First of all, who is Troy Davis? He is a black man accused and convicted of killing a white off-duty policeman in 1989. He was sentenced to death for the crime and is scheduled to die on Wednesday, September 21, 2011. This is the case in spite of many serious elements of doubt that have surfaced regarding the condemned man’s guilt.
As you might expect, people and institutions generally hostile to the death penalty, ranging from the NAACP to Pope Benedict XVI have strongly urged a stay of execution for Davis. Note, they are not asking for a pardon; just that the State of Georgia not terminate his life under such murky circumstances. Now, on top of that crowd, former Texas judge and FBI director William Sessions and former Georgia Republican Congressman Bob Barr have also strongly advocated for a stay of execution.
The weakness in the prosecution’s case stems largely from a complete lack of physical evidence and the recantation of just about every witness who testified against him. Those recanting parties, in just about every case, cited intense police pressure (possibly to the point of coercion) as the reason for their allegedly false testimony at Davis’ trial. The homeless man who was being beaten in the melee the murdered officer was trying to break up says the police would not let him get treated for his injuries until he fingered Davis.
Does that mean that Troy Davis flat-out didn’t commit the murder? Well, no, but it certainly casts a more-than-reasonable doubt about his guilt. Perhaps the convicted man’s guilt or innocence can be sorted out at some point in the future, until which time, the state should reserve the right to keep him incarcerated. After all, for whatever reason, he was found guilty by a jury of his peers. In fact, William T. Moore, Jr., the judge who presided over Davis’ most recent appeal rejected the new evidence on the grounds that it did not conclusively prove the petitioner innocent. I guess the presumption of innocence does not apply to previously-convicted people.
There are some who might imagine that, had Davis (if he killed anybody) killed some black nobody instead of a white policeman, he would not be on death row, even if a thousand people plainly saw him pull the trigger. Well, that may be so, but the argument, while it has some place in the debate is not quite that simplistic. In most parts of our nation, killing a policeman is viewed as a very aggravating circumstance, over and above killing a “civilian.” Actually, that is not at all a morally bankrupt notion. We owe that extra measure of protection to the people we have tasked to protect us, do we not?
On the other hand, the killing of a policeman should not release the constraints against miscarriage of justice. That seems to be exactly what has taken place in this instance.
If I may shift the focus to capital punishment in general, I will address the notion that people who favor the death penalty should stand against Troy Davis’ execution. The people in Georgia who have the final power of life or death over the condemned man will likely turn a deaf ear to the NAACP, the Pope and everybody else whose politics they regard as unsound. They will need to hear from more people like Mr. Sessions and Mr. Barr if this debate is to have any substantial effect on their thinking.
But why should conservatives and pro-death penalty advocates bother? Well, for one thing, if Davis gets executed, he will not by any means be the first possibly innocent person who was put to death. At least one of candidate Rick Perry’s vaunted 234 executions may well have been carried out against an innocent man-a fellow named Cameron Willingham. In all there have been well over thirty very questionable executions, at conservative estimate, since the re-institution of the death penalty in 1976.
All of these dubious executions will have a cumulative effect at some point in shaping society’s opinion on this issue. Now here is the thing: I am actually in favor of the death penalty in its proper place. By proper place, I do not mean against people convicted in kangaroo courts and defended by idiot lawyers. If the state wants to execute a suspect, the bar for that result needs to be set so high as to remove all doubt as to the efficacy of the execution.
Our society had bred its share of true monsters, such as Timothy McVeigh and John Allen Muhammad, the Beltway sniper. They both deserved and needed to die, if nothing else, as a legitimate display of our outrage. If the institution of capital punishment gets discredited by bloodthirsty petty tyrants looking to take a life-any life will do-to effect their version of squaring accounts, larger and larger numbers of people will become revolted by the practice. Then it will not be around for those instances when we ought to have it available to us.
Great Britain abolished capital punishment in 1952, in the face of far fewer questionable executions. In light of the increased crime and terrorism that have visited that nation in today’s troubled times, I wonder how many of their citizens now regret that earlier decision?
Almost no one who is advocating for Troy Davis’ life to be spared is clamoring for his release. If their appeals finally have sway over the argument, Mr. Davis will still have a life term to serve. How is that letting him get away with murder, even if he actually did do it? And if he did not, who is getting away with murder then?
Sources
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/15/troy-davis-execution-william-sessions_n_963366.html
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/09/17/us-execution-georgia-march-idUSTRE78G0GE20110917
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/09/17/us-execution-georgia-march-idUSTRE78G0GE20110917
CBS Evening News, 9/19/11 broadcast