'He was a straight-A student', 'a loving husband', 'she worked 60 hours a week'––we often hear how victims of police and white supremacist violence didn't deserve to be killed due to their shiny records. But what if this is the totally wrong approach to discussing violence visited upon oppressed communities? Our guest, Appeal contributor Zoé Samudzi, argues that the notion of “innocence” as a condition for empathy is an outdated, puritan mode of thinking that implies those with messy, so-called "criminal pasts" are somehow not deserving of our compassion.