extreme poverty, just by him simply holding on to that money. the top 1% in general contribute to roughly 9,159 deaths per day just by hoarding their wealth.
21,500 people on average die from extreme poverty, per day.
they collectively contribute to killing nearly half of the worlds poorest people each day, so that they can have fancy things, and have fancy friends, and do fancy stuff.
that is colder than anything that even the most mentally deranged “lower class” serial killer has ever done.
at least in my personal opinion.
That’s a very interesting thought, deaths per billion hoarded. I was trying to find more info about that topic but couldn’t find anything
Could you point me in the direction of more info?
If you believe the legal system to be 100% effective then a death penalty makes sense
However since in reality no legal system is 100% effective, by allowing death penalty, you are allowing a certain percentage of people to be murdered legally that have not commited the crimes they were convicted of
What about a case like this, where it’s incontrovertible?
You can have incontrovertable (facts) in a case
Laws and rulings by themselves are objective, and by definition are contentious
Now you’re just arguing the definition of the word I used and ignoring the actual facts.
You have a person who we are completely certain committed the crime.
We may feel certain of things, but we weren’t there to witness anything. We didn’t see anything happen, and are only learning of the details after they’ve been filtered through several people. We don’t know anything about motive, potential external threats, anything really. All we know is that this woman was strangled, and it is likely he did it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1993_Long_Island_Rail_Road_shooting
Famous case where there were survivors who witnessed what happened.
I’m just pointing out that there are cases where it’s beyond doubt
Now you are doing a what if scenario, we can do “what ifs” all day…
There is no case that exists right now where it is 100% without a doubt certain that a crime has been commited by an individual Again, no legal system is 100% irrefutable
This one seems to be 100% certain.
Lemme get this straight. You want the people who made this decision the same power to decide if people live or die.
Make it make sense
Which part confuses you?
Shawdow’s point is that there are cases where the facts aren’t clear.
I pointed out in this case it’s certain what happened.
The issue is laws must be written to cover more than just a single case. I may agree it would be fine for this case, but the law must be written to cover other future cases. Then it’s up to the discretion of judges to rule on future cases and apply the law as they see fit.
The issue is that we can’t write perfect laws that will never produce bad outcomes. We can’t trust all judges to be perfectly moral and upstanding and also perfectly accurate in their judgment. In a world with perfections, I could maybe agree with it. That’s not the world we live in.
If every case were so cut and dry, it would work.
But invariably there will come a case where it seems so certain but not be true. To accept the death penalty in any case, we must be okay with it being applied at least once to kill an innocent person.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackstone's_ratio
That’s an idea from 1760. Long before the invention of camera, DNA testing etc etc etc.
It’s premise is that the courts can never be 100% correct. There is no level of burden of proof which is infallible.
No amount of modern technology guarantees that an innocent man won’t inadvertently be convicted and sentenced to death.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_exonerated_death_row_inmates
He was in a cell with his wife and she was killed.
You’re already jumping to conclusions, specifically that he was definitely in the cell with his wife when she died and that she was killed.
There’s still some doubts that can be cast, especially given the few details we have.
He didn’t have control over who could enter or leave the cell, it’s possible someone else did the murdering.
Heck with the evidence we have access to, it’s possible she never entered the cell alive.
It could have been accidental as the result of something consensual.
It could be coincidental that something consensual happened and after which see died of an unrelated cause.
It could have been suicide, where she wanted to be with him at the time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1993_Long_Island_Rail_Road_shooting
Numerous witnesses saw him get on the train and start shooting.
Say it happened today and there were several independent videos showing the person doing the shooting.
What then?
Raises the question. Begs the question is a very different thing.
Varlet! Wouldst thou claim our English tongue is immutable! Nay, I say 'tis as changeable as the tides, and as various as the flowers in the feilds.
I agree, but certain changes that confuse the language deserve at least a little pushback, especially when it’s due to ignorance that the change occurs.
I’ve been hearing it used ‘the wrong way’ since I was but a wee lad.
And when was the last time you heard ‘wee’ used correctly?
‘begging the question’ is a specific type of logical fallacy
“begging the question or assuming the conclusion (Latin: petītiō principiī) is an informal fallacy that occurs when an argument’s premises assume the truth of the conclusion. Historically, begging the question refers to a fault in a dialectical argument in which the speaker assumes some premise that has not been demonstrated to be true. In modern usage, it has come to refer to an argument in which the premises assume the conclusion without supporting it. This makes it an example of circular reasoning.” -per wikipedia
“You fools! Dr. Frankenstein was the real monster!!”
It’s not that he doesn’t deserve it or lack of evidence. It’s because the state shouldn’t have that authority. At all. Ever. Look at the fuckery going on in the Whitehouse. Ten years ago 90% of people would’ve said this isn’t even possible. Close that door, lock it, throw away the key. It’s not about justice for in one case, it’s more important to prevent greater injustice.
The state has nuclear weapons. The state kills people in shoot outs with the police all the time.
He killed his wife. Where’s her justice?
That’s exactly what I’m saying. It’s not about justice for one person.
Then try this. Call him Joe. Joe has a rare blood type that can cure cancer. Joe doesn’t feel like giving his blood away. No amount of persuasion or money will change Joe’s mind. If justice for one person doesn’t matter, do we have a right to lock Joe up and take his blood?
And if we don’t have the right, why are Joe’s rights greater than the dead wife’s?
Joe is human. He doesn’t have more rights than his wife, her right to life was cruelly taken from her in a criminal act. That isn’t fixed by taking more life. It just makes the government an even bigger criminal.
Edit: due to the scale of them taking far more lives.
So now all prisoners know that they can kill guards and visitors and have no punishment?
Two questions:
It’s not so unlike my job. Things go wrong and situations get fucked up, but retribution doesn’t fix anything. You have to identify how to resolve any ongoing situation and then prevent it from happening again. If the guy isn’t in a situation where he can attack anyone else, what more needs to be done to keep people safe?
There is no fixing the damage the guy has done, with or without retribution. That is only to assuage our own emotional wants.
Look at Luigi. He (allegedly) killed one person. No aggravating factors. The laws say he can’t be executed for that, so now he’s charged with terrorism. Same with people who vandalize fucking Teslas. I doubt they are going to face execution, but nothing actually prevents that.
If the state wants to murder someone, it will find a way to make it legal to do so if there is any avenue at all. Let’s just take it off the board.
We keep going back and forth over the same point. Let’s agree to end it here.
Have a nice day.
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He’s gonna die in a cage.
You’re discussing revenge, not justice.
How about never? Government should never have to decide to kill anyone unless ifs for a respectable death by euthanasia
Locking folks up for life is cheaper. I’d be fine leaving Elon on a deserted island somewhere around Point Nemo and occasionally airdropping food and the like.
I don’t have an issue with the death penalty.
The pushback against the death penalty and the idea that prisons are for “rehabilitation” instead of punishment is really just new-age nonsense by people who are afraid of the real world.
It’s why we pretty much only see them making these arguments on the internet; it’s the only place they can survive.