Summary
A West Virginia couple, Jeanne Kay Whitefeather and Donald Lantz, received prison sentences of 215 and 160 years, respectively, for forcing their five adopted Black children into slave labor.
Authorities discovered the abuse after a welfare check revealed children locked in a shed without water or sanitation.
The couple, charged with human trafficking, child neglect, and forced labor, targeted the children because of their race.
The court ordered them to pay $280,000 in restitution each.
Trump pardons incoming
State not federal.
Do rules matter now?
While I get what you mean, they were arrested, detained, charged, and convicted by the state. They will be in a state prison. Unless Trump is going to send the military to raid the prison, I don’t see the state changing its mind.
he can’t pardon state sentences?
No, only the governor of that state can do that.
That’s why people like Loraine Pellegrino are still on probation for forging the fake electors and trying to steal the 2020 election. MAGA doesnt mention the people that still have charges and convictions against them for their illegal acts. He only could pardon the charges brought by the federal government.
It takes a cartoonish level of cruelty that your verdict sounds like a made up rage bait article that tries way too hard.
Fuck you. I hope they get the same treatment as kiddy fiddlers in prison.
I may have laughed when I read this line from the judge, “You brought these kids to West Virginia, a place as I know as almost heaven and put them in hell,” Either she has a lot of pride for West Virginia or the cartoonist part was present during the trial as well.
"Almost heaven, West Virginia. Blue Ridge Mountains, Shanendoah River.
Life is old there, older than the trees.
Younger than the mountains, growing like the breeze.
Country roads, take me home, to the place I belong"
Good. In the USA, slavery isn’t ok for private citizens. Only prisons are allowed to engage in blatant actual slavery.
When they change illegal immigration to be a felony, all those people in the deportation camps can legally be put right back in use!
… they took our jerbs?
“You brought these kids to West Virginia, a place as I know as almost heaven and put them in hell. The court will now put you in yours. May God have mercy on your souls, because this court will not."
Circuit Court Judge MaryClaire Akers
That’s kinda fire actually
Reminder that West Virginia exists exclusively because of slavery. Especially that part of Appalachia was a HUGE haven for self emancipated people and free black people alike, because if you get deep enough into the mountains, you basically cease to exist as a legal entity unless people want to put a significant amount of effort into reaching you and the same amount in extricating you.
I always find the people here with Confederate flags claiming it’s about heritage to be the most ridiculous. The state was founded during the Civil War and is the part of Virginia that stayed with the Union, how in the everloving fuck is a Confederate flag part of our heritage?
If it was about heritage, it would be half-burned and covered in boot prints.
It was also arguably the heart of Ol’ John Browns crusade against twisted institution of slavery. I usually find Evangelicals both living and dead to be morally reprehensible weaklings who take their own gods name in vain, John Brown is one of the few I would be willing to shake the hand of.
John Brown did nothing wrong.
“I just want the court to know that I have made mistakes I am very sorry for that and I love my children and I have never, ever, done anything to my … children to harm them intentionally,”
So what, you just accidentally locked them in a shed and forced them into slave labor? What the fuck is this apology.
I wonder if they have biological children and meant them.
Source: haven’t read the article.
Edit: read the article. Still don’t know.
I’m just surprised that the apology didn’t mention Jesus even once.
Brain farts and prayers
Even though by the time the hearing commences, the judge has already usually decided on the sentence, every competent criminal defence lawyer will advise their client to grovel and beg for mercy at the sentencing for two reasons:
- Acting recalcitrant could upset the judge and result in a heavier sentence than the judge originally planned because they feel a need to make an example of the defendant.
- Not being apologetic damages your future chances of parole when the parole board looks at the tape or record of the sentencing.
Ah, yes, the parole they might receive when the parole board reviews their case in [checks watch] 80-100 years.
There’s also the possibility of appeals to get the sentence reduced. And the defendant’s family can apply for pardons. Pardons and commutations are usually associated with political grift in the US (and this is a well-deserved reputation), but they can also be applied for and governors occasionally grant them to prisoners who demonstrate they’re reformed even when they’re not otherwise eligible for parole.
Grovelling before the judge and acting like you accept you are guilty for sixty minutes costs nothing on the part of the defendant anyway.
I understand. I was mainly just making a joke.
Pro-Tip for any actual monsters hiding in human skin: deflection of all wrongdoing is not a great apology.
This is America.
Don’t catch me slippin tho
Oligarchs next?
They don’t deserve prison
Yes, we need a few of these. There are 759 billionaires in the USA. That would easily wear one out and break it.
I say, the duller the blade, the better. Maybe it’ll take a few hacks to really get those heads rolling. Who cares? A few minutes of pain is nothing compared to the thousands of lives they’ve walked all over
Who cares?
I do. If I was in favor of casual and unnecessary suffering I’d be a hypocrite for guillitong people over their lax attitudes towards casual and unnecessary suffering. I don’t believe in “it’s ok when we do it”. I don’t want to live in a society where it’s considered acceptable.
Nearly Headless Billionaire
Slavers should be shot
John brown smiles upon you:
John brown did nothing wrong
He did a lot wrong, but the failure to ensure adequate equipment and training for his troops is to a degree expected when running a guerrilla crusade.
He should have gone to ground earlier in the campaign.
They needed to do more smaller scale raids on remote plantations for longer, bleeding Kansas was a start but insufficient.
Morally wrong, no. Tactically he made enough errors to get himself killed.
John Brown’s body lies molding in the grave, oh John Browns body lies molding in the grave, John Browns body lies molding in the grave but his soul goes marching on /lyr
Death is a mercy. Unless you meant “in the spine.”
I don’t care about “mercy” I just want them removed from the world as efficiently as possible.
Spine, legs, arms.
Wait when did I stumble into a Rimworld sub?
Of course, you can never go wrong with the old faithful “one lung, one kidney, amputate both arms and legs and replace with pegs then release back to their people”
Burned.
Burned, then shot
“Ow! You shot me! Now I’m very badly burned, and have been shot!”
I’m still down here and still in quite a lot of pain. Maybe someone could call an ambulance? The pain is really quite severe… I’ve fashioned a makeshift splint, here goes nothing!
You know the prisoners are basically slaves as well.
…and?
So there’s a lot of slavers out there. If this person actually believes what they’re saying, they are fully capable of taking action based on their beliefs right now.
I like the way you think
You can get two birds stoned at once by going to the prison where they’re being held
I am an abolitionist so?
So?
What the fucking fuck?
Watch donald pardon them and give them a job doing ethics or bs. He wants outrage
Donnie just found his new education secretary.
That asshole would probably put them in as Secretary of Labor.
Lol “I’d like to formally announce the new head of The Office of Child Care…”
As long as this was a state affair, he can’t legally pardon them.
All he has to do is apply sufficient political pressure upon the governor to make the pardon happen. It’s more work for a state level concern but ultimately it’s plausible if the current Republican administration is sufficiently motivated
Who will stop him? Who’s going to die on that hill? He ignores Judges orders already right? I mean, I don’t know the system that well but if he just does what he wants and ignores those that usually have the power to say no, then what?
Yeah, I agree. That’s why I inserted “legally.” That said, I fully expect us to see this happen soon.
How did this get 20 upvotes, 0 downvotes, and not a single person pointing out that this conviction was at the state level, something the POTUS unambiguously lacks any power to pardon?
unambiguously lacks any power
Ten years ago, I would agree. Now we’re seeing the trump administration openly oppose federal judicial rulings and even telling the court they are “not showing respect” to the Executive. We’re seeing Musk say he will back a primary challenger for any elected official that doesn’t follow trump’s orders, with the most recent being musk offering to openly buy votes for $100 in support of his candidate. Any one of these ten year ago would have been unambiguously in violation of law and tradition and dealt with.
There is no “unambiguously lacks any power” anymore.
Our governor might be a GOP dipshit, but he’s…less on the Trump train than some others. I think he got shocked out of it a bit when the whole “stop all payments” thing first started less than 48 hours before the Medicaid disbursement was supposed to hit and he was needing to have emergency “how do we keep Medicaid going” meetings before the injunction against it. He can’t be totally off the Trump train if he wants reelected because this is a hard red safe state in the way it used to be a hard blue safe state before fucking Gore of all people fucked it up.
I don’t think he’d pardon someone just because Trump asked, barring Trump making a significant threat to force the issue.
I don’t think he’d pardon someone just because Trump asked, barring Trump making a significant threat to force the issue.
Would trump have to use force? His minions are in control of the Treasury. It doesn’t matter that it would be illegal for trump to mess with state funding from the federal government. He’s already shown he is defying court orders which take week to arrive at anyway.
How bad would your state be if trump cut off all federal funding overnight?
He could do that, but it would become very public very quickly and that’s more a problem for your side politically when you do it to a state where your side is in power in general.
He can threaten Maine and Maines governor like that because they’re a blue state and turning on them doesn’t make his base realize he could do the same to them in the same way because they’re the other team. Doing the same to WV would read as a betrayal to his own followers precisely because they’re solid red and we’re not far enough down the “and then they came for…” list for that to be a safe move politically yet.
TL;DR: People on Lemmy have no idea how pardon powers work and don’t care to check before commenting and upvoting but want to save face by baselessly claiming he can do this anyway.
Tldr, you still think we live in the world of pre 2025. We don’t. American democracy is dead, the checks and balances are falling apart, and its only a matter of time in their crusade against the constitution before the states rights mask comes fully off, if it hasnt already.
You’re still working under the “technically correct” definition. Yes, a state crime is pardonable only by the head of that state, the governor. What you do not appear to be conceding is the trump may have the indirect power to replace the governor. trump is now targeting the governor of Maine (for an unrelated trump tantrum). If trump and Musk bring the power of the federal government to strip funding away from Maine, and Musk funds GOP friendly rivals for governor, that new governor would issue the pardon. The end result being trump wanting a pardon (yes at the state level), and getting it.
That’s Maine, Maine is a blue state and it costs him and his little electoral capital to attack a Dem politician in a blue state.
WV is red, extremely red. Trying to fuck with WV like that is attacking a strongly red state, and risks making the other red states realize that maybe, just maybe the leopard might eat their faces too. We’re not far enough down the “and then they came for…” list for that to be a safe move, yet.
What you do not appear to be conceding is the trump may have the indirect power to replace the governor.
Not true, but okay. That’s not the “technically correct” definition; that’s the unambiguously correct definition, and people who have no idea how pardon powers work are coping hard that they upvote whatever they think is true without actually doing any work to verify what they read. As with Reddit, so with Lemmy: it’s a constant on social media, and it’s a constant here that people have no fucking idea what they’re talking about and just vote based on what sounds right to them and what sounds the most authoritative. Evidenced by the fact you can’t go five seconds without reading an upvoted comment by someone who didn’t read past the headline (and then whining that that information should’ve been in the headline when they get called on it or trying to “um ackshually” their way out of it).
Come back to me if this person gets pardoned. Until then: lol.
Come back to me if this person gets pardoned. Until then: lol.
ok
Because rules/law/ethics matter to the current ‘administration’…?
Many people are not fully aware of the extent of pardon powers.
Maybe next time wait a few minutes before reacting?
They could have just worked for the prison system, then they’d get a regular paycheck to enforce slavery.
This is great news for all. The parents rot in a cell and hopefully get shoved by other black prisoners once they find out what they did.
I hope the government put services in place to help rehabilitate and provide those children with the mental heath and support they’ll need.
I hope the government put services in place to help rehabilitate and provide those children with the mental heath and support they’ll need.
Thoughts and prayers. Write a letter.
Jim Brown would have shot these filthy pigs.
John Brown
Jim Brown
Hmm, I could have sworn I wrote John, but I guess I fucked that up. Doubly so, because I’m a big John Brown fan, and even have a sticker of him on my laptop that says “I don’t argue with people John Brown would have shot”.
Jim Brown was a prominent civil rights activist though, so not an unfortunate mixup
it is funny that nobody finds this funny.
I am shocked this went to trial in WV
