Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/11/19/no-one-entered-jeffrey-epstein.html
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So let’s see: we have a child sex trafficker whose testimony could destroy the lives of multiple world leaders and oligarchs who died in a jail cell guarded by temps and replacements, some of which admitted to falsifying reports and who fell asleep and never actually checked on him, in an area in which the cameras all happened to be broken at the same time.
Sure, nothing odd about that.
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But what about all of the evidence random people on the internet made up that proves he didn’t kill himself?
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I wouldn’t be surprised if Epstein had done a Frank Pentangeli but without the bathtub and the razor. Basically, if he didn’t kill himself, all he had to look forward to was somebody else killing him down the road. If somebody told him that his cell wouldn’t be watched for a few hours, it wouldn’t surprise me if he killed himself.
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Hi, we are here to kill Epstein.
Sure, please sign in and make sure to let me know when finished so we can sign you out.
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Sadly, you’re right. Like Cory Doctorow said a couple of months ago, the state of our prisons is a national shame.
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So far I haven’t seen any evidence that suggests the willful ineptitude surrounding Epstein’s treatment in prison was unusual compared to the willful ineptitude of our prison system in general.
Think of it this way: if a black civil rights leader was gunned down without just cause by police during a traffic stop a lot of people would assume it was a targeted assassination, and indeed it could be. But it could just as easily be yet another example of the racist police brutality that plays out across our nation every day.
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To be fair, I don’t have an in-depth knowledge of that prison or how things are typically run there; it wouldn’t surprise me at all if their meager budgets result in using a lot of poorly-trained crappy temp guards and their maintenance budget is so low that their surveillance cameras rarely function properly.
But it still seems like a weird coincidence that such an intensely high-profile prisoner was taken off of suicide watch so quickly and then was basically abandoned with little to no surveillance.
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But in that case either way it is police murdering her/him for being Black and doing something they didn’t like.
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It’s only a “weird coincidence” if it’s unusual compared to how suicidal prisoners are usually treated. If this case wasn’t attracting so much media attention it would probably just be another day at the office.
Which isn’t to say that he wasn’t murdered/intentionally left to kill himself, merely that we don’t have any evidence suggesting that so far.
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Sure, just as in this case Epstein is dead because the prison system wasn’t concerned with protecting his physical wellbeing.
The question is “is Epstein dead because he was targeted, or is he dead because the prison system is generally incompetent and unconcerned about the wellbeing of prisoners in general?”
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I dunno, man, People die in prison all the time. IIRC Epstein got his affairs in order and updated his will shortly before. So it really isn’t hard for me to believe he wanted to kill himself, and the guards didn’t really care if he did or not. For sure they were negligent in keeping an eye on him, but the conspiracies of the Clintons or someone else paying to have him murdered I am not keen on at this point (change my mind).
Furthermore - I don’t understand why Epstein’s death would effect anyone else getting in trouble. Odds are he would have been silent during the trial, and they would have brought a ton of witnesses to load up the evidence against him. guess one could argue he could have turned on his clients for a shorter sentence, but I think he knew it was over at this point. Him turning states evidence wouldn’t really help him out in anyway.
So just assuming Epstein kept quiet, they still had a case against him - and I assume - others. Certainly these should be pursued. Like that lady was the groomer/arranger - start with her.
I DO appreciate the longevity of “Epstein didn’t kill himself”, but maybe it should be “Epstein didn’t do it alone.”
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no, no, everything’s fine, nobody gets murdered in jail, that’s not a thing
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I dunno, either, which is the frustrating thing. As you point out, he updated his will and got his affairs in order, and it’s very easy to see why someone in his position would want to permanently exit the situation.
If anything, it’s simply a shame that the prison was in such terrible shape – and our prison system is so consistently terrible at this stuff – that there’s reasonable doubt in both directions, and we may never know the full circumstances.
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Conspiracy theories are how weak minds seek to explain a world too complex to fight, so their surrender and complicity can be framed instead as impotence and incapability.
“Yeah, prisons are understaffed, under budget and in disrepair, but the real problem is the illuminati who run everything, the Bilderbergs, the .0001% cabal, etc.”
Nonsense.
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Unfortunately, there really is nothing odd about federal lockups being short-staffed, sloppy, and generally run with a disregard for prisoner safety.
See, e.g. https://boingboing.net/2019/08/13/malice-vs-incompetence.html
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I don’t think anybody here’s talking about the Illuminati or advancing conspiracy theories.
What I did mention, with my “weak mind” full of “impotence”, is that the person in question – unguarded, with broken surveillance cameras – was a child sex trafficker linked directly to two Presidents, the British royal family, and the Saudis.
And that that, combined with our shitty prison system, means that people will likely be wondering how he died with no answers.
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The only unusual detail I’ve seen about the Epstein story is that after his first suicide attempt he was taken off suicide watch after something like24 hours. At the insistence of his own lawyers.
Someone who’s been in the MCU suicide ward described it me as “they throw you naked into a padded room without even a bucket to shit in”. But Epstein wasn’t in the suicide ward when he died, and a lot of the “but how?” conspiracy comes out of the assumption that he was. Its not surprising that Epstein would want out, though. It is weird that his lawyers would fight to end it.
All of the staffing, funding, negligence and broken shit problems at this detention center had already been reported, and complained about in court for a long time before Epstein’s death. Including during his first suicide attempt. Hell it was his lawyers who asked for the suicide watch, and authorities tried to argue it wasn’t a real suicide attempt, with the broken cameras and lack of video in his cell during that attempt becoming a major part of that fight.
A lot of the other misunderstandings have to do with the fact that this is not a prison and is not part of the prison system. The MCU is a federal detainment facility or jail. Its not a big place where you go to serve time. Its where they hold people pending trial/charges. Jails have a different set of super fucked up problems then prisons. And one of the big ones is negligence and suicides, along with broken facilities and staff short falls.
Its a pretty big indictment of that situation that these people didn’t even give enough fucks to be more careful than usual with a case this high profile. But aside from the detail of who it was that lifted the suicide watch, the scandal here is that Epstein got treated like everyone else.
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I wonder where the lawyers’ ethical duty lies here. Are they supposed to advocate for treatment that would be in the interests of their client’s health and physical safety if that conflicts with their client’s stated desires?
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