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submitted 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) by alphanerd4@lemmy.world to c/usauthoritarianism@lemmy.world
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[-] Nougat@fedia.io 446 points 7 months ago

One: 65 years, while long, is not "multiple life sentences." Two: The 65 years was shortly thereafter reduced to 55 years, though I am not finding any details on why. That 55 years was 30 for felony murder and 25 for burglary and theft (???), consecutively. Three: Body cam shows A'Donte Washington charging the officer with a drawn weapon, so this does not appear to be a case of abuse of force. Four: A later court changed those to run concurrently, making it an effective 30 years. In this hearing, the victim's own father made a statement that Smith did not deserve to be charged with his son's death. Five: This screenshot is dated less than a week after the original sentencing.

Other notes: There were five teens involved in this burglary, Smith was the only one who did not take a plea deal. The day before this burglary, Smith and others were involved in the murder of another man. The stolen car used in the burglary came from yet another murder. I have to think it was a difficult argument for the defense to make, that Smith "did not intend to hurt anyone." The prosecution surely had an easier time framing this in terms of "Smith was at least present when someone was murdered the day before [it may have been a short time, hours, since the earlier murder was "around midnight" and I don't see what time of day the later burglary occurred]. He had to know that continuing to commit crimes with the same group of people could end with death, and still pressed on."

Whatever your opinion about this situation, you will be better served by presenting it alongside a more complete and accurate respresentation of facts than this screenshot of a tweet contains.

[-] technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com 51 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Body cam shows A’Donte Washington charging the officer with a drawn weapon,

Unsurprisingly there's no footage of this other person in that link. Not that that would justify putting an innocent person in a cage.

There were five teens involved in this burglary, Smith was the only one who did not take a plea deal.

Why would anyone take a plea deal for a murder that they didn't commit? The real problem here is this scam of forcing people into plea deals by threatening them with insane punishments in a fundamentally unjust system. It's gross when people act like refusing a "deal" is some kind of guilt. It's mostly likely the opposite.

The day before this burglary...

That's irrelevant to the cop murdering this kid.

... Smith and others were involved in the murder of another man.

Even if this were relevant, did this even happen? Your article is from 2016 says nothing about Lekeith being convicted.

More generally it's amazing how "normal" people are brainwashed enough to post this kind of copaganda word salad.

There's no "opinion" here. Teenagers shouldn't be convicted for murders committed by cops. It's that simple.

[-] erin 4 points 7 months ago

The parent comment doesn't appear to be copaganda, or even have a stance one way or the other. The comment is context, which is important for discussing the issue at hand. Because of the context, we should not be discussing police brutality or excessive use of force in this case, we should be discussing the immorality of a justice system which allows someone to be charged with felony murder in the case of an accomplice.

To clarify, if this group of teens broke into a home and shot the homeowner, that would be a justified charge of felony murder for all the accomplices. However, their friend chose to essentially commit suicide by cops, and the convicted was running away at the time. Again, the parent comment did not make any qualifiers on the actions of the cops or anyone else present, they posted context with which other commenters can frame their discussion. Nowhere in their other comments could I discern a pro-cop stance, reading with an objective eye. Reactionary pointing of fingers just discourages future posters from providing context.

Before you accuse me of copaganda as well, ACAB, systemic racism is a huge problem in the US, and our justice system is rigged against the most vulnerable.

[-] Nougat@fedia.io 1 points 7 months ago
[-] erin 1 points 7 months ago
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