Executed for being Gay, in the USA

[Stavros]

The Supreme Court has decided not to interfere in the decision of South Dakota to execute a man convicted of murder even though revelations from the jury concern his status as a gay man and their view he would 'enjoy' life imprisonment, and therefore should be executed.

During deliberations, the jury had often discussed the fact that Mr. Rhines was gay and there was “a lot of disgust” about it, one juror recalled in an interview, according to the court petition. Another said that jurors knew he was gay and “thought that he shouldn’t be able to spend his life with men in prison.” A third recounted hearing that if the jury did not sentence Mr. Rhines to death, “if he’s gay, we’d be sending him where he wants to go.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/19/o...death-row.html

There are now no limits to what the Republican Party can do, no institution to stand in its way, no opposition worthy of the name, so terrified are they all of incurring the wrath of their God and King in the White House, He Who Must Be Obeyed.

As the Us trashes the peaceful international order established in 1945, as it insults and abuses its (former?) allies while heaping praise on dictators and mass murderers, as it withdraws from the UN Human Rights Council claiming it is hypocritical to attack Israel when the US itself is an ally of Saudi Arabia one can see the end-goal here is to abandon the United Nations itself, and evict it from New York City, a real estate project America's God and King has dreamed of for decades.

But if you are gay, or transgendered, at least you can be sure now that you are a second or third-class type of person, maybe just an infestation in the Christian America these people dream of creating on the rubble of freedom.

Guess its all over now, Stonewall was a waste of time.

[Murmdrum]

you kill you should be killed...period. I dont get behind what these jurors were saying and discussing.I am not like that..but I am an eye for an eye guy when it is proven beyond reasonable doubt that someone has taken a life that theirs should end as well

[Nick Danger]

The Supreme Court has decided not to interfere in the decision of South Dakota to execute a man convicted of murder even though revelations from the jury concern his status as a gay man and their view he would 'enjoy' life imprisonment, and therefore should be executed.

During deliberations, the jury had often discussed the fact that Mr. Rhines was gay and there was “a lot of disgust” about it, one juror recalled in an interview, according to the court petition. Another said that jurors knew he was gay and “thought that he shouldn’t be able to spend his life with men in prison.” A third recounted hearing that if the jury did not sentence Mr. Rhines to death, “if he’s gay, we’d be sending him where he wants to go.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/19/o...death-row.html

There are now no limits to what the Republican Party can do, no institution to stand in its way, no opposition worthy of the name, so terrified are they all of incurring the wrath of their God and King in the White House, He Who Must Be Obeyed.

As the Us trashes the peaceful international order established in 1945, as it insults and abuses its (former?) allies while heaping praise on dictators and mass murderers, as it withdraws from the UN Human Rights Council claiming it is hypocritical to attack Israel when the US itself is an ally of Saudi Arabia one can see the end-goal here is to abandon the United Nations itself, and evict it from New York City, a real estate project America's God and King has dreamed of for decades.

But if you are gay, or transgendered, at least you can be sure now that you are a second or third-class type of person, maybe just an infestation in the Christian America these people dream of creating on the rubble of freedom.

Guess its all over now, Stonewall was a waste of time.

Eloquently stated, Stavros but as is so common from the liberal perspective, the glue that holds your outrage together is composed of hyperbole and sometimes, outright poppycock.

The man is not being executed for being gay, he is being executed for killing a man. I expect he is being treated unfairly by the courts, because it seems he should be able to make his case that the jury leaned toward execution for prejudicial reasons. Nonetheless, it is notoriously difficult in this country - particularly in sparely-populated, heavily-conservative states LIKE South Dakota, also North Dakota, Texas, Montana, Nevada - pretty much any state in which a measurable percentage of the population are ranchers, to get a death sentence overturned. True enough there is a long, drawn-out appeals process which lasts for decades in many cases, and they appeal over every whiney detail possible. But eventually those appeals run out, and sometimes it seems unfair. In many cases, as any American who keeps up with the news can tell you, a death sentence is carried out in spite of new and exonerating evidence being discovered.

So this is no surprise, nor is it out-of-line with the many other totally-valid grounds for appeal that have been ignored by courts across this great nation, over the course of its entire existence, in favor of delivering the final blow of justice with no more excuses. It's more the result that when an execution begins drawing media coverage, that's when you can be most sure they are going to carry it out as planned - there's no better advertisement for the death penalty than applying it when the convicted is in the news. This country is serious about the death penalty. Can't say I disagree, I won't say it's a deterrent, but it is justice.

[Stavros]

Two astonishing posts that reveal the extent of moral collapse in the USA.

Evangelical Christians, Fundamentalist Christians, Conservatives -call them what you like, prefer the Bible to the Constitution but cherry pick the bits they like and those they don't -like
-Thou Shalt not Kill for example, clearly irrelevant even if it is one of the Ten Commandments to be Dis-obeyed when you feel like it;
-Forgive them that sin against us -or maybe not as we also like to sin;
-Abortion is wrong because it is wrong to take a life, unless you are a Judge and Jury and then you can take a life and who cares?

Capital punishment in 2018? Hard to believe anyone with a conscience or decency could defend such violence.

Just as astonishing is the glib way in which the values that used to bind American society together are falling to pieces in front of your eyes and you just shrug your shoulders and dismiss it as a Republican blip when the reality is that religious weirdoes and libertarian freaks who used to occupy the fringes of your society are now judges in your courts, legislators in your state capitols, and the officers on patrol who legally kill specific people for the crime of being Black while Driving.

Here is the devastating fact: they hate you, they hate your transexual girlfriend, because you are the pox that has infested American society and broken it. But these are not armchair warriors, they are out for vengeance and these Avengers are using politics and the law to assert their revenge against you and transforming your country into the very kind of theocracy you criticize in Iran (but not Saudi Arabia because the President makes money out of them Arabs). When Sarah Huckabee Sanders defended the despicable policy of tearing infants from their mothers arms to dump them in a cage in Texas, she cited the Bible, not the Constitution, and by acquiescing in this crime against humanity you extend its reach into every corner of society.

They hate you, and they are coming for you, so don't be surprised if the day comes when you are are arrested for 'Driving with a Transexual' and your home in the gulag for 10 years is a mattress on the floor of a cage, your days spent breaking stones as Sessions revives the Chain Gangs today he failed to revive when he was AG in Alabama.

As long as you don't care, or wish it all away, the President addicted to conflict will search for new victims, it is only a matter of time before he runs out of obvious scapegoats and chooses you.

[kfortune]

He's a confessed murderer. Whether the jury acted inappropriately has been appealed at state and Federal level since 1993 - 25 years! This has zilch to do with Republicans. If Justices Ginsburg, Breyer, Kagan and / or Sotamajor had granted cetiorari then his case would have been heard. They didn't.

Sometimes a criminal is a criminal. And his victim might have liked another 25 years of breathing.

[Nick Danger]

Two astonishing posts that reveal the extent of moral collapse in the USA.

Evangelical Christians, Fundamentalist Christians, Conservatives -call them what you like, prefer the Bible to the Constitution but cherry pick the bits they like and those they don't -like
-Thou Shalt not Kill for example, clearly irrelevant even if it is one of the Ten Commandments to be Dis-obeyed when you feel like it;
-Forgive them that sin against us -or maybe not as we also like to sin;
-Abortion is wrong because it is wrong to take a life, unless you are a Judge and Jury and then you can take a life and who cares?

Capital punishment in 2018? Hard to believe anyone with a conscience or decency could defend such violence.

Just as astonishing is the glib way in which the values that used to bind American society together are falling to pieces in front of your eyes and you just shrug your shoulders and dismiss it as a Republican blip when the reality is that religious weirdoes and libertarian freaks who used to occupy the fringes of your society are now judges in your courts, legislators in your state capitols, and the officers on patrol who legally kill specific people for the crime of being Black while Driving.

Here is the devastating fact: they hate you, they hate your transexual girlfriend, because you are the pox that has infested American society and broken it. But these are not armchair warriors, they are out for vengeance and these Avengers are using politics and the law to assert their revenge against you and transforming your country into the very kind of theocracy you criticize in Iran (but not Saudi Arabia because the President makes money out of them Arabs). When Sarah Huckabee Sanders defended the despicable policy of tearing infants from their mothers arms to dump them in a cage in Texas, she cited the Bible, not the Constitution, and by acquiescing in this crime against humanity you extend its reach into every corner of society.

They hate you, and they are coming for you, so don't be surprised if the day comes when you are are arrested for 'Driving with a Transexual' and your home in the gulag for 10 years is a mattress on the floor of a cage, your days spent breaking stones as Sessions revives the Chain Gangs today he failed to revive when he was AG in Alabama.

As long as you don't care, or wish it all away, the President addicted to conflict will search for new victims, it is only a matter of time before he runs out of obvious scapegoats and chooses you.

It must be nice, Stavros, to watch the USA from some faraway place (a place that is undoubtedly under the USA's protection) and render judgment on us for our sins. It must be nice, and it must be easy. Nice and easy.

But here in the actual USA we're sitting on a powder keg 24/7. Poverty is our single most reliable and destructive problem. Drug use to escape the harsh reality that in the end, only you will determine your fate in the USA. The high aesthetic standards of the middle and upper classes ensure there are always plenty of beautiful women and pretty girls flitting around everywhere like helpless birds. Non-stop consumerism ensures there are plenty of high-value goodies on the shelf for sale or for the taking, plenty of money locked away in plenty of vaults all over every city and town. All the riches of the world, to an obscene degree, on display all day, every day, nationwide. The USA is a playground for the twisted and the determined.

So yeah we have the death penalty. Some people deserve it. The tendency is, the ones who do deserve it, get it, and the ones who don't, don't. We've executed Ted Bundy and John Wayne Gacy. You have a problem with those executions? Should those savage, unrepentant mass murderers have been "rehabilitated?" We executed Timothy McVeigh. He blew up a federal building with a U-Haul full of fertilizer and killed 168 innocent people. Execution feel unjust to you in that? If so, do you even have a line that can't be crossed?

Some folks say the existence of the death penalty serves as a deterrent to people doing horrible things to their fellow humans, but I don't really buy that. I'd say usually, when someone is in such a state of mind to commit cold-blooded murder, the consequences are the last thing they're thinking about. What they're thinking about is how they can get away with it.

Also, you know, you talk about state-sanctioned, legally-applied execution as if it's some form of barbarism, even though it is widely-practiced throughout the world and has been throughout history. The debate hasn't been won by soft-on-crime liberals just because it is now 2018. In fact, I'd say the fact it's 2018 and we're currently living under a Republican President who can barely keep his arch-conservative AG on a leash, a Republican congress, and a conservative-majority supreme court might indicate just the OPPOSITE of what you imply must be so obvious, it being the current year.

A last quick question because you truly did lose me toward the end of your post, Stavros. Are you implying that U.S. President Donald Trump is secretly behind the Supreme Court's refusal to hear the Charles Rhines appeal?

[Stavros]

He's a confessed murderer. Whether the jury acted inappropriately has been appealed at state and Federal level since 1993 - 25 years! This has zilch to do with Republicans. If Justices Ginsburg, Breyer, Kagan and / or Sotamajor had granted cetiorari then his case would have been heard. They didn't.
Sometimes a criminal is a criminal. And his victim might have liked another 25 years of breathing.

Your post is naive and misses a key point: when murder has been committed, do you seek revenge, or justice?
Nobody approves of murder it seems, until they are given the opportunity to do it legally, whereupon the taking of a life is justified. The issue here is precisely the refusal of the Supreme Court to fine tune a matter of law which is why they exist, and where, in this specific case, the sexual orientation of the murderer was the key reason they opted for the Death Penalty rather than life imprisonment. In other words, it is because he is Gay that they believe he should be executed. That is the core issue, and that is the core issue you have decided to dodge because I suspect you take some satisfaction in revenge for a horrible murder, rather than administer justice that locks up murderers for life.

[Stavros]

So yeah we have the death penalty. Some people deserve it. The tendency is, the ones who do deserve it, get it, and the ones who don't, don't. We've executed Ted Bundy and John Wayne Gacy. You have a problem with those executions? Should those savage, unrepentant mass murderers have been "rehabilitated?" We executed Timothy McVeigh. He blew up a federal building with a U-Haul full of fertilizer and killed 168 innocent people. Execution feel unjust to you in that? If so, do you even have a line that can't be crossed?


Also, you know, you talk about state-sanctioned, legally-applied execution as if it's some form of barbarism, even though it is widely-practiced throughout the world and has been throughout history.

A last quick question because you truly did lose me toward the end of your post, Stavros. Are you implying that U.S. President Donald Trump is secretly behind the Supreme Court's refusal to hear the Charles Rhines appeal?

Nick, as ever, you dodge the issues I raised, and replace them with poorly argued alternatives.

On capital punishment, it is simple: yes, it is barbaric, because it achieves nothing as, by definition it destroys life. To argue that
state-sanctioned, legally-applied execution...is widely-practiced throughout the world
Puts you on the same level as Saudi Arabia, Iran and Daesh who have all claimed the legal right to execute with the difference they do so in public -Saudi Arabia, one of your closest allies and a major source of your President's wealth, chops heads off in public as did Daesh, albeit one uses a sword where the other used a knife; Gay men have been thrown off buildings or hung from cranes in Iran -what is the difference? Only the method. If you oppose capital punishment for gay men in Iran, you must oppose it in the USA or you are, quite simply, a hypocrite.

My final point was at the core of my original post which concerned the way in which the law is being used to execute gay people in the USA. You cannot dodge this because the Jury has made it clear that it is the sexual orientation of the murderer that has determined their view that Capital Punishment rather than life imprisonment is what he should be subjected to, and the Supreme Court has declined to reverse that decision.

To argue that well, they are rural conservatives from South Dakota trivializes a key feature of the USA that has been evolving for some time in obscurity but is now out in the open: there is no longer a separation of government from religion, but a unity of purpose between Christians, the Presidency, Congress and the Courts.

And here is the even more important point that you dodged: they hate you. They may call themselves Christians but they do not love transgendered Americans, and you don't need to go to South Dakota to hear it when you need only go to California, thus 'Pastor' Jim Domen:

For several years in his 20s, Mr. Domen has said, he had a relationship with a man. After the couple split up, Mr. Domen enrolled as a seminary student at Azusa Pacific University, an evangelical Christian university in Azusa, Calif., and it was there that his life changed at last. He met his future wife; took a job at the California Family Council, an affiliate of Focus on the Family, an organization that promotes “biblical” answers to America’s social problems; and worked toward the passage of Proposition 8, California’s 2008 statewide ballot initiative stating that “only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.”

And if you think Domen is just another nut, read the article about his nationwide campaign, and this nugget on what really happens in your Congress:

Barry Loudermilk, a Republican representative from Georgia, emphasized the biblical character of the Trump administration. “How many of you know that we have a church service every Wednesday night right over here in the Capitol building?” he said. “We have dozens of Bible studies that happen throughout the week. We have ministers that do nothing but walk the halls of the office buildings and drop in and pray with members.”

As for the law, Kellyanne Conway

the White House counselor, was equally ecstatic. “One-eighth of the U.S. Circuit Court judiciary right now is a Donald Trump appointee nominee,” she said, “and we’ve only been here for 16 months.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/20/o...l-right-region

Hence my last point: for a President who only lives to sow division, and addicted to conflict, when he has run out of Democrats, Judges, football players and actors to insult and abuse, he will be coming after you and your transexual girlfriend, not as a publicity stunt, but with the full force of the law, passed by a fundamentalist Christian government, protected and served by fundamentalist Judges who use the Bible rather than the Constitution as their guide.

[seth123]

Just to calm things down a little, I need to point out that no one has been executed in South Dakota since
2012 as far as I can see. In addition, with the million dollar appeal system and the large number of folks with a lot more heinous criminal acts under their belts ahead of him, it is highly likely that Mr Rhines will probably die in prison in almost exactly the way the jurors had intended ( ie.. . without benefiting from the incarceration). What appears to be happening in Government, Law Enforcement ,Education, Religion and Society, is a frustration over results that causes everything to be ramped up to the point where so called "Draconian Measures" are being instituted to deal with just about anything. We are becoming the extremist we despise and the radicals and terrorists we claim to hate.

[deepfix]

First. I don’t agree with the jury system I think it’s ridiculous to trust the fate of someone’s future to a group of randos picked purely to support either side.

Second. Occam’s razor. I find it equally ridiculous to jump to the belief that the “singular” reason he got the death penalty is because he’s gay and would enjoy prison.

Third. Cherry picking the Bible supports basically any side you want to take. I believe God nuked Sodom and Gomorrah for doing gay crap. Just like I believe John the Baptist and Jesus both forgave soldiers for killing.

Fourth. Having spent years in prison I can assure those of you with concerns about “enjoying” it. It sucks. Doesn’t matter what orientation or gender you classify. Also from a classification stand point you would have to assign him as death row/lifer. Someone with no chance of getting out behaves WAY differently than your average joe doing a 5 with a 3. No facility in their right mind would mix those two populations