The fact that Marcellus Williams is innocent and that the state plans to murder him anyway clarifies the essence of a social order—and its carceral defense mechanisms—that cannot survive without the pseudo-godlike power to make people die at will.

Prison is built on the premise that subjection creates order, that sacrificial death creates life, that chains and corpses save us. In the carceral imagination, one’s presence behind those walls—regardless of guilt or innocence—is evidence enough that one must die.

Americans, cut out the crap. "Social order" does not execute people in plenty other countries. Stop inventing cosmic big words, and take responsibility for YOUR failures.