Summary
Vietnam’s High People’s Court upheld the death sentence for real estate tycoon Truong My Lan, convicted of embezzlement and bribery in a record $12 billion fraud case.
Lan can avoid execution by returning $9 billion (three-quarters of the stolen funds), potentially reducing her sentence to life imprisonment.
Her crimes caused widespread economic harm, including a bank run and $24 billion in government intervention to stabilize the financial system.
Lan has admitted guilt but prosecutors deemed her actions unprecedentedly damaging. She retains limited legal recourse through retrial procedures.
The amount of people in here pushing for the death penalty when it’s used on people they dislike is sickening…
This is a penalty that needs to be abolished, not expanded or made exceptions for.
You’re completely right.
However, I feel like I’d make an exception for people who massively contribute to an actual existential threat to humanity. Ie billionaires. All billionaires.
I’m not saying we should kill them. I’m saying we should use the possibility of that being on the table to make them pay their taxes. The entire planet is ruined by billionaires when we could literally everyone have enough to have our basic needs met while having an economy and industry which isn’t on track to make the planet uninhabitable for us, seeing as it’s the only planet known to support life.
Yes, all life is important. That’s why all life should be protected by making sure the planet doesn’t become one huge airfryer. If while doing that a few billionaires get guillotined, I’m honestly fine with it. I’d prefer they’d just actually help people instead of being selfish assholes, but if them being selfish assholes is putting everyone else in danger, then the choice is clear, no matter your views on the death penalty. (Which as you say, shouldn’t be a thing.)
I dunno, reducing them to being not-billionaires and even not-millionaires would actually be a pretty just sentence IMO. I bet being reduced to a regular Joe would hurt some of them more than the death penalty
What’s to stop them doing it all over again, given some starter money? Usually what makes these assholes so effective is their lack of empathy. That works well in capitalism.
White collar crime needs to start getting hard time in the same prisons that proper criminals go to. That’d be a deterrent, or a motivator to fix the prison systems.
If they can create a law that makes them no longer billionaires, I’m sure they could figure something out to prevent them from doing it again…
The thing with billionaires is that they don’t live in any single legal framework.
Which is why it would be so crucial to actually imprison them to get them to see any sort of consequences, as otherwise they’ll just hop on a private jet and fuck off.
Literally no consequences for stealing the value of labour of hundreds of millions of people. It’s crazy.
We as humanity allow these people to exist. We could just decide we don’t. If we all do, simultaneously, and pinky-promise, then the problem would be dealt with.
But ever tried getting 8 billion people on a zoom call at the same time? Yeah…
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I’m guessing most of them do pay their taxes. There are just lots of loopholes that have been lobbied for by the rich that they are using that their expensive tax accountants find for them. Instead of whacking billionaires, maybe get rid of the tax loopholes that let them pay so much less in taxes as compared to their extreme wealth.
And who’s gonna change the laws when there’s no democracy and wealth almost directly translates to political power?
Billionaires can just go around national laws and stuff shit in tax havens. And when they get caught, it gets hushed up.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panama_Papers
Moneys fucks people up. Trying to reason money out of the hands of billionaires is harder than convincing a jonesing crack addict to not hit a loaded pipe they’ve got in their hands.
Revolutions aren’t pillow fights.
True, but they’re demands of a better world. There’s a difference between killing in a revolution and a 60 year old communist government executing an embezzler instead of giving her life in prison
The state ending someone’s life for breaking its laws and then having people here who would normally condemn the use of capital punishment compare it to a revolution and call it justified just because the state in question claims to be socialist is just so uniquely Lemmy.
Lol read a fucking book, if the left has been consistent about one thing throughout history, is constant infighting and bickering.
Nothing you’ve said is unique to Lemmy. Except maybe the part about making uninformed comments with extreme confidence.
That’s consistent across all social media!
This is not a revolution. It’s the state killing a person. The death penalty is ALWAYS unacceptable, without expections. Do I want billionares to die? Hell yes! Do I think the state should have the power to kill people? Hell no!
So you are a more hands on type. You are fine with the killing if it’s you as a a worker class pulling the trigger.
They didn’t say that. I think it’s pretty clear what they mean. The state has a monopoly on violence. They are permitted a certain amount of force in order to keep the peace. When a government misuses that power, or oversteps to the point of deciding who gets to live or die, then it’s gone too far.
If you can’t understand the difference between a regular worker being possibly oppressed by this misuse of force, and the state apparatus itself, then I really don’t know what to tell you.
I understand that the state has a monopoly on violence. Violence IS the ultimate power to rule no matter the form of government. What you don’t understand is you can’t limit that power. Once granted, even on what might appear to be a limited basis, and it’s never limited for long, cannot be revoked. You can totally remove the power of the government to use violence and then hand that power to the populace-- but this is not a good idea. The only thing dumber than the government is the public.
The person I responded to stated plainly, they were for killing billionaires. They just didn’t want the government to do it. So he must be willing to pull the trigger himself. Which is a valid political stance. Even though I think it’s very misguided.
You have read into a plain statement something YOU believe. And if you don’t understand that, then I don’t know what to tell you either.
Simply untrue.
Show me examples. And show that such examples haven’t degraded over time.
Why, though? The usual reasoning for abolishing the death penalty is the argument that we might make a mistake and mistakenly sentence innocent people to death. But what about crimes like this, where the crime is entirely on paper, fully documented, and with no risk that you’re prosecuting the wrong person?
Edit: I’m not sure why I’m getting downvoted with no replies. I’m asking an actual question here, if you disagree why not state your opinion?
I think it’s a valid question. I wouldn’t say that the only reason for abolishing the death penalty is because we might make a mistake… that definitely factors into it, but there’s more to it.
Ask yourself what purpose does it serve to put someone to death? They’re already in jail/prison and no longer a threat to society. Deterrence? Is the death penalty any more of a deterrence than a life sentence?
The only purpose I can think of for the death penalty is that it’s for “Revenge”. It doesn’t actually fix anything in of itself. It doesn’t resolve disputes, it doesn’t really solve anything.
Because we’ve always said that we won’t make any excuses for the terror when our turn comes.
Can you expand on this?
Either you replied to the wrong comment, or you’re clearly thinking of some context that I’m not, or it’s related to some saying that I’m not familiar with.
It’s a quote from the article Marx wrote after his Rheinische Zeitung got closed by Prussian censorship
Well fuck billionaires but papers can and trials can be wrong.
Like who’s to say she wasn’t a patsy?
I’m not saying she was, but how would you prove beyond any doubt that she wasn’t?
Probably this case is an open-and-shut case but my point is valid, I think.
Full support dude.
This point rests my case.
I want to point out that this is already the standard for conviction. The finder of fact must find the accused to be guilty beyond all reasonable doubt before convicting them. So from a legal perspective, everyone convicted of a crime already has been proven guilty to the highest possible standard. If there is any shred of doubt at all about the guilt of the accused, they’re supposed to be acquitted. It’s only possible in retrospect when new evidence emerges that exonerates the accused that it can be determined that the original guilty verdict was incorrect. You can’t really “force” this evidence to emerge with any amount of policy changes. It just happens over time.
For example, witnesses lie. Maybe five years after the fact they feel bad about lying and retract their testimony. Maybe some of the investigators assigned to the case just made up some evidence to get the accused convicted in court because they just thought there was no way he could be innocent and they just needed to cook up the evidence to get them declared guilty, and they can only admit that when the statute of limitation passes. Or maybe, three years later, a convenience store manager deleting old footage happens upon a CCTV tape giving the accused an alibi. Or maybe still, the accused was actually framed and their framers only got caught ten years later doing some other crime, and it turned out that they forged the accused’s signatures on those documents and used their computer to send those e-mails without their knowledge. I could go on.
So if your proposed standard is applied, it would not actually exclude anyone from execution because everyone who’s been convicted has already been proven guilty beyond all reasonable doubt.
Someone better tell Texas
Nonsense. I oppose the death penalty for almost all crimes. It’s just too easy to render an inaccurate verdict, and you can’t undo an execution.
But we don’t have any doubt about billionaires. They’re verifiably guilty beyond any shadow of a doubt.
I also think they should be able to avoid the death penalty by giving up their wealth and living on minimum wage for a number of years equal to the number of billions they captured and withheld from society.
Seems to be a common mindset among americans. As european I don’t understand it.
Yea, I’m against the death penalty too. This shit shouldn’t be legal. It should be illegal and brutal. Like the mob takes you to the square and threatens to lynch you unless you give away the billionaire persona. The cops turn a blind eye. Total societal shame. Collapse of moral and legal order. And then afterwards, we all feel bad about it and we legislate a ban on wealth hoarding so that our society never falls to those kinds of depths ever again.
The fact that this comment likely isn’t satire, should be concerning.
People: please read books. That’s all I’m going to say. Read about your ideology and its bloody, storied history, before posting ignorant shit like this.
Check your knowledge of history. Revolutionary history is actually not uniquely bloody. Counter-revolutionary and/or status-quo violence has historically been just as, or even more, bloody (need I mention the countless massacres and genocides perpetrated by colonialists and imperialists? Or is it enough to mention France, Russia, China, and Cambodia to win every argument?)
That said, I am of course very very very averse to any kind of violence. The whole point of my comment is that it is a dirty, shameful thing that should never happen. The fact that it does happen is extremely unfortunate but ultimately is the fault of the status-quo boots pushing down people’s throats. There is always a non-bloody way out of an oppressive situation: stop the fucking oppressing. Lift the boot. Give up the privilege. Simple as.
Example: 1960s Quebec. The Catholic Church simply gives up its stranglehold on French-Canadian society. No anticlerical massacres follow. Everyone happy. That’s the model.
I used to be against the death penalty. Problem is that obscenely rich and well connected people can just hire assassins to execute people they don’t like with impunity. Case in point the Boeing engineer that supposedly committed suicide briefly before his hearing on Boeings deliberate security violations leading to hundreds of people slaughtered in preventable plane accidents.
Executing the rich and powerful is necessary to level the playing field.
Pearl clutching liberals? Not once.
It’s a classic.
There are no buts; if there’s a “but” then you’re pro capital punishment.
It’s a classic false dichotomy.
I’m against killing people, but if someone tries to kill me…
You’re right, it is a false dichotomy on your part. There’s a difference between an active threat and someone who has been arrested. We are talking about sentencing someone who is on trial, not about active self-defence. Or would you shoot someone as they are running away from you, just because they attacked you earlier?
Do you think the people who are pro death penalty want to kill people for every minor crime? Because they also just want to condemn to death the people who they believe to be morally righteous to do that to.
Fuck accountability right?
That’s not what I’m saying or implying in any way.