Absolutely!

I’m pretty sure @booly@sh.itjust.works was meaning the exact opposite, that it’s more about educating perpetrators than taking vengeance or merely dishing out old-fashioned justice on them.

Apparently, it was required to be allowed in that state:

Reading a bit more, during the sentencing phase in that state people making victim impact statements can choose their format for expression, and it’s entirely allowed to make statements about what other people would say. So the judge didn’t actually have grounds to deny it.
No jury during that phase, so it’s just the judge listening to free form requests in both directions.

It’s gross, but the rules very much allow the sister to make a statement about what she believes her brother would have wanted to say, in whatever format she wanted.

From: https://sh.itjust.works/comment/18471175

influence the sentence

From what I’ve seen, to be fair, judges’ decisions have varied wildly regardless, sadly, and sentences should be more standardized. I wonder what it would’ve been otherwise.

Perhaps; it seemed like they knew the decedent well enough to know that he would appreciate this, from everything that the article says. With that said, I also won’t be surprised if templates for wills or living trusts add a no-duplication statement by default over the coming years.

Thanks for sharing; I thought this was a fascinating read, especially since it ended on a positive note and not pure condemnation. It seems totally Black Mirror-esque, but I do wonder how many of the commentators here attacking it didn’t read the article. The family obviously didn’t make this decision lightly, given how much work it took to create it, and even the judge appreciated the novel approach. This is probably one of the best-case use scenarios relative to the abyss of unstoppable horror that awaits us.