Turns out I work a couple blocks away from the strip model where that shop was. One day I walked by and saw a memorial placard in the ground and started googling to find out what happened there. Pretty nuts. There’s been so much gentrification since the time of the murders that it’s hard to understand what kind of neighborhood it was back in the day.

No disciplinary action for the cops involved in trying to convict innocent boys, and harassing one to the extent that he’s now dead. If their own freedom was on the line, they’d not be so motivated. Time to hold the police accountable:

Irony: the real killer was arrested 2 days later and had the murder weapon on him, but it was never matched against the Austin murders. He killed himself in 1999. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Eugene_Brashers

The HBO documentary about this case was excellent and you really feel for Forrest and his family. Highly recommended watch.

> In February, Forrest was officially declared innocent, and a few months later he was granted millions of dollars in compensation from the City of Austin. In August, he turned fifty, and his mom and the patrons of the Manchaca Springs Saloon threw him a big party. Sixty friends—many of whom he didn’t even know two years ago—toasted him, hugged him, and gave him raucous high fives. You would think Forrest would, finally, be happy.

I see the argument thrown around a lot that it's unethical to impose the death penalty because it can't be reversed.

This has never made any sense to me. If you put someone in prison for 40 years, you can't reverse that either. If you spread baseless rumors about someone being a murderer, never charge him with anything, and just quietly let everyone in the state shun and despise him for 40 years...