A Milwaukee woman has been jailed for 11 years for killing the man that prosecutors said had sex trafficked her as a teenager.

The sentence, issued on Monday, ends a six-year legal battle for Chrystul Kizer, now 24, who had argued she should be immune from prosecution.

Kizer was charged with reckless homicide for shooting Randall Volar, 34, in 2018 when she was 17. She accepted a plea deal earlier this year to avoid a life sentence.

Volar had been filming his sexual abuse of Kizer for more than a year before he was killed.

Kizer said she met Volar when she was 16, and that the man sexually assaulted her while giving her cash and gifts. She said he also made money by selling her to other men for sex.

  • HelixDab2@lemm.ee
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    23 days ago

    Do we really want vigilantism though? Because that’s where this leads.

        • Modern_medicine_isnt@lemmy.world
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          23 days ago

          Fair enough, the courts didn’t do thier job. The courts and the police work for us. If they fail us, we have to take over. That should be the defense.

          • sudneo@lemm.ee
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            23 days ago

            Just a thought: what happens when that “we” is people who - say - think the courts and the police are not doing their job in sending home all “these illegal immigrants” or something like that?

            • Modern_medicine_isnt@lemmy.world
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              22 days ago

              That is supposed to be the motivation for the system to do it’s job… preventing groups with minority opinions from taking matters into thier own hands. But that doesn’t seem to be enough anymore. I don’t suggest this path because it is a good choice. It’s a horrible choice. Innocent people will be hurt or killed for sure. But that is already happening in larger and larger numbers from the systems inaction. And the cost of inaction is past the tipping point with the cost of action. And I see no other choice. But I am open to suggestions.

            • wanderingmagus@lemm.ee
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              23 days ago

              Then we have a nice little civil war again, kill a few million of them, and this time when they surrender for the second time, we do a hard reset of their entire culture - no monuments, no statues, no memorials, no representation or voting for any of them or any who aided or abetted them, or their children, or their children’s children.

              • sudneo@lemm.ee
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                23 days ago

                Right, violence works usually works to eradicate ideas and standardize morality!

                • wanderingmagus@lemm.ee
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                  23 days ago

                  It worked when we dropped the sun on Japan, twice. Turned them from a fanatical warrior death cult into salarymen and pacifists in a hurry.

                  • Malfeasant@lemm.ee
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                    23 days ago

                    dropped the sun on Japan

                    I know this is beside the point, but what powers the sun is nuclear fusion- fusing hydrogen into helium- while the bombs dropped on Japan were fission- splitting uranium into various lighter elements.

                  • AVincentInSpace@pawb.social
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                    22 days ago

                    So if failing to resort to violence doesn’t solve your problems, you failed to resort to enough of it? We should be willing to consider all solutions up to and including dropping nukes on our own country to kill the Republicans?

      • HelixDab2@lemm.ee
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        23 days ago

        Which is true, and also doesn’t address the point. (Also, obligatory ACAB.)

        The problem with vigilantism is that the vigilante both decides whether an offense has been committed, and what the punishment should be for that offense. If I’ve been hit repeatedly by people speeding in my neighborhood, and cops aren’t giving the speeders tickets, no one in their right mind is going to say that I should start shooting at people driving in my neighborhood. (Or, I would hope no one in their right mind would say that.)

        • winterayars@sh.itjust.works
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          23 days ago

          She knew whether an offense had been committed.

          That doesn’t prove it to anyone else, of course, but it doesn’t seem like anyone is (now?) contesting the the offense in question was committed. Just that he got off free and she had no recourse. This is not a one time event, either, it’s a pattern where the law fails to protect people in this situation and then throws the book at them if they take matters into their own hands. If she had not, do you think this dude would still be free? Or would the law have eventually caught up to him, after who knows how many more victims?

          • Cosmonauticus@lemmy.world
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            23 days ago

            You don’t get a license to kill just because the justice system failed you. I’m loving how everyone is screaming about how bad the justice system is with this case yet they think a bunch of pissed off ppl thirsty for revenge is a somehow the more measured and practical solution.

            What if after she set the house on fire it burned down the whole block? What if the guy had a victim in the house with him when it happened? Another person pointed out she could’ve destroyed evidence from other victims. Two wrongs don’t make a right

            • Soggy@lemmy.world
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              23 days ago

              I’m not saying it’s more measured or practical, I’m saying it’s inevitable when the system doesn’t serve the people. I’m saying chaos is preferable to tyranny.

            • HelixDab2@lemm.ee
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              23 days ago

              Even if she didn’t harm any other people - the criminal justice system in the US doesn’t allow for the death penalty for cases of rape. (And in point of fact, part of the reason that we don’t do that any more is because it tended to be disproportionately applied against black men accused of assaulting white women.)

        • Katana314@lemmy.world
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          22 days ago

          There’s still answers out there that are “more right” than others.

          Jill, what do you think the price of this bag of rice is? $8.50? Unfortunately, not correct at all. Bob? The 1950s Hall of Rock and Roll on VHS? That’s a thoroughly nonsensical answer that barely even respects the question! The answer was $11.

          Sentencing judge, what do you think this man’s punishment for rape should be? Nothing? Oh, wow, that’s a very obviously wrong answer! Vigilante, your go. Well, we were looking for “A life sentence with chance of parole after 30 years”, but I will say, “Shoot him in the head” is closer to correct.

          I feel like some people there’s a “magic light” applied to courtrooms with judges, that makes their judgments more fair by implication. But it’s absolutely possible for three people in lawnchairs discussing matters over beer to make a more fair judgment than some judges.

          • HelixDab2@lemm.ee
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            22 days ago

            I feel like some people there’s a “magic light” applied to courtrooms with judges

            That’s certainly true if “fair” in your view isn’t the same thing as, “consistent with the law and precedent”.

            Let me pose this a slightly different way: a person murders a baby. Should the person be arrested? Should they be tried for murder? Should they be executed? What if the ‘baby’ is actually an 8 week old fetus, and the person is a doctor performing a legal elective abortion? Religious zealots and right-wing misogynists are going to argue that killing the doctor is morally justified and “fair”. Should each person get to apply their own moral code?

            • Kalysta@lemm.ee
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              22 days ago

              We need to change the precedent so that rapists get life in prison.

              Precedent can be shit too. Remember when “separate but equal” was precedent?

              • HelixDab2@lemm.ee
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                22 days ago

                Ah, yes, so that rape is treated the same as murder. Which will result in more murders. Because if you go to prison for the same amount of time either way, why not go all-in an murder your victim?

            • Katana314@lemmy.world
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              22 days ago

              This isn’t a case of fighting moral codes. This is a case of battles of safety.

              There are many issues of safety that affect all people, including food safety, mental safety, economic safety. All of those have resulted in court battles, as well as court failures. Safety from violence is the basic one, and people will often need to make their decisions around it on a faster basis than courts can proceed.

              That’s the practical analysis, rather than the idealistic view where every single disagreement of any kind would receive a protracted court debate with all evidence present.

              People are all capable of in-the-moment vigilantism (heck, most murderers feel this way). Society can still evaluate their cases afterwards to say whether they were warranted or not. I argue people should feel some safety from repercussions if society can agree their actions demanded some form of immediacy beyond what courts could provide, and did something good for society or were necessary for their own safety.

              A zealot would get no such votes unless they were given a jury of their fellow zealots, and if that’s possible then I can think of no fair justice system in such a society.

              • HelixDab2@lemm.ee
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                22 days ago

                Safety from violence is the basic one, and people will often need to make their decisions around it on a faster basis than courts can proceed.

                Anti-choice zealots argue precisely this: they are protecting babies from premeditated violence.

                It’s not what I believe. But it’s the justification that they use to bomb reproductive clinics and murder OBGYNs.

                That’s the risk we run when we accept vigilante justice; we normalize it so that other people can use it for other reasons that we may or may not find morally acceptable.

                Society can still evaluate their cases afterwards to say whether they were warranted or not.

                Isn’t that what happened here? She was charged with murder, and she took a plea deal since it’s likely she would have lost a court case; she had no reasonable claim of being in fear for her life, and as a matter of law, her attorney wouldn’t be allowed to make the argument that her abuser/victim deserved to be killed.

        • المنطقة عكف عفريت@lemmy.world
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          23 days ago

          Downvoted just f the ACAB. Who said it’s obligatory? Why? That one phrase that reeks of generalization, civilized society has adopted it now? If this is not what it’s supposed to mean, I am open to explanations.

          • HelixDab2@lemm.ee
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            23 days ago

            The point is that the system of policing that we have now is corrupt, and doesn’t protect or help victims. We see this quite often with sexual assault, where cops flatly refuse to investigate; rape kits remain untested for decades. The “good” police officers that try to affect change from within the system end up empowering the system, or get thrown out.

            • المنطقة عكف عفريت@lemmy.world
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              22 days ago

              So if the current system is corrupt, what are the chances for a vigilante system? Somehow less corrupt? And based on what, the goodness of those who are willing to be vigilantes? Sounds like Police v2 minus any shred of accountability or system to handle abuse cases.

              • HelixDab2@lemm.ee
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                22 days ago

                I don’t support vigilantism, no, as you should clearly be able to see from the context of my other comments. I do support completely overhauling the entire criminal justice system, and largely eliminating court precedents that make police officers largely immune from prosecution for failing to perform their jobs, or for malicious actions.

    • jjjalljs@ttrpg.network
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      23 days ago

      When the official justice system fails people, some of them will take matters into their own hands. Frankly it’s surprising there isn’t more political violence targeting police and corrupt judges.

      And remember, jury nullification exists.

      • HelixDab2@lemm.ee
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        23 days ago

        Are you willing to universalize that though? Are you willing to allow all people that believe that they have been treated unjustly to take justice into their own hands?

          • HelixDab2@lemm.ee
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            23 days ago

            That’s your risk though. You let this person administer their own justice, why shouldn’t someone else?

            Where, exactly, is the line? How do you keep that slope from getting covered with oil and grease?

            • thejoker954@lemmy.world
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              23 days ago

              I mean you talk like it isn’t already a vigilante based system.

              Everything you are arguing is already happening. Except the vigilantes are state sanctioned.

              Cops pick and choose what laws to both follow AND enforce all the time. And the judges protect them.

              • HelixDab2@lemm.ee
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                23 days ago

                By definition they aren’t vigilantes if they’re state-sanctioned. You can’t be both a vigilante and state sanctioned.

                Yes, cops pick and choose which laws to enforce (and I’m not addressing which laws cops follow, since it’s not directly relevant here). But cops are also supposed to be disinterested parties; the idea with having cops enforcing the law rather than a person that feels wronged is that cops ar supposed to be more even-handed, even if that’s not the way that it always–or even often–works out. Accepting vigilantism means that we throw out any semblance of impartiality, and make everything subjective.

                • thejoker954@lemmy.world
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                  20 days ago

                  If all you wanna do is argue definitions sure, but this ain’t rocket science. The end results are the same.

                  • HelixDab2@lemm.ee
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                    19 days ago

                    …Except that they aren’t even remotely the same.

                    Vigilantism results in lynchings. That’s the end result.