Virginia Prisons Accountability Committee

Wednesday, January 31, 2024

The People Of Alabama Collectively Placed Their Hands Around The Neck Of Kenny Eugene Smith And Choked Him To Death With Nitrogen Gas By William Thorpe



So, on Thursday 1/25/24, the people of Alabama collectively placed their hands around the neck of Kenny Eugene Smith and choked him to death with nitrogen gas. Kenny Smith had been convicted of capital murder, a murder for hire scheme concocted and set into motion by the victim's husband, a Charles Sennett who was a pastor or Reverend in the Church of Christ for the sum of $1k. Mr. Smith was tried, convicted and sentenced to death. On November 17, 2022 with intent of carrying out Mr. Smith's death sentence the people of Alabama collectively enthralled by the capital punishment motive jabbed needles extra-judicially into Kenny Smith's body with intent of killing him, they failed. The failure then, to kill Mr. Smith enabled this peculiar emergence of nitrogen as agent of death, which the people of Alabama collectively used in killing Kenny Smith on 1/25/24.What I want to focus on are two occurrences, as a result of the killing of Mr. Kenny Eugene Smith. The first is how, John Hamm Commissioner of The Alabama Department of Corrections misrepresented to the people of Alabama the circumstances of the killing of Mr. Smith .A misrepresentation that will deprive the people of Alabama the necessary information and facts and can subsequently impede their ability to abolish the death penalty as legal instrument in their name. Commissioner Hamm in his comments to the media after the choking death of Mr. Smith said, "he (meaning Kenny Smith) struggled a little bit". However witnesses, media and Mr. Kenny Smith's wife described the circumstances of the killing as "violent convulsions", (I paraphrase) with seepage of stuff, vomit, under the leather mask that was tightly strapped to Smith's face, choking him. This is the reality Commish Hamm said," he struggled a little bit". So the question is why?, Why would a prison official, a public servant, become a partisan in the ongoing argument on Capital Punishment and the Death Penalty? By saying that the dying Kenny Smith only struggled a little bit, Hamm is insidiously attempting to make light of the barbarity and savagery of what was done to Kenny Smith under the misnomer of justice and by making light of the death circumstances Hamm is dumbing the people of Alabama down with what they need to know to then say, Not In Our Name. Lastly if Commissioner John Hamm is certain of his position, that he's on the right and correct side of history he shouldn't cowardly misrepresent what happened at that charnel house of a prison on 1/25/24 of the killing of Kenny Smith. Secondly the surviving sons of the victim, whose preacher husband had her killed, were quoted in the media as saying and I paraphrase that the world has forgotten about their mother and its all about Kenny Smith, what I say to their grief is this, justice shouldn't simply be a one upmanship endeavor, a steppingstone to speculative political power.

By William Thorpe

.I'm William Thorpe Virginia exiled me to the Texas prison system. I'm solitary confined at the Wainwright Unit


Tuesday, January 30, 2024

Radically Charged Guest Post Brave New Films

Brave New Films
Guest Post, Brave new Films

Monday, January 29, 2024

The Failed Promise of Police Body Cameras Guest Post By ProPublica, New York Times Daily

Guest post: ProPublica/New York Times Daily

This episode contains strong language and audio excerpts of violence.

About a decade ago, police departments across the United States began equipping their officers with body cameras. The technology was meant to serve as a window into potential police misconduct, but that transparency has often remained elusive.

Eric Umansky, an editor at large at ProPublica, explains why body cameras haven’t been the fix that many hoped they would be.

Guest: Eric Umansky, an editor at large at ProPublica.

Eric Krupke, Olivia Natt and 

Marion Lozano, Dan Powell, Rowan Niemisto, Diane Wong and 

Alyssa Moxley and 

Background reading:

For more information on this episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. 

vapac

Sunday, January 28, 2024

ON PRISON REFORM IN VIRGINIA AND WHAT DOES COMPLICITY MEAN By William Thorpe

The author, Nancy Isenberg, a Professor of American History at LSU, produced a book," White Trash. The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America ". In which she brought forth certain facts, moments of History, relevant to America and the activity, in particular of White-European invaders. I start this work, which I expect will be brief with description of Prof. Isenberg's work because it deals with ignorance and how we are not absolved of complicity due to it. Ignorance isn't necessarily bliss as adage attempts to absolve us of the concurrent and accompanying inevitable and inexorable complicity. But what it does is, it permits us to justify (fill in the blank) of why if in all other matters, we can vigorously lay claim to personal sovereignty which naturally is based on cognition and knowledge (knowledge in this context specifically means the honesty of seeking out what we don't know but must in order to function optimally), but as soon as we are confronted with aspects of existence that are to our benefit, we then act as if the underlying travesties of law, (which is primarily our collective social-selfishness regardless of ones participatory understanding), as, Political-Economy, as the justice infrastructure and the practice of imprisonment are then and somehow beyond the reach of our comprehension. I titled this work, ON PRISON REFORM IN VIRGINIA AND WHAT DOES COMPLICITY MEAN, because to reform a system and its practices requires, demands and ask, are we ready to grasp and understand that which is before us? Just as what is a human mind is insular and secret yet its work, its production is inclusively objective on whatever the terms are of the relationship, such then are the substance of society and The Social Contract, because society requires and is based on relationship, regardless of whether one is master of or slave to, it exposes and reveals ignorance and the subsequent complicity. In The Commonwealth of Virginia, The Department of Corrections is under the Secretary of Public Safety and Homeland Security, who is nominated by The Governor of The Commonwealth of Virginia. The Director of The Virginia Department of Corrections is appointed by said Governor, this process is codified at Virginia Code Title 2.2-200.Now I will not waste any ones time stating why the Virginia Department of Corrections is a failed agency unwilling to satisfy the modernity of its mission. Virginia's corporate and legacy media, notwithstanding their status quo and establishment bias have documented enough of The Departments' violations and extra-judicial practices. What I want to get at is the canker of complicity. When one study's Virginia laws, what you will find is outline upon outline of process, intended to hold the Virginia public official i.e prison official accountable. So for example at Virginia code 2.2-520 (C) #9 we see that there is an office of Civil Rights within the office of attorney General authorized to investigate civil right violations (and what is noteworthy is the Virginia prisoner is not excluded from its protections as in other Virginia laws that make a point of excluding the Virginia prisoner)The Virginia prison official is subject to the authority of the law at 2.2-511.1as defined by Va.Code 9.1-101

By William Thorpe

.I'm William Thorpe Virginia exiled me to the Texas prison system. I'm solitary confined at the Wainwright Unit