Causing a Natural Disaster to Party: The Case of James Scott | Overlooked
3,904,388
Published 2022-11-29
In this episode of Overlooked, Adam Pitluk, journalist and author of Damned to Eternity, returns to Quincy, IL to further investigate how James may have been scapegoated by local community and law enforcement officials whose tunnel vision firmly placed the blame on James, a crime which he maintains to this day that he didn't do.
• World News
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All Comments (20)
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The fact that the one farmer refuses to say whether he thought James broke the levee and then says "he's served enough time" tells you everything you need to know. He needed the money but now feels guilty that a man is rotting in prison. James took the fall so that people could have insurance payouts. If there was a random burglary in the area or a fire, I could see viewing him as a suspect over that due to his past. But to break a levee? Sure looked like he wasn't partying when he did that interview shortly after the flooding started. Who breaks a levee to go party, then sticks around to do a TV interview? None of this makes any sense.
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Massive amount of respect to the Journalist for telling this story, if he had not, would we ever really know about James Scott? Imagine all James Scotts (innocent people) rotting in prison who don't have a journalist telling their story.
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Wow, my heart dropped when it said his mother passed away, one of two people who had never abandoned him..RIP
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life in prison for a flood on failing infrastructure with nothing but circumstantial evidence, and then on top of it there was financial gain for the ‘witnesses’ is insane. Thats like something out of north korea…
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There is no way that, after spending 27.5 years, there’s no way that the state could ever admit fault after this long and so it’s so upsetting to know he is serving a lifetime sentence and he did not deserve it. It’s sad to know about this. I hope he gets out.
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His mom passing away made this so much more sad. She was waiting on the day he was going to come home. praying for this man to get out
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I am from the area. Some of those farms are worth millions. I believe he is 100% innocent.
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Wow. The fact he is willing to continue to insist his innocence, plus his say he didn’t hate the people, but what they did. That’s a man who has complete clarity of the situation. He has overcame his anger.That man is innocent. 100 percent.
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When that politician said that he judges someone’s past behaviour as evidence to predict future behaviour basically said that James Scott was picked as the perfect scapegoat because of his previous crimes and that he was actually being punished for his past because he was going to end up in jail anyway. He was definitely right about one thing,James Scott was the perfect scapegoat because he wouldn’t plead guilty, he wouldn’t take a deal and he won’t lie to a parole board to finally get out of prison. So essentially, once he was convicted they had nothing to worry about because James will keep himself in prison due to his moral compass being set way higher than the greedy motherfuckers that decided they were the only ones deserving of a new home while there was no disaster relief fund for the rest of the community. Disgusting.
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This needs to be played across every media outlet.
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It's terrible that we live in a society where a judicial system will put financial gain over someone's innocence
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His first conviction was thrown out for prosecutor misconduct, and he was tried and convicted AGAIN. Crazy story.
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Probably one of the worst abuses of power I’ve ever seen. All these prominent men in town were freaking out bc their insurance doesn’t cover flooding until they saw this guy on the news. I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone getting life in prison for a nonviolent crime where no one died or even hurt.
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They never even explained how he supposedly damaged the levy to cause the flood. How anyone can look at that “evidence” and conclude that any one person was responsible is insane. They found a patsy they figured the world would forget. Thank you Adam for bringing attention to this injustice. I hope this man gets his well deserved freedom.
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Cases like this really make it clear why so many people don't trust our justice system.
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I live in Kansas City Missouri. My dad just told me about this guy a couple days ago when I brought up the flood. Then two days later this shows up on my YouTube feed. A life sentence for allegedly causing a flood. How did he summons the clouds that summer to make it rain so much?
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He got a lifetime in prison, so everyone else could commit insurance fraud. That's horrible in so many ways.
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This man should have been home. People commit murder and serve less time. This is INSANE
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This is so sad..I can’t ever wrap my mind around it. Kudos to this reporter and Vice for putting his story out there
