The "protester" is the one that went out looking for trouble, Abbot was just trying to do his job as an uber driver and was not allowed to leave while an armed thug blocked his car and approached him. Choose better martyrs.

I believe the outrage is not about how good this particular 'martyr' is but because he was found guilty by the same system that decides when a person can reasonably use deadly force in a state that has laws specifically designed to 'stand your ground' and even then he was found guilty by a jury of his peers.

So with everything going for him he was still found guilty, so now someone can undo all of that just because they feel like it?. This spits in the face of the entire state and its judicial system.

Wouldn't that argument extend to every government? Every state has to decide what level of force or violence is allowed and in what situations, and the power given to individuals will never match the power of the state.

It sounds more like an anarchist argument than an anti-Texas argument.

I wasn't questioning criminal justice in Texas broadly, the topic was innocent people being put to death.

> From what I understand, Texas executes possibly/probably/definitely innocent people with regularity.

The GP comment seems to imply that Texas is intentionally putting innocent people to death regularly. That had nothing to do with the governor or pardons.

> the topic was innocent people being put to death

If you don’t understand the relationship between my example and your topic, not certain what else to say.

You could help explain the connection a bit more. The original topic is wrongfully execution, your example seems to be wrongful release? Is your issue with the death penalty or governor's pardon power?

The example is a means of wrongful execution (sanction of private execution of those seen as politically undesirable by the leadership of the State.)

The example higher up the chain is of Abbot pardoning someone though. What execution are you referring to in the example?

IIUC what dragonwriter is saying is that by way of pardoning the murderer, Abbott is condoning the murder, making it in a sense a "private execution".

I think that logic is sufficiently sound, provided we know we are not being precise. I don't know enough about the case to say whether it actually applies here.

I haven't seen anything that clearly lays out Abbott's reasoning or intent, though I may very well have missed it.

Pardons aren't always condoning a person for the crime they were convicted of. The legal system is fallible and writing clear laws to handle ant scenario that comes up is impossible. A pardon can be used to free an individual who seems to have been wrongfully convicted but without sufficient proof or process for an appeal. It can also be used to free individuals who have been rehabilitated, or who the executive believes has learned from their crime and is ready to return to public life.

I have no idea if Abbott was motivates by anything like that or if it was more akin to jury nullification, but I wouldn't assume that a pardon can only mean that the elected official is condoning the crime itself.

I appreciate your taking the time to demonstrate that your arguments throughout this thread were not the product of naïveté, as I had originally suggested, but instead just tedious concern trolling. What motivates Abbot, as well as the murders he sanctions, judicially and extrajudicially, has been quite plainly stated by himself and those doing the killing. Instead of making pointless arguments in the abstract, familiarize yourself with the particulars.

This is such an ad hoc argument.