Guest Rant Sep 13, 2022 at 10:30 am

If You're One of the 20,000 Who Got Their Voice Back, Then Join Me in Registering to Vote

Seattle has not been as progressive of a place for people with my lived experience. Let's change that together. Alyssa Knight

Comments

1

I would like to be thrilled at the restoration of your ability to vote, but how am I supposed to if you haven't said what you did to receive an apparently double-digit year prison sentence?

2

Well, I almost didn't, but I'm glad I did a little Googling here. Correct me if I read wrong, but it seems pretty clear: it looks like you received a 23 year sentence because you and your friends attempted to rob a man and ended up slaughtering him. Talk about burying the lede!

Presumably consumed by guilt, you were still somehow able to muster up enough of a passion for justice to get one of your conspiracy to commit robbery conviction sentences lowered after arguments on appeal.

"Seattle has not been as progressive of a place for people with my lived experience. Let's change that together."

Er...let's not!

3

@1 Regardless as to whether you subscribe to a rehabilitative or punitive model of criminal justice, at some negotiated point (clearly already passed) the state declares that work done; what's your problem that you want to pile more on top of that?

4

@3, well gosh, maugre that I should feel so entitled to disagree with the state that has decided its work is done (the horror!), but in fact I nearly hope I'm reading a different case where the names and timeframe match up somehow, because there's something almost too beautiful about all this. Despite some good-natured grumbling in the article here from Alyssa about how she had to serve part of her original sentence for being an accomplice to a brutal murder, she was still able to summon up some righteous anger about how long it took for her to receive her well-deserved "right" to vote and make political decisions over the lives of the people in the community she preyed on.

5

“… the prison and legal system showed me exactly how many decisions were being made for me.”

Those decisions were being made for you because, as already noted in the comments here, you did an absolutely terrible job of making decisions for yourself:

“Knight had sex with Cole, 26, in his room at the Travelodge motel, 33 W. Division, to determine whether he had a gun and how much money he had, according to court documents.

“While in the room with Cole, Knight got a call from two accomplices who said they were ready to carry out a planned robbery. Knight led Cole into the alley outside the motel about 3 a.m. and distracted him with kisses until co-conspirators Dione J. Williams, 23, and Peter Michael Knypstra, 21, arrived belatedly.

“Instead of robbing Cole as planned, Williams shot Cole to death and fled with Knight and Knypstra.”

(https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2004/dec/16/woman-gets-23-34-years-in-mans-murder/?amp-content=amp)

You know what else was a bad decision, again with you receiving help in making it? Not being forthright about why you’ve spent most of your adult life in prison, for one. Not showing a speck of contrition for your extensive role in planning and executing armed robbery, for another. (Your partner this time, the Stranger, should have warned you about telling only part of your story, but then, the Stranger also hasn’t shown much sense of late, when it comes to telling the stories of criminals.)

And I agree with the restoration of your rights, and that we should spend more money on education and rehabilitation of prisoners. Sentences can stay as they are, because anyone who does what you did deserves to think about it for a long, hard time, and in a place where no harm can come to the rest of us.

I sincerely hope you make better decisions concerning your ballot choices than you once did with your life choices.

6

Yeah, I think part of rehabilitation is probably admitting if you were an accessory to murder.

8

@2 left out that the victim was a suspected drug dealer. Seems like a relevant piece of information that was omitted. In no way does this lessen the horrible crime committed. However, it does provide important context. This was a group of criminals preying on another criminal.

"A Spokane woman who was a central figure in the murder and attempted robbery of a suspected California drug dealer..."

11

What Sir Toby II said. The fact she didn't even bring up her crime victim goes to show how little she thinks about that person. That's the quality of a sociopath. Reformed perhaps?

12

@8, @10: He was just asking for it, right?

13

@8: Seriously, I agree with you, but only because the Stranger should have fully informed readers of the author’s crime. Instead they let her say nothing at all about it, and even let her play the victim.

Sadly, the United States and Washington state have wrongly convicted many persons, often male persons of color. Still more persons of color have served long sentences for “crimes” which are now legal (e.g. the aforementioned weed charge) or served longer sentences than white criminals on the same charges. The Stranger could have tried to find one of those persons, but instead gives us a conventionally-attractive white woman who volunteered to lure a victim into an armed robbery, was justly convicted, did not serve her full sentence, shows no remorse for her dead victim, and even acts as if she’s somehow been wronged — after full restoration of her rights. With the possible exception of a rich white guy who defrauded old ladies to finance his even bigger yacht, it’s tough to think of an example less likely to sway readers to the cause of justice reform.

14

Note the guy who's probably poised to become Washington's next Secretary of State voted against this. And the National Popular Vote Compact. If Anderson's position was different, I guess that would be clear by now. I guess they're obliged by law but I'm curious how well rule changes will be administered. Someone I knew thought they couldn't vote here because of past convictions/current probate.


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