Social Justice - A Conversation

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Good evening. My name is Charles Stanton. I'm on the faculty of the Boyd School of Law and the UNLV Honors College. My

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name is Kira Kramer. I'm a fourth year honors college student, a public health major and a pre law student. And this

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is social justice, a conversation, a conversation you

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Well, good evening, everybody. Welcome back. Professor Stanton here with my cohort. Kiera Kramer, hello.

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Good to see you,

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and we're gonna resume our fight for social justice. It's almost like Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, absolutely, except we're not going through a desert. We're in a cool, air conditioned studio, thank God, with what the weather has been in Vegas, but I wanted to open up the program today with Kira talking about Marcellus Williams. Marcellus Williams was executed on September 24 in the state of Missouri, and it really, it really struck me for a few reasons, the plight of Marcellus Williams is not a singular event. Particularly in the state of Missouri, there have been a number of cases where the prosecutions and convictions of men of color have come under dubious circumstances, and this case, I think, was really very was very interesting, because this was a man who basically had been convicted of murder, and he was sentenced To the death penalty in the state of Missouri, there's a few things that jump down at me. One thing is, how many of these defendants are on death row for decades? Which, to me, is something if you want to say cruel and unusual punishment, I guess we could say that. But in this particular case, though there was, there was a lot of evidence that there was exclusion of minority jurors from the actual jury itself, and also that in a case where the person who was murdered, it was a horrific murder, this woman had been had been killed and she'd been stabbed, I think, 43 times. They did not, apparently have any DNA evidence linking this man with a crime. And when it came to reviewing the procedures of the coroner's office and the investigation, apparently, a number of people had actually handled the murder weapon and had obliterated probably for all time. What, who and what have you, who was the actual killer, if it was Marcellus Williams, when this was brought out, the answer to it was, well, that's how that particular commoner's office, slash Emmy's office operates, and a lot of people handle the stuff and, you know, just, that's just, that's just the way It is. But the compounding factor in that case was the fact that both the prosecution and defense were in agreement that they did not, did not feel that, under the circumstance, under the factual circumstances of the case, that this man should be executed, including including the family of the woman who was murdered, and they all were in agreement that a commutation of the sentence to death to life imprisonment was what would have been a satisfactory alternative. And of course, that that alternative, which was joined in by all three, all three parties, was completely ignored by the Attorney General of the State and completely ignored by the governor of Missouri, not for the first time. And you know, it just struck me that we're always talking about the law having humanity and mercy. I think, I think Jefferson said that a law without mercy is tyranny. But it just, it just hit me that this has happened so many times before, absolutely.

Unknown Speaker 4:49
And that quote from Jefferson really drives it home. I feel I was talking with another attorney about the death penalty, and this, this attorney, happened to. Work very closely with people who've been imprisoned and those on death row. And when he first started working there, he observed that many people were really not necessarily like undeserving of serving the time that they were, that they meant to serve, but necessarily that many of them and their circumstances is needs to be looked at within the context of the prison system in general. While some people, he observed, can't necessarily be saved that they're like in and of themselves, they were so violent towards any guards or people in prison that solitary confinement would be the only option for them, and that he felt that that was cool and unusual punishment, and that to leave a person because they are so dangerous in solitary confinement, not he didn't feel that it justified the death penalty, but he felt that those types of questions have to be evaluated on a case by case basis. If a person is so dangerous that they can't be around any other human beings without harming themselves or others, is solitary confinement ethical? Is it cruel and unusual? But for many people who are in the prison system, it's a system that perpetuates itself. Many of these people could go on to recover and contribute very positively, economically, to our economy, to our communities. Yet, even though this was a murder trial and a conviction of murder, many of those who are in prison have not been convicted of such significant crimes and so and whether it's petty theft or drug crimes, many people, when removed from the circumstances that perpetuate their consistent reintegration into the criminal justice system, have the opportunity To get out, but they don't. In the current system, there is the possibility of getting people rehabilitated and given them the opportunity to be educated, to access services mental health, and otherwise, that can give these people a second chance at a better life. And I believe in this man's case, especially when there's a lack of evidence that even points this man, like from my understanding this man to the crime that is heinous and it's terrifying. And I guess my question for you is, is there anything that could have been done on the federal level to have intervened in this case. Well,

Unknown Speaker 7:43
the way the system works now, they made the appeal to the Supreme Court, and as we would predict correctly, the six Justices of the one wing of the court were for, you know, continuing demands sentence, and the other three justices were opposed to it. I think what we see in a lot of these cases is the complete rebuking of the idea that prison is rehabilitative and reformative,

Unknown Speaker 8:20
and also there these for profit. Prisons are making millions of dollars off of this industry. And for those that are not for profit, we're spilling government resources into feeding them and housing them and paying security to watch them, when in all reality, we could be benefiting our economy by like, by giving back to these individuals, and granted I know may perhaps not. Every person wants to do that, or will want to be in like. Of course, there's those instances and significant cases where criminal like, there are people who have committed significant crimes, and our justice system does permit whatever sentencing is appropriate, however, for many, many people, especially young people, who are introduced into the criminal justice system early, there is so much potential. There so much potential for that life to contribute valuably to society, but it's thwarted by our criminal justice system, and that's exacerbated by our racially motivated criminal justice system, and so that is genuinely disheartening and tragic, because we are constantly battling in the US economics and finding and spending, when, in all reality, we spend it like my mom always says. She says, where you spend your money is what you value, and that is quite clear within the United States. Yeah,

Unknown Speaker 9:56
I think, I think a lot of it has to do with the fact. Well, first of all, first of all, the bail system that we have is one of the major problems. You actually have people in, of course, in our city, but in other, many other cities, whose time in incarceration, without having been convicted of a crime, actually exceeds the sentence they would have been given if they actually had been convicted. So that's one of the problems. I think death penalty cases have to be judged each one by the circumstances. In other words, you can't just have one flat rule where everybody's going to be executed, although I will, I will, although I will say, although I will say, as a progressive. And I consider myself a progressive. I do think there are certain cases where the death penalty could be called for. And I'll give you one, I'll give you one example of it, the Golden State killer. There was a case of a man who was a police officer. He had been involved in multiple rape in Sacramento, California. He went down to Los Angeles, and he continued that, in addition to killing the women, he is sexually assaulted, or anybody else who you know was had the misfortune of being around when he did it. He was found he was found guilty in California court, obviously, and the prosecution and the defense agreed to a plea bargain so he would get life imprisonment. I don't I didn't see it in that particular case, what this man had done was beyond, was beyond any kind of rehabilitation. And I think in a case like that, you could, you could make a case of the death penalty. The problem, unfortunately, is, though, that the death penalty cases are very heavily racially slanted and unfortunately, unfortunately, statistically speaking, at the end of every year they they bring out a list of commutation of sentences or pardon of sentences for people who are falsely incarcerated for murder and for other crimes. The vast, vast, vast majority of people of color, it's like 90%

Unknown Speaker 12:21
the vast majority of people in prison are people of color. Well,

Unknown Speaker 12:24
the vast majority of people who are falsely incarcerated and have been sentenced to death, or whatever it is, and then it's commuted, or they're pardoned, or everything, it's like 90% people of color. So right away you see that there's this tremendous disparity that's going on as to, you know, how these sentences are passed out. I think another problem that we're having with a lot of the people who have been in prison for years on these charges is there wasn't in that day the same kind of scrutiny of the racial composition of the jury. So when these actual verdicts were brought down. It was an all white jury in a lot of cases, and there was a deliberate exclusion of people of color from the jury. So that's another problem. Yeah,

Unknown Speaker 13:08
right. And even in looking at this case, I think we come back to this idea that our government is supposed to be run by the people, for the people, and we when we have, like, the the sheer amount of people advocating that his death sentence not be followed through. Where do we draw the line of a governor making a decision that is his own versus that of his constituents? And I suppose maybe we would be speaking differently had the consensus looked different, but it's incomprehensible.

Unknown Speaker 13:46
Yeah, I agree. I agree. Well, I wanted to talk a little bit about a documentary that I saw on MSNBC From Russia With Lev, which is sort of a takeoff on the James Bond movies. And it had to do with a man by the name of left parms who was very much involved in, you know, working for the the administration before Joe Biden got into office, and trying to, you know, work with the Ukrainian authorities to try to find, you know, bad stuff about Joe Biden while he was running for president. And it's a very, very interesting, very interesting documentary as how, as to how the the administration in those years between 2016 and 2020 was actively trying to find incriminating stuff about Joe Biden, and also, and also, basically, in a sense, blackmailing or trying to blackmail, the Ukrainian government to cooperate with that. Or otherwise, we weren't going to give the the Ukrainian defense forces a weaponry to to protect themselves against Russia and I. Thought, I thought it was extraordinarily interesting, and

Unknown Speaker 15:02
just connecting it to today. It's my understanding that President Trump just recently mocked President Zelensky and his relationship with President Biden. And it's, it's my understanding that that that that investigation, and I understand that Trump was also trying to instigate an investigation against Hunter Biden. It's my understanding that investigation didn't yield any significant findings and that there wasn't necessarily any foul play in his work in Russia or in Ukraine, pardon me, yeah,

Unknown Speaker 15:35
yeah. Well, it's just, it was just, it was just interesting to see it, because you had all these people who were involved with this man. One of the main movers of it was Rudy Giuliani, right? And, you know, from having come from the East Coast, and you know, being there at the time, and Rudy Giuliani was the mayor. It's like a different person. It's like a different, I don't know what you'd say, like, almost like an imposter of the man that you, that you had known and met when you were you, when you were, you know, back east and everything. But I think what the ex President is very astute at is people's weaknesses and people's hunger for power, so that they will associate with him and those of his his entourage, because they want to remain relevant. And as Lindsey Graham would put it, and that's what you're that's what you saw here, basically, that they had gone all through Ukraine, and, you know, trying to get them to drum up this evidence. And, you know, basically, in a sense, threatening Ukraine almost with extinction if they didn't get this weaponry. And that then that, of course, and that of course, was the that evidence was, was responsible for the first charge of impeachment against the ex president. So, you know, it just it just, I just find it. I just find it very interesting, though you had mentioned this to me, you know, which is kind of interesting about about Kamala Harris, you know. And here we have a woman who was the prosecutor of Oakland, California. She was the Attorney General of the State of California, and she became vice president and the United States Senate and all things. As far as I know now, I could be wrong that I don't think she has a criminal record. No, I don't think she's been convicted of any felonies. I don't think there's any like, you know, jurisdictions where they have indictments against her for various crimes. And we were talking about this, and I think it's funny, you know, a lot of the people who, when you read the papers every day, they're still trying to find out who Kamala Harris is. You know, we need to get more information about Kamala Harris. But a lot of that information is there for the taking. It is. It's not being hidden. No, it's not, you know, and I see it almost in the sense as a as like an excuse or a rationalization for trying to try to come up with a reason why.

Unknown Speaker 18:14
Well, and people are chomping specifically, anyone who's looking to have any prejudice against her, they are chomping at the bit for that information. If it was there, they would have found it already, certainly, and we'd probably see something similar to the course that Hillary's campaign took with the email scandal and how that just took fire to her campaign. And we would see this happening. We would see it. They would have found it, and whether it was true or not, it would be spreading all over the media like fire, yeah,

Unknown Speaker 18:49
yeah. Well, certainly, certainly, the disinformation that's out there on the internet and all these social media sites is a very hard thing to combat, because, I, as I've always said, and I said this, you know, a long time ago, I think the internet and all that stuff is a wild wild west. Basically, there's literally no regulation of anything. I mean, they can, you know, all these, you know, different companies like Facebook and Twitter and all that stuff. They can say that they try to regulate content, but that they don't really because it's impossible.

Unknown Speaker 19:21
And I would argue it's down near impossible when people are making so much content all day, every day, hundreds of 1000s of people. How are you going to get the manpower to regulate it? It's they're certainly outnumbered. You could use AI, and you can try to regulate it through AI, but AI is biased. It's still biased. It'll only regulate what you tell it to regulate, yeah, and that creates even more ethical considerations, yeah, and so that is of grave concern, yeah. So. Well,

Unknown Speaker 20:00
it's interesting you mentioned the word ethics, because in many ways, the internet world, or social media world, is devoid of ethics. And I don't mean devoid of ethics in a sense like that. They would put stuff that was, you know, terrible, on for people to see it. I

Unknown Speaker 20:16
mean they do with which they do. There's a reason why women have to cut, like when they post videos or images of their children, but they have to cover their faces, yeah,

Unknown Speaker 20:26
but I think it's, it's, it's a lack of moral responsibility. I mean, the perfect example is AI and you know the situation, like in universities where we we have these, we have these meetings about, you know, how will AI affect our teaching, and how AI affect, you know, the courses and everything and that you have to put, you know, disclaimers and everything that you can't, that you shouldn't be using AI and all the rest of The stuff. But the thing that's troubling, though, is where was the regulation of this AI? In other words, where was the where was the examination of some of the ramifications of what AI would would bring, rather than just having the thing been thrown out there? And I say that, and I say that because Hinton, who was one of the founders of AI, I'm sure, with a lot of other people, he disowned it. So I'm thinking to myself, and I'm not, believe me, I'm not. I'm not an electronic Marvel. I am not. I mean, you know, I'm not, I'm not. I'm not a social media habit guru. Guru is very kind guru, but, but if the man who's one of the founders of this technology has disowned the technology on the grounds that he sees that it could irreparably harm society, wouldn't that give you a little pause and say, Hmm, you know, let's, let's look at this a little more carefully. Let's see, you know, let's do some studies on what the possibilities are of it, of its capacity to do things that are harmful. And none of that was done. It was just like thrown out there.

Unknown Speaker 22:15
Well, in the interest of capitalism, that type of research and evaluation would only hinder its profits. But we don't even need, we didn't even need to evaluate AI to know what at least some of its effects would be. If we look at the last few decades, particularly my generation, when we see the effects of social media and technology, that research is already underway, and there's plenty of evidence that suggests how it is changing the like human psychology. And there also is new evidence coming out about how false information is able to travel and be digested so effectively by our human brains. And there is a very biological component to the way we interact with technology, and reviewing just some of that literature would begin to tell you the story that AI would pose. And I think when we're looking at AI integrated into schools, the cat's out of the bag. So looking backwards and saying what we could do and what we should have done, unfortunately, it will never be done. But looking forward, I think regulation is a very sticky wicket to approach, because AI will constantly be evolving faster than our own policymakers can keep up with regulation. We might be able to regulate one version and then give it a year or even less, there will be a new version that will require new regulation. We are constantly behind and let alone how behind we are, because Congress can barely agree to pass anything, let alone anything as complex and as comprehensive as regulation for AI. And in many ways, I don't even think we fully understand, even the profession, like the people who are in the field that are generating these new technologies, understand all of its possible uses. And so I think as a collective, we need to embrace AI, because it's not going anywhere. And so as a pre law student, even though I myself can say I've never used AI in part because I want to maintain the integrity of my own writing and make sure that I learn how to be a good writer the original way, for the sake of appreciating and understanding beautiful, good literature that I don't think AI is capable of generating at this point, although maybe I'm wrong. It's important that we're not afraid of it, because when we are afraid of something, we'll never be able to fully understand it. We'll never be able to regulate it. But it's something that as a collective, we need to have more integrity about, not necessarily our policymakers, because we. Control for them, but individuals and the companies that produce this technology need are the ones that we need to put the magnifying glasses on, including ourselves as to how we use our own AI. And that just comes down to improving the integrity of individuals and of the American people. There's really no way that we can expect our government to do it without us doing it ourselves. Yeah, I

Unknown Speaker 25:24
agree. I agree. I think that's true. I think that's true, but I think it's also true that we're not, we're not a reflective society. We're not an introspective society. Which is, which is the most important, one of the most important things that you could that you could be obviously, because you got to assess yourself and what you're doing and your your motivations and stuff like that, you know. So I just wanted to close out this. This program was a big article that was in last Sunday's New York Times by Peter Baker, having to do with how the administration before Joe Biden was using the Justice Department and all these different agencies to try to harass people and threaten people and do all the rest of those things, the people who were enemies of the ex president, it was very, very interesting, you know, because they had had their phones tapped and everything. But there was a very, very interesting interview with Michael Cohen about his experience. And I think anybody who you may have varied opinions of Michael Cohen, but his experience, as he describes, it was extremely interesting as how, what his, shall we say, what his punishment was for, you know, trying to be transparent, and I don't think people understand or realize and want To acknowledge exactly what they're being told by the ex president. The EX president is telling everyone, these are his words, not mine, of what will await people who are, you know, have disobeyed Him, or who have not supported him in the election, who he considers he considers to be his enemies, and how the confluence of the fact that the Supreme Court now has basically given the president almost whole immunity, I think, is going to open up a really a lot of bad a lot of bad tidings for this country. But But again, but again. The country and the government, of all things, are what the people choose. It's it's on on our P on our people, all of our people, to get out and vote and to exercise the franchise that they have. You know Franklin, when Franklin was leaving the convention hall, and he was asked by this gentleman. He says, Well, what have you What have you done? What have you created in there? And Franklin said, he said, a republic, if we can keep it. I don't think enough people appreciate the miracle of our democracy, but that democracy can, at times, be very tenuous, because people you know slack off and they take things for granted about what our liberties are and those rights that we were given. And it's not it's not just something that you take for granted. It's something that has to be constantly guarded absolutely as something that's something that's sacred, almost. And that's not to say our country is without flaw, but it is. It is a unique it is unique experiment that constantly has to be guarded

Unknown Speaker 28:53
Absolutely. I agree, and with that, I just want to encourage everyone with around 46 days, I believe, until the election, please go out and vote, make sure that you're registered to vote and exercise your power and your voice. Thank you.

Unknown Speaker 29:08
I agree completely. And with those wise words, we will both say, Good night.

Unknown Speaker 29:13
Yes, good night. You.

Unknown Speaker 29:23
I thank you for listening to this broadcast, and if you have any questions or ideas for future discussion topics, please contact myself at K, R, A, M, E, k two@unlv.nevada.edu or Professor Charles Stanton, at C, H, A R, L, E, S, dot, S, T, a n, t o n@unlv.edu, see you next time

Unknown Speaker 29:52
we look forward to it. You.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai