Summary

Stephanie Diane Dowells, 62, was strangled during an overnight visit with her husband, David Brinson, at Mule Creek state prison in California.

Brinson, serving life without parole for four murders, claimed Dowells passed out, but authorities ruled her death a homicide.

This marks the second strangulation death during a family visit at the prison in a year; Tania Thomas was killed in July 2024 while visiting inmate Anthony Curry. Investigations are ongoing.

California is one of four states allowing family visits to maintain positive relationships.

  • Lemmist@lemm.ee
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    4 months ago

    The obvious answer: never. Not because of humanism and all that. But because we cannot trust judges and executioners.

    • LastYearsIrritant@sopuli.xyz
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      4 months ago

      Yeah, this is the right answer.

      Also, maybe in 30 years we’ll find a better way to reach out to people and help them.

      If you kill that person, you’ll never have a chance.

        • DancingBear@midwest.social
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          3 months ago

          How will killing the husband help the dead wife?

          Even among victim families whose perpetrator do receive the death penalty, it doesn’t usually help, and often, it makes it worse for victim families.

          • Dagwood222@lemm.ee
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            4 months ago

            As written, that’s meaningless. Whose freedom? If you have a point, lay it out clearly.

            • beejboytyson@lemmy.world
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              4 months ago

              This is meaningless. You’re disingenuous. If you think everyone in that interaction didn’t make thier own choices you’re an authoritarian coward.

              People jump over tiger cages all the time.

    • Dagwood222@lemm.ee
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      4 months ago

      Did you not read the story? He just killed his own wife, while in prison. It’s not like there’s a chance he was set up by the police. How do you say never?

              • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
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                3 months ago

                Compensate their families or other next of kin.

                I’ll be honest, I believe in prison abolition. I don’t really want to defend the concept of life in prison. We don’t need to lock people up.

                But it’s clearly better than killing people.

                  • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
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                    3 months ago

                    Yeah, it’d be nice if people didn’t commit crimes. Unfortunately that’s not the world we live in.

                    You should focus on reality instead of your fantasies more often.

                    This exact same glib argument can be used against your own complaints about life imprisonment, so I’m not even sure what you’re arguing for at this point.

      • Lemmist@lemm.ee
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        4 months ago

        I said, “we cannot trust judges and executioners.” We don’t trust them. No, we don’t trust them to “imprison people for life” too.

        But imprisonment is a lesser evil and can be fixed to some extent in the case of fuck up. Execution cannot.