7 ms·

The First Time Texas Killed One of My Clients

55 points by samclemens 11y ago

Mithaldu 11y ago
> She could not remember Marvin. Jesus christ, that sentence hit hard. A child having been left alone with a parent that cares so little that the mother has literally no recollection of what kind of person her child was. Where i come from the government will go so far as to send armed police to separate children from family just for not sending them to school, and i'm glad my country is like that.
- idrios 11y ago
  At the end Marvin says the tattoo on his arm says "Bam, ... the name my mother called me". So, there's a chance that among her own psychological issues she just doesn't remember him by the name of Marvin. I couldn't possibly understand the family dynamic these people lived, but this all supports the notion that prisoners like these need help. .. not death
  - themartorana 11y ago
    But that seems like so much work...
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
- thieving_magpie 11y ago
  Armed police for truancy - sounds great. Glad your government always knows whats best, otherwise that's a frightening prospect.
  - techsupporter 11y ago
    Assuming you are from the U.S., I have bad news: Your government does that, too. In every state, truancy is a criminal offense (usually chargeable against the parents) and people are arrested for it.
    - thieving_magpie 11y ago
      It really doesn't matter which country you're talking about. Introducing violence over truancy is a stupid idea.
  - Mithaldu 11y ago
    Well, in one year one of your cops uses more bullets than our entire police force, and that's with the country being roughly 1/5 of yours in population. Also no death penalty. I'm reasonably confident my government has a better grip on these things than yours.
    - thieving_magpie 11y ago
      In one year a single American cop uses the amount of bullets in all of the (guessing German by your name) German police force? Yeah, I believe you. This isn't a government pissing contest - I'm only saying armed response to truancy is stupid. If it happens in the US, it's stupid.
      - Mithaldu 11y ago
        Well, to be fair. It wasn't truancy. It was unqualified parents insisting on home-schooling their gaggle of 4 or so kids, because they were very religious.
        thieving_magpie 11y ago
        Ah. I see. Well that's definitely a thing in the US, I have family that are very religious and home-schooled. I honestly disagree with their lifestyle and subjecting their kids to a lesser education, but that's not my place to decide for them. Nor, as I personally believe, is it my government's job. That's a dangerous road to go down in my opinion.
Etheryte 11y ago
This is deeply touching beyond comparison.
univalent 11y ago
Deeply moving. People fighting the death penalty in Texas deserve our respect no matter where we fall on the issue. They are willing to invest their soul in an uphill battle where the odds are heavily against them.
elipsey 11y ago
I'm not sure it would have mattered if this information had been admissible. Most of the Texans I have known had no sympathy for prisoners. I think this is at least partly because it's easy to be naive when you don't know people who are different from you, and the economic and cultural climate in Texas is highly self segregated. My extended family is from Texas, but I grew up on the west coast, occasionally visiting relatives in Houston suburbs and other pleasant, relatively opulent areas. My aunts and uncles lived in nice neighborhoods and gated communities, and my grandparents house was on two acres next to a country club. I moved to Texas as student and lived in Austin for a while, which was very enjoyable. However, I also traveled, and lived briefly in other parts of Texas, and was amazed at the degree to which people lived in different worlds from one another in the same state. Outside of Austin and the nicer suburbs, a whole different picture started to emerge: --I made friends who owed money to payday lenders and pawn shops, and friends that gave 5% of their income to check cashing stores because their credit wasn't good enough for banks. --I started noticing people at work wearing anklets. One of them lost his job because he wasn't allowed to stay out past 9pm, and then couldn't pay his probation fees; I never saw him again. --After I left Austin, I interacted with the police a lot, although I was never charged with any crime. --I got handcuffed and searched because my license plate marker lights were the wrong color (white). --I got searched because my vehicle “looked stolen.” --When regular police or State Troops pulled me over, other mysterious authority figures sometimes showed up. I was searched on several occasions, sometimes with drug dogs, once by a man in a suit with an unmarked car and no badge. --Police stings and paid citizen informants seemed common, and were often reported. A person who seemed like an obvious paid informant tried to get me to buy heroin, purchase a prostitute, and finally, in apparent desperation, give alcohol to a minor. --I started hearing the N-word a lot but only from the poor whites, and especially regarding the jobs and other resources “they” were taking away from white people. --Neighborhoods were highly segregated, and apparently self segregated by race, but only lower class people talked about which neighborhoods were “black neighborhoods” or “Asian neighborhoods.” (My suburban family members didn't bring this up.) When I made a delivery to the “Vietnamese neighborhood” my boss said: “watch out, or they'll eat your dog!” People said stuff like this all the time, and I got used to it. --Every landlord used the same lease: a huge, crazy contract written by a state trade association. I was told that the terms of this lease couldn't be negotiated, because <something about state law??>. --Protectionism seemed rampant. My family seemed to favor the “pro business” climate, and when I asked people if there is a difference between “pro business” and “pro market” I got blank stares. In other words, when I left the opulent suburbs I was continually surrounded by craven scams and rent seeking behavior, but only a fraction of the people ever seemed to see the negative effects first hand, because most don't interact with people outside their class. I guess you could say things like this about many places, but of all of the places I have been Texas seemed to me to be the most extreme. I have no idea if this is supported by evidence, or is merely an unrepresentative subjective impression (it would be interesting to figure that out somehow). I think where people are less able to self segregate, people of different races and incomes sort of have to deal with each other, and have some face to face interaction that is beneficial to society. I live in NY at the moment, and local politics often involves acrimony over race and class. This may or may not be helpful, but at least it's harder to be as totally naive about how other people live as I was before I lived in Texas.
JoeAltmaier 11y ago
Maybe this is an old article? I cannot find a Texas execution of a multiple-murderer in the last 4 years (that the author has been practicing at their current position) that matches the description (committed their crime before they could 'buy beer'; multiple victims).
- kr7 11y ago
  Derrick Dewayne Charles seems to fit the description. Executed in 2015; black; Houston area; age 19 at offence; 3 victims.
  - JoeAltmaier 11y ago
    That could be it. I was assuming the case must have been nearer the beginning of the author's tenure in Houston. But it could have been just last year; nothing in the article contradicts that. This puts a different light on the article. That case involved premeditated murder, rape, assault and strangulation. I find it harder to be empathetic with the defendant.
    - erikpukinskis 11y ago
      When you see someone who was sadistically abused until they became a sociopathic abuser, you don't feel any empathy?
      - JoeAltmaier 11y ago
        "Harder" The article was carefully written to engender empathy - no mention of the sociopathic tendencies. No mention of victims at all. Stress was on how much he liked sports. But knowledge of all that he was, recasts that story irreparably. He was clearly sociopathic, lacking empathy. Any appearance of normality could not have been sustained. Even the stories of his supposed attachments were probably misinterpretations. These are just observations. Please don't read it as an endorsement of Texas capital punishment, or callous disregard for those broken by a warped society. Also, its not clear that sociopathic abuse was the problem. Empathy is learned before the age of 4(?) or not at all. His mother's mental problems were more likely at the root of it.
tzs 11y ago
> “He was a good boy,” she answered. “Just like any other boy. A normal boy.” Are they ever not? I don't recall ever hearing those who knew a multiple murderer as a child recalling him as bad or abnormal. Edit: to clarify, I'm not saying that she was wrong in this case. This is just a general observation. It seems odd to me that I've never seen an interview with people who knew a mass murderer as a child where they say something like "that kid was a little shit who I knew would end up killing people".
nkurz 11y ago
Here's a recent article that gives a picture of Texas politics. It's too US-centric and political to be submitted here on its own, but I thought it was a rollicking read and may offer insight into some aspects of the criminal justice system in Texas. The thrust is that while Donald Trump is embarrassing to Republicans, current Texas Senator and US presidential candidate Ted Cruz is a lot more dangerous. The closing paragraph gives a sense of the tone: An orange-faced, thin-skinned, narcissistic, blow-hard clown versus a truly scary, malevolent alien from the dark side. Oh, and before I forget, gee, thanks for the choice. But I gotta go with the clown. I have examined the clown pretty closely, too, and I think I can outrun him. The other guy, I’m not so sure. http://www.dallasobserver.com/news/letter-from-texas-listen-america-trump-is-just-embarrassing-cruz-is-scary-8095715 http://www.dallasobserver.com/news/letter-from-texas-listen-...
- themartorana 11y ago
  Yeah that's a terrible [0] article. I have no doubt that Cruz is nuts, and I was hoping this was a straight-laced "here's what he actually believes with evidence" articles, but instead after 6 paragraphs I knew the author didn't like Cruz, but aside from "he's so far right he's in outer space" I had no idea why... The author comes off as nuts him/herself, waving their hands in the air and begging people to listen to them. I think a plain telling of facts about Cruz would be scary enough. Someone should write that. [0] but seriously I'm no one to judge.
  - nkurz 11y ago
    I appreciated the article more for its style than its content. The author does get into some specifics later in the article, although it gets lost behind the imagery and ecstatic prose. I think the author chose to exaggerate his frantic hand waving to try to convey the degree of his terror. Cruz pulled it off because he is very, very smart. But never at any moment during his Senate campaign — nor at any moment during this presidential primary race as far as we can see from here in Texas — has Cruz ever once given any indication that he does not believe in and hold to heart every single word that comes out of his father’s sorcerous mouth. ... He means what he says about pushing 11 million people back across the Mexican border, about using the government to hound, harry and herd human beings based on their sex lives, about stripping women of their physical autonomy, and about all of the superstitious claptrap that issues from his old man’s mouth on evolution, global warming and science itself. The Ivy League took none of that away from him. He held it dear then and holds it dear now. It’s all right there in front of you, not a millimeter beneath the surface. His only bluff is that he shows you less than his full hand, not that he fakes having more. I don't actually know much about Cruz's beliefs. I watched a few excerpts of his father's speeches, and they were about what you'd expect from a Cuban-American fundamentalist preacher who was tortured by communists. This appears to be a more impartial summary of his positions: http://presidential-candidates.insidegov.com/l/62/Ted-Cruz http://presidential-candidates.insidegov.com/l/62/Ted-Cruz
throwaway_xx9 11y ago
> tore at her skin in the belief that bugs were crawling on it. symptom of meth use
duncan_bayne 11y ago
For everyone who is horrified by the details of the death of this single young man, consider: war is this, multiplied by the tens of hundreds of thousands, or even millions. That's not to say that war is never justified. But it is always an almost incalculable tragedy. Imagine a million young Marvins, brutally killed with even less justification then the victim here. A million parents whose political decisions doomed their children, in much the same way that Marvin's parents' decisions helped to doom him.

55 points by samclemens 11y ago

> She could not remember Marvin. Jesus christ, that sentence hit hard. A child having been left alone with a parent that cares so little that the mother has literally no recollection of what kind of person her child was. Where i come from the government will go so far as to send armed police to separate children from family just for not sending them to school, and i'm glad my country is like that.

idrios 11y ago
At the end Marvin says the tattoo on his arm says "Bam, ... the name my mother called me". So, there's a chance that among her own psychological issues she just doesn't remember him by the name of Marvin. I couldn't possibly understand the family dynamic these people lived, but this all supports the notion that prisoners like these need help. .. not death
- themartorana 11y ago
  But that seems like so much work...
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
thieving_magpie 11y ago
Armed police for truancy - sounds great. Glad your government always knows whats best, otherwise that's a frightening prospect.
- techsupporter 11y ago
  Assuming you are from the U.S., I have bad news: Your government does that, too. In every state, truancy is a criminal offense (usually chargeable against the parents) and people are arrested for it.
  - thieving_magpie 11y ago
    It really doesn't matter which country you're talking about. Introducing violence over truancy is a stupid idea.
- Mithaldu 11y ago
  Well, in one year one of your cops uses more bullets than our entire police force, and that's with the country being roughly 1/5 of yours in population. Also no death penalty. I'm reasonably confident my government has a better grip on these things than yours.
  - thieving_magpie 11y ago
    In one year a single American cop uses the amount of bullets in all of the (guessing German by your name) German police force? Yeah, I believe you. This isn't a government pissing contest - I'm only saying armed response to truancy is stupid. If it happens in the US, it's stupid.
    - Mithaldu 11y ago
      Well, to be fair. It wasn't truancy. It was unqualified parents insisting on home-schooling their gaggle of 4 or so kids, because they were very religious.
      - thieving_magpie 11y ago
        Ah. I see. Well that's definitely a thing in the US, I have family that are very religious and home-schooled. I honestly disagree with their lifestyle and subjecting their kids to a lesser education, but that's not my place to decide for them. Nor, as I personally believe, is it my government's job. That's a dangerous road to go down in my opinion.

Etheryte 11y ago

This is deeply touching beyond comparison.

univalent 11y ago

Deeply moving. People fighting the death penalty in Texas deserve our respect no matter where we fall on the issue. They are willing to invest their soul in an uphill battle where the odds are heavily against them.

elipsey 11y ago

I'm not sure it would have mattered if this information had been admissible. Most of the Texans I have known had no sympathy for prisoners. I think this is at least partly because it's easy to be naive when you don't know people who are different from you, and the economic and cultural climate in Texas is highly self segregated. My extended family is from Texas, but I grew up on the west coast, occasionally visiting relatives in Houston suburbs and other pleasant, relatively opulent areas. My aunts and uncles lived in nice neighborhoods and gated communities, and my grandparents house was on two acres next to a country club. I moved to Texas as student and lived in Austin for a while, which was very enjoyable. However, I also traveled, and lived briefly in other parts of Texas, and was amazed at the degree to which people lived in different worlds from one another in the same state. Outside of Austin and the nicer suburbs, a whole different picture started to emerge: --I made friends who owed money to payday lenders and pawn shops, and friends that gave 5% of their income to check cashing stores because their credit wasn't good enough for banks. --I started noticing people at work wearing anklets. One of them lost his job because he wasn't allowed to stay out past 9pm, and then couldn't pay his probation fees; I never saw him again. --After I left Austin, I interacted with the police a lot, although I was never charged with any crime. --I got handcuffed and searched because my license plate marker lights were the wrong color (white). --I got searched because my vehicle “looked stolen.” --When regular police or State Troops pulled me over, other mysterious authority figures sometimes showed up. I was searched on several occasions, sometimes with drug dogs, once by a man in a suit with an unmarked car and no badge. --Police stings and paid citizen informants seemed common, and were often reported. A person who seemed like an obvious paid informant tried to get me to buy heroin, purchase a prostitute, and finally, in apparent desperation, give alcohol to a minor. --I started hearing the N-word a lot but only from the poor whites, and especially regarding the jobs and other resources “they” were taking away from white people. --Neighborhoods were highly segregated, and apparently self segregated by race, but only lower class people talked about which neighborhoods were “black neighborhoods” or “Asian neighborhoods.” (My suburban family members didn't bring this up.) When I made a delivery to the “Vietnamese neighborhood” my boss said: “watch out, or they'll eat your dog!” People said stuff like this all the time, and I got used to it. --Every landlord used the same lease: a huge, crazy contract written by a state trade association. I was told that the terms of this lease couldn't be negotiated, because <something about state law??>. --Protectionism seemed rampant. My family seemed to favor the “pro business” climate, and when I asked people if there is a difference between “pro business” and “pro market” I got blank stares. In other words, when I left the opulent suburbs I was continually surrounded by craven scams and rent seeking behavior, but only a fraction of the people ever seemed to see the negative effects first hand, because most don't interact with people outside their class. I guess you could say things like this about many places, but of all of the places I have been Texas seemed to me to be the most extreme. I have no idea if this is supported by evidence, or is merely an unrepresentative subjective impression (it would be interesting to figure that out somehow). I think where people are less able to self segregate, people of different races and incomes sort of have to deal with each other, and have some face to face interaction that is beneficial to society. I live in NY at the moment, and local politics often involves acrimony over race and class. This may or may not be helpful, but at least it's harder to be as totally naive about how other people live as I was before I lived in Texas.

JoeAltmaier 11y ago

Maybe this is an old article? I cannot find a Texas execution of a multiple-murderer in the last 4 years (that the author has been practicing at their current position) that matches the description (committed their crime before they could 'buy beer'; multiple victims).

kr7 11y ago
Derrick Dewayne Charles seems to fit the description. Executed in 2015; black; Houston area; age 19 at offence; 3 victims.
- JoeAltmaier 11y ago
  That could be it. I was assuming the case must have been nearer the beginning of the author's tenure in Houston. But it could have been just last year; nothing in the article contradicts that. This puts a different light on the article. That case involved premeditated murder, rape, assault and strangulation. I find it harder to be empathetic with the defendant.
  - erikpukinskis 11y ago
    When you see someone who was sadistically abused until they became a sociopathic abuser, you don't feel any empathy?
    - JoeAltmaier 11y ago
      "Harder" The article was carefully written to engender empathy - no mention of the sociopathic tendencies. No mention of victims at all. Stress was on how much he liked sports. But knowledge of all that he was, recasts that story irreparably. He was clearly sociopathic, lacking empathy. Any appearance of normality could not have been sustained. Even the stories of his supposed attachments were probably misinterpretations. These are just observations. Please don't read it as an endorsement of Texas capital punishment, or callous disregard for those broken by a warped society. Also, its not clear that sociopathic abuse was the problem. Empathy is learned before the age of 4(?) or not at all. His mother's mental problems were more likely at the root of it.

tzs 11y ago

> “He was a good boy,” she answered. “Just like any other boy. A normal boy.” Are they ever not? I don't recall ever hearing those who knew a multiple murderer as a child recalling him as bad or abnormal. Edit: to clarify, I'm not saying that she was wrong in this case. This is just a general observation. It seems odd to me that I've never seen an interview with people who knew a mass murderer as a child where they say something like "that kid was a little shit who I knew would end up killing people".

nkurz 11y ago

Here's a recent article that gives a picture of Texas politics. It's too US-centric and political to be submitted here on its own, but I thought it was a rollicking read and may offer insight into some aspects of the criminal justice system in Texas. The thrust is that while Donald Trump is embarrassing to Republicans, current Texas Senator and US presidential candidate Ted Cruz is a lot more dangerous. The closing paragraph gives a sense of the tone: An orange-faced, thin-skinned, narcissistic, blow-hard clown versus a truly scary, malevolent alien from the dark side. Oh, and before I forget, gee, thanks for the choice. But I gotta go with the clown. I have examined the clown pretty closely, too, and I think I can outrun him. The other guy, I’m not so sure. http://www.dallasobserver.com/news/letter-from-texas-listen-america-trump-is-just-embarrassing-cruz-is-scary-8095715 http://www.dallasobserver.com/news/letter-from-texas-listen-...

themartorana 11y ago
Yeah that's a terrible [0] article. I have no doubt that Cruz is nuts, and I was hoping this was a straight-laced "here's what he actually believes with evidence" articles, but instead after 6 paragraphs I knew the author didn't like Cruz, but aside from "he's so far right he's in outer space" I had no idea why... The author comes off as nuts him/herself, waving their hands in the air and begging people to listen to them. I think a plain telling of facts about Cruz would be scary enough. Someone should write that. [0] but seriously I'm no one to judge.
- nkurz 11y ago
  I appreciated the article more for its style than its content. The author does get into some specifics later in the article, although it gets lost behind the imagery and ecstatic prose. I think the author chose to exaggerate his frantic hand waving to try to convey the degree of his terror. Cruz pulled it off because he is very, very smart. But never at any moment during his Senate campaign — nor at any moment during this presidential primary race as far as we can see from here in Texas — has Cruz ever once given any indication that he does not believe in and hold to heart every single word that comes out of his father’s sorcerous mouth. ... He means what he says about pushing 11 million people back across the Mexican border, about using the government to hound, harry and herd human beings based on their sex lives, about stripping women of their physical autonomy, and about all of the superstitious claptrap that issues from his old man’s mouth on evolution, global warming and science itself. The Ivy League took none of that away from him. He held it dear then and holds it dear now. It’s all right there in front of you, not a millimeter beneath the surface. His only bluff is that he shows you less than his full hand, not that he fakes having more. I don't actually know much about Cruz's beliefs. I watched a few excerpts of his father's speeches, and they were about what you'd expect from a Cuban-American fundamentalist preacher who was tortured by communists. This appears to be a more impartial summary of his positions: http://presidential-candidates.insidegov.com/l/62/Ted-Cruz http://presidential-candidates.insidegov.com/l/62/Ted-Cruz

throwaway_xx9 11y ago

> tore at her skin in the belief that bugs were crawling on it. symptom of meth use

duncan_bayne 11y ago

For everyone who is horrified by the details of the death of this single young man, consider: war is this, multiplied by the tens of hundreds of thousands, or even millions. That's not to say that war is never justified. But it is always an almost incalculable tragedy. Imagine a million young Marvins, brutally killed with even less justification then the victim here. A million parents whose political decisions doomed their children, in much the same way that Marvin's parents' decisions helped to doom him.