site banner
PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   28338 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 23, 2024

This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.

Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.

We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:

  • Shaming.

  • Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.

  • Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.

  • Recruiting for a cause.

  • Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.

In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:

  • Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.

  • Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.

  • Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.

  • Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.

6
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Those aren’t the main points.

  • The murder weapon was improperly handled by the police, and they did not use “touch DNA” at that time. This means that DNA could not be factored into the murder, not that DNA either exonerated the suspect or acts as evidence against his involvement through omission. The DNA on the murder weapon was from the police, and it’s greatly misleading to just write “the DNA wasn’t his”.

  • From my reading, the shoeprint sole pattern wasn’t his. That’s not a big deal because the perpetrator would have disposed of his bloody shoes if they were sufficiently bloody as to leave marks (they were). The Appeal to the Missouri Supreme Court makes no mention of shoe size.

  • You are wrong that there was a financial motive. The girlfriend never requested reward for information about Ms. Gayle’s murder. (Don’t make top level posts explaining the “main points” if your main points are wrong, this isn’t Reddit).

You ignored significant other main points:

  • The jailhouse informant provided information about the crime that was not publicly available, yet consistent with crime scene evidence and Williams’ involvement. Other individuals were present when Williams bragged about this murder, and they were disclosed to Williams’ team before trial and have been discussed in subsequent proceedings. “On August 31, 1998, Williams was arrested on unrelated charges and incarcerated at the St. Louis City workhouse. From April until June 1999, Williams shared a room with Henry Cole. One evening in May, Cole and Williams were watching television and saw a news report about Gayle's murder. Shortly after the news report, Williams told Cole that he had committed the crime. Over the next few weeks, Cole and Williams had several conversations about the murder. As he had done with Laura Asaro, Williams went into considerable detail about how he broke into the house and killed Gayle. After Cole was released from jail in June 1999, he went to the University City police and told them about Williams' involvement in Gayle's murder. He reported details of the crime that had never been publicly reported.”

  • Gayle’s personal items were found in the trunk of Williams’ car. “Asaro told the police that Williams admitted to her that he had killed Gayle. The next day, the police searched the Buick LeSabre and found the Post-Dispatch ruler and calculator belonging to Gayle”.

  • This was his face around the time of the murders. The media likes to show him as a weak old religious man today.

—

This is sufficient to use the death penalty. There is zero chance (zero.) that he otherwise came into possession of these personal items, and he happened to have these worthless items in his possession (of no monetary value), and his cellmate just happened to accuse the wrong person who happened to have these possessions, and that he happened to guess the right details, and that the made up confession happened to also be reinforced by two separate made up testimonies that the confession occurred, and that the black hood girlfriend with a strict no snitching policy happened to rat our her boyfriend immediately. No. Come on. He did it. It’s not a question.

You are wrong that there was a financial motive. The girlfriend never requested reward for information about Ms. Gayle’s murder. (Don’t make top level posts explaining the “main points” if your main points are wrong, this isn’t Reddit).

"The Innocence Project" makes this claim.

https://innocenceproject.org/innocence-project-statement-on-the-execution-of-marcellus-williams/

His conviction was based on the testimony of two eyewitnesses who were paid for their testimony.

They don't appear to be arguing in good faith and they are paltering but I don't think anyone expects them to outright lie.

https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/24/24-5612/326599/20240923222511639_Petitioners%20Appendix.pdf

On page number 37, the court informs us that the girlfriend mentioned to the police she had information about the murder under no provocation. It was during a prostitution sting, but it defies any motive, because she later declined to cooperate despite the offers of 5k reward and charges being dropped:

On September 1, 1998, after being arrested for prostitution, Asaro told officers that she had information related to "the murder of the woman in U. City." (T. 1901; Ex. 8-Supplementary Investigative and/or Disposition Report dated 11/16/99 at 1). But when Detectives arrived to question her, she would not talk to them, stating she was "just trying to get out of the arrest." (Ex. 8, at 1). Police questioned her for two hours to no avail. Id. Although Asaro was known to police, after their interview with Cole on June 4, 1999, police enlisted Cole as an informant for the next four months to try to make contact with Asaro. (T. 1818). Detectives provided him with a pager so she could contact him, but Cole's efforts to get Asaro to incriminate Mr. Williams were unsuccessful. (T. 2439-44).

This isn’t surprising. Ghetto people don’t rat. Although she originally mentioned the murder to the officers, she refused to cooperate despite enormous reward offers. It was only after officers told her she could be charged for withholding information that she decided to cooperate. According to the lead prosecutor, she was a perfect witness:

she was amazing, she said -- first of all, she was with the defendant when he sold the computer to Glenn Roberts. She was there in the car. He walked up to Glenn Roberts' house and he sold him the computer. She took the police to the house where the computer was. She said, The guy that lives in that house has the computer. And the police knock on the door. Glenn Roberts comes to the door and says, what can I do for you? officers say, Do you have a computer? He says, Yes, I do. The police said, Bring it to me. He brought it to them, and it was the computer. They said, who gave it to you. And he said, Roberts said Marcellus williams. Marcellus was staying about three houses down living out of his car. Inside his car was Mrs. Gayle's calculator and Post Dispatch ruler in his car 15 months later. The computer, these are the things taken at the crime. The computer was found at Glenn Roberts' house about three doors down from his grandfather's house where he was staying in a car, a Buick, on the front yard or the side yard.

The prosecutor also tells us about the jailhouse informer:

Henry Cole said that the defendant told him that he jammed the knife in her neck and he twisted it and left it in her neck. And that's exactly how they found the body. And the knife was bent. And no one knew that. That was not on the news. That was not in the newspapers. The only people that knew that were the police. And cole had written it on a piece of paper while he was in the jail.

The lead prosecutor also informs us that the officers on the scene believed with certainty that the perpetrator wore gloves, due to spots left on the broken window. Which, of course, renders the entire dna subplot void, even if the lead prosecutor didn’t additionally inform us that he only learned about “touch DNA” in 2015!

On balance, I think he likely did it. But Cole's specificity raises some skepticism of his testimony for me. Would a murderer actually mention those details?

Not impossible, and I don't have a strong mental model of jailhouse confessions and what motivates them. But I can equally see the police thinking "this guy obviously did it, so we should intentionally leak these details to Cole to make sure we get him."

It's a decades old case, there are a lot of contradictory things floating around on the internet. The governor's statement may be correct, but according to this article the ex girlfriend's testimony is a bit muddier:

About three months after Cole’s interview with police, a woman named Laura Asaro was arrested for sex work. Asaro told officers that she had information related to “the murder of the woman in U. City.” But when detectives arrived to question her, she would not talk to them, stating she was “just trying to get out of the arrest.” Police questioned her for two hours to no avail. They tried a different tack four days later: Detectives told her the charges would be dropped if she cooperated. They noted the reward for information. “She was not receptive, so detectives then told her that Ms. Gayle’s husband had posted a $10,000 reward in the case involving the death of his wife, and she would be eligible for some or all of the money if she helped out,” prosecutors wrote.

Maybe she forgot about getting the reward because she was a crackhead sex worker, but she didn't exactly come forward voluntarily either.

While we're on the topic, what's the counter-claim exactly? That this crackhead just randomly decided to frame her ex-boyfriend for a murder that some other guy who was cellmates with him had also decided to frame by complete coincidence for a financial reward?

I suppose if we are maximally conspiratorial, the explanation is the (obviously racist) police were embarrassed with an unsolved murder of a white woman, marked some black dirtbag in prison for it, and fed testimony to two people and then planted the evidence. But if we're that conspiratorial about the police why do we believe any evidence one way or another about DNA? Everything is manufactured. Conflict theorists unite!

You don’t have to go that far.

The witnesses could, in theory, have coordinated. Especially if one of them did it.

But if there was a credible alternate theory, maybe one of the many trials would have found this guy innocent.

My takeaway is that he would have gotten away with it if he had the restraint to not go around confessing to murder. Probably would have helped to not steal from the house after it's a murder scene rather than a robbery, but it sounds like no one would have bothered to look in his trunk if he just shut up about it. The implications are discomfiting.

I wouldn't worry about it, I'm guessing you don't interact with many criminals or murderers on a regular basis, I've had that delight before.

They are all fucking idiots who can't help themselves, brag, and do other stuff that makes sure they get caught. Yes you have sampling bias issues (how do you meet the ones who aren't idiots?).

However almost by definition most murderers in particular have some sort of acute or chronic issue with impulse control. Why? Because the upside of murder is typically so minimal. For most people it's to sate some appetite (even if it is just anger at your partner for cheating on you). That's not a good reason to expose yourself to so much risk.

People who have any semblance of control make sure to use it, and those that don't are more likely to out themselves in some way, fuck up the cover up, etc.

Most killers by the numbers are gang types or addicted to drugs. How organized do you think those people are these days?

Discomfiting because... ?

The face value implication that he was too stupid / psycho to resist blabbing to people about this brutal murder he did against a totally innocent woman after breaking into her home? Or something else?

Because it implies that the police are incapable of anything beyond security theater. A lot of other evidence is accumulating behind that hypothesis, and it bodes ill if you value a government monopoly on violence.

2022 clearance rate

Murder and manslaughter 52.3%

Motor vehicle theft 9.3%

Aggravated assault 41.4%

Rape 26.1%

Robbery 23.2%

Don't be in the bottom half of murderers or bottom quarter of rapists and you'll probably get away with it.

Alternate take: it's the bottom half of murderers killing the bottom half of victims who are most likely to get away with it. In 2022 cook county (Chicago) had a 20% clearance rate (154/756). Maine had a 90% rate (54/60)

The bottom half of victims get the "he already had crack sprinkled on him, let's get out of here" investigation technique.
A gang member shooting a guy who looked at him wrong just has to be clever enough to use his girlfriend's car for the drive-by. A white collar guy who wants to murder his boss or an annoying neighbor needs to be Moriarty with a forensics post-grad.
(And cynically/realistically, only one of those two will get a billion dollar foundation helping him avoid justice, unless the professional's name is Leo Frank)

In addition to what hydroacetylene says, the majority of gangland shootings involve huge numbers of suspects at scenes with very large numbers of people were any one of them might well have a gun and fire it. White collar murders typically take place at locations where DNA evidence is much more compelling because, for example, a killer actually tries to dispose of the victim (almost guaranteeing a DNA trail) rather than using the spray and pray method and running away, which leaves no DNA.

In addition, the police are a taxpayer funded service and therefore try harder in cases where actual taxpayers get killed.

White collar people who commit murder almost always murder eg a cheating spouse where the prime suspect is immediately obvious. You don't have to be Sherlock to figure this stuff out(and you wouldn't be able to get away with it by being Moriarty either). On the other hand the bottom half of murders are much more random.

Are you saying if the police were competent they could have caught this guy without needing him to confess unprompted to randos? Or just that it's awfully unnerving how easily it would be for non idiots to get away with random acts of murder?

An NYPD friend told me once that if you just drive to some neighborhood you never go to and shoot somebody on that street the odds that they'll ever catch you are slim to none. But that was in the early 2000s...

Or just that it's awfully unnerving how easily it would be for non idiots to get away with random acts of murder?

Fortunately, non-idiots rarely commit murder, and when they do it’s usually a crime of passion where they would be the prime suspect regardless of evidence.

Or just that it's awfully unnerving how easily it would be for non idiots to get away with random acts of murder?

That's the one.

The current era is best understood as a massive, distributed search for ways to hurt the outgroup as badly as possible without getting in too much trouble.

Here, we are seeing that there is a significant gap between the perception and the reality of "getting in too much trouble." Awareness of the gap invites arbitrage.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats