First, they came for the truth tellers: WaPo editorial staff, CBS 60 Minutes, Stephen Colbert, & now Jimmy Kimmel. Trump is suing the New York Times & the Wall Street Journal (itself, a deeply conservative rag). Now a tragic killing is being used to justify more silencing of truth and conscience.
Mike Crowley
@mcrowley
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Locally, I have advocated for better budgeting and school funding. Nationally, I have plugged criminal justice reform. Former school board member. Former Senior Fellow, Brennan Center for Justice. Former White House OMB. Now Belmont MA Town Moderator.
First, they came for the truth tellers: WaPo editorial staff, CBS 60 Minutes, Stephen Colbert, & now Jimmy Kimmel. Trump is suing the New York Times & the Wall Street Journal (itself, a deeply conservative rag). Now a tragic killing is being used to justify more silencing of truth and conscience.
Massachusetts governor proposes mass pardon of thousands of misdemeanor simple cannabis possession convictions. It’s the right thing to do. Criminal convictions often carry collateral consequences that can negatively affect people’s lives for years.
https://www.wbur.org/news/2024/03/13/massachusetts-governor-pardon-marijuana-possession
Healey announces sweeping pardons for simple possession of cannabis | WBUR News
Healey's pardon forgives all state court misdemeanor convictions for possession of marijuana before March 13, 2024. It does not apply to charges of distribution, trafficking, or operating a motor vehicle under the influence.
Our criminal justice system has failings that boggle the minds of thinking, rational people. The death penalty is the worst. In addition to its barbarity, it permanently silences claims of innocence. And we know that innocents have been executed in the U.S.
Ivan Cantu, Texas man who long claimed innocence is executed
A Texas inmate who long claimed his conviction more than 20 years ago was based on false testimony and questionable evidence has been executed for the slayings of two people, including his cousin. Ivan Cantu received a lethal injection Wednesday evening at the Texas state penitentiary in Huntsville. The 50-year-old was put to death for the November 2000 shooting deaths of his cousin James Mosqueda and Mosqueda’s girlfriend, Amy Kitchen. Prosecutors said Mosqueda dealt illegal drugs and that Cantu killed his cousin and Kitchen as he tried to steal drugs and cash from his cousin’s north Dallas home. Cantu had long claimed a rival drug dealer killed the two and said in his last words that he was innocent.
Legislation introduced in Ohio and supported by its AG would restart executions using nitrogen hypoxia — smothering people to death — copying Alabama’s horrific recent execution.
Just because the Supreme Court has ruled that Alabama may proceed with a nitrogen gas execution doesn't make the decision correct. Effectively death by smothering, nitrogen gas execution is an ethical and legal abomination.
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/01/25/supreme-court-alabama-execution-00138007
No evidence linking him to a murder except shifting testimony of a jailhouse informant who stood to benefit. DNA evidence links someone else. So why is Missouri fast tracking Marcellus Williams' execution? #deathpenalty #criminaljustice
https://theintercept.com/2024/01/14/missouri-dna-marcellus-williams-execution/
A judge has granted Alabama permission to perform a nitrogen gas execution. Let's be honest, this is suffocating the man to death and pure barbarism. It has no place in a true justice system. #deathpenalty #criminaljustice
Federal prisons are a mess, shortstaffed and posing a danger to those employed AND incarcerated there. Yet programs to ease crowding are ending, just when it is clear that they should be expanded. #criminaljustice #prisons
https://www.themarshallproject.org/2024/01/06/federal-prisons-release-staffing
Just a handful of mostly southern states still execute people in the U.S., running counter to prevailing public opinion. But they’re also inventing new ways to kill people and bring back old ones. It’s a pox on our justice system. #criminaljustice #deathpenalty