[dotgov]

He lived in extreme poverty, was neglected by his parents, got sexually assaulted by his siblings and was forced to have sex with his stepsister when he was seven. He shot himself twice, once trying to kill himself. The world he lived in was bad.

[loeg]

GP is talking about Mathis Milton. You're quoting a wikipedia article about Quintin Jones. Obviously, they are not the same person.

[dotgov]

Whoops my mistake. I’ll try to make my point with Mathis Milton as well:

“Milton dropped out of school after the 8th grade and worked as a cook, mechanic’s helper, and laborer before his arrest. Milton abused alcohol and drugs as a teenager.”

In another article he was being referred to as having “low IQ”. Combined with the fact that the murders happened in a crack house, I infer that he probably lived in a similar environment and had a comparable upbringing and childhood.

[mardifoufs]

What does that have to do with the killer not taking any responsibility, accusing other people of lacking humanity and saying to a victim that she was just "at the wrong place at the wrong time" with 0 other admission of guilt? I get that we could maybe, maybe stretch the argument that he had a rough upbringing (though dropping out of school isn't that extreme) to "explain" the circumstances of the crime... but not that he was basically still seemingly remorseless after having decades in death row to reflect on his acts.

[dotgov]

He does show signs of remorse: “To Melanie, I never meant to hurt you.”

With regards to the guilt question: I did make the honest mistake of misquoting the history of another inmate before, what stands out to me and what I wanted to point out: I don’t think it is a coincidence that both of those inmates grew up in an environment of poverty. We do have the specifics of what happened in childhood in the first case, the second one I can only infer from the fact of teenage drug use and of growing up in a certain environment, which are both things I would expect to have a high correlation with childhood trauma.

This is not to say that Milton is not guilty of a crime, in the legal sense. But to expect someone who has been beaten, abused and has gotten the short end of the stick all their life to take full individual responsibility for something he didn’t have a choice in does seem inhumane to me. In a way like Melanie, he was at the wrong place at the wrong time.

And what purpose would such an admission of guilt serve? Would it take make it easier to believe that tragedies like this are fully the individuals responsibility and that the environment the individual grows up in has no influence on the outcomes?

[loeg]

I don't dispute that Milton's life growing up was probably tough, but your comment upthread is making specific factual claims (e.g., that he was raped by his sister/siblings), which are to the best of our knowledge not true (because you confused the subject of the thread). We should avoid making false statements.

[pnf]

And? That describes lots of people who don't go out and commit heinous crimes.

[thinking4real]

Lol now you guys are literally just guessing about “how bad he had it” to justify the sociopathy

[seszett]

That's a different person, although his world was probably not much better.