I understand now that you’ve rediscovered the 13th amendment everything looks like a nail, but murder isn’t a status crime like vagrancy, some pretext to reincarnate slavery as convict leasing. We were always going to punish murder (traditionally, by hanging).

And against the complaint that even fixed-term sentences don’t come with an exit plan these days, “ease out your last few years doing off-campus catering around the most powerful people in the state” doesn’t strike me as rank barbarity tbh