In Search of Finality
SEPTEMBER 22, 2011 TAGS:
Outrage, disgust, shame. Just a few feelings I found expressed across my social media platforms this morning after the execution of Troy Davis in Georgia, the 42 year-old who was convicted for the first degree murder of an off-duty cop in 1989. In the years since his conviction seven eyewitnesses who fingered Davis either recanted or altered their testimony. Some claimed that police coerced them into incriminating Davis. There is no physical or forensic evidence pinning Davis to the murder.
And yet… and yet. the machinations of justice did not stop Davis' execution. Appeal after appeal had been filed and a Supreme Court-ordered evidentiary hearing failed to win reprieve. The only thing left to do -- and this where we see inverted logic of capital punishment -- was to execute Davis. Finality for the sake of finality. Doubt, in the words of the case's original prosecutor, becomes overblown as time passes.
Steve Kornacki at Salon.com asks whether this case will cause a "public opinion tipping point," and swing Americans away from support capital punishment. With everyone from Jeffrey Toobin to Kim Kardashian offering their admonition, could this terrifying case be the beginning of the end for the death penalty?
Yesterday, Lawrence Russell Brewer, a white supremacist who was convicted for perhaps the most heinous hate crime murder in decades was put to death by the state of Texas. There were few tears in Hunstville for Brewer, no vigils or Internet castigation. There also was no doubt about Brewer's guilt.
Sixty-four percent of Americans support the use of capital punishment for the most egregious crime, willfully taking another's life. But even in Texas, the capital of capital punishment, that number and the number of executions, is on the wane. Why? A lack of trust in the system.
As Kristen Houle from the Texas Coalition to Abloish the Death Penalty told Natalie Pompilio in 2009, jurors are increasingly aware of the danger of wrongful convictions. The erosion of trust in the system will ultimately lead to fewer and fewer prosecutors seeking capital trials. Even if politicians still score easy points by brandishing their death penalty bonafides.
Ben Jealous from NAACP wrote in an email to signers of the group's petition to grant Davis a new trial
Troy's execution, the exceptional unfairness of it, will only hasten the end of the death penalty in the United States. The world will remember the name of Troy Anthony Davis. In death he will live on as a symbol of a broken justice system that kills an innocent man while a murderer walks free.
Two days ago the military ended their Don't Ask Don't Tell policy toward homosexuals. Why? because of the slow erosion of bigotry. That day too will come for capital punishment. More people will be killed by the state before that happens. Some might be monsters like Brewer (who dragged his black victim three miles behind his truck) and some might be innocent. Neither deserve to die.
As Justice Harry Blackmun famously wrote in his 1994 dissenting opinion in the death penalty case Callins v. Collins:
I feel morally and intellectually obligated simply to concede that the death penalty experiment has failed. It is virtually self evident to me now that no combination of procedural rules or substantive regulations ever can save the death penalty from its inherent constitutional deficiencies. The basic question--does the system accurately and consistently determine which defendants "deserve" to die?--cannot be answered in the affirmative.
And yet… and yet. the machinations of justice did not stop Davis' execution. Appeal after appeal had been filed and a Supreme Court-ordered evidentiary hearing failed to win reprieve. The only thing left to do -- and this where we see inverted logic of capital punishment -- was to execute Davis. Finality for the sake of finality. Doubt, in the words of the case's original prosecutor, becomes overblown as time passes. Steve Kornacki at Salon.com asks whether this case will cause a "public opinion tipping point," and swing Americans away from support capital punishment. With everyone from Jeffrey Toobin to Kim Kardashian offering their admonition, could this terrifying case be the beginning of the end for the death penalty?
Yesterday, Lawrence Russell Brewer, a white supremacist who was convicted for perhaps the most heinous hate crime murder in decades was put to death by the state of Texas. There were few tears in Hunstville for Brewer, no vigils or Internet castigation. There also was no doubt about Brewer's guilt.
Sixty-four percent of Americans support the use of capital punishment for the most egregious crime, willfully taking another's life. But even in Texas, the capital of capital punishment, that number and the number of executions, is on the wane. Why? A lack of trust in the system.
As Kristen Houle from the Texas Coalition to Abloish the Death Penalty told Natalie Pompilio in 2009, jurors are increasingly aware of the danger of wrongful convictions. The erosion of trust in the system will ultimately lead to fewer and fewer prosecutors seeking capital trials. Even if politicians still score easy points by brandishing their death penalty bonafides.
Ben Jealous from NAACP wrote in an email to signers of the group's petition to grant Davis a new trial
Troy's execution, the exceptional unfairness of it, will only hasten the end of the death penalty in the United States. The world will remember the name of Troy Anthony Davis. In death he will live on as a symbol of a broken justice system that kills an innocent man while a murderer walks free.
Two days ago the military ended their Don't Ask Don't Tell policy toward homosexuals. Why? because of the slow erosion of bigotry. That day too will come for capital punishment. More people will be killed by the state before that happens. Some might be monsters like Brewer (who dragged his black victim three miles behind his truck) and some might be innocent. Neither deserve to die.
As Justice Harry Blackmun famously wrote in his 1994 dissenting opinion in the death penalty case Callins v. Collins:
I feel morally and intellectually obligated simply to concede that the death penalty experiment has failed. It is virtually self evident to me now that no combination of procedural rules or substantive regulations ever can save the death penalty from its inherent constitutional deficiencies. The basic question--does the system accurately and consistently determine which defendants "deserve" to die?--cannot be answered in the affirmative.
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