Too Much Doubt
Bawndo! It's what plants craveClown shoesSociopaths
Many that live deserve death. Some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them, Frodo? Do not be too eager to deal out death in judgment. Even the very wise cannot see all ends.
-Gandalf (wizard)
If you’re going to kill a man you have to be sure, and there’s just no way to be sure with this guy.
Troy Davis, 42, was put on death row 20 years ago for the 1989 murder of a police officer, Mark MacPhail, in Savannah following a fight with a homeless man over a bottle of beer. Since then seven out of the nine key witnesses who implicated him have recanted their evidence, several saying they were cajoled by police into giving false eye-witness statements.
Another 10 have come forward to point the finger at a separate man present at the scene of the murder, Sylvester Coles. BTW, Coles was one of the 2 of 9 witnesses mentioned above who did not recant – go figure.
Meanwhile, no forensic or DNA evidence linking Davis to the shooting has ever been found, and nor has the murder weapon.
Amnesty International’s US branch, that has championed the case, said: “Allowing a man to be sent to death under an enormous cloud of doubt about his guilt is an outrageous affront to justice. The case against Davis unraveled long ago.”
The public figures who have leant their names to the “Too much doubt” campaign to have Davis’s execution commuted include Pope Benedict, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, former president Jimmy Carter, the former director of the FBI William Sessions, 51 members of the US Congress and many others. Bianca Jagger, who acts as the Council of Europe’s ambassador on the death penalty, said: “to execute Troy Davis in these circumstances would be a travesty. Executing an innocent man is a state-sanctioned murder.”
The parole board heard from one of the jurors who originally recommended the death penalty for Davis. Brenda Forrest told the panel she no longer trusted the verdict or sentence: “I feel, emphatically, that Mr Davis cannot be executed under these circumstances,” she said, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. But the Georgia Parole Board denied clemency yesterday and Troy Davis is scheduled to be put to death today.
– From the Guardian (UK)
[UPDATE] A last minute appeal to the US Supreme Court delayed the execution about 4 hours. But they denied it, and so the State of Georgia killed Mr. Davis a little after 11:00 p.m. Davis maintained his innocence to the end. Strapped to his gurney he lifted his head and according to execution witnesses, told the family of Mark MacPhail that he was not responsible for the officer’s death and did not have a gun at the time.
Last Updated on January 26, 2016 by admin
4 Comments
Discussing the issue of death row can and always will be a very touchy subject. Lex Talionis Means “eye for an eye” in Latin, a lot of people that are pro death penalty stand behind this motto which is fine. My problem is that the death penalty is a flawed system. If you execute one innocent man then the system fails and you need to start over. In 1972 the case of Furman V. Georgia overturned the death penalty for rape cases. The case also deemed it cruel and unusual punishment under the 8th amendment to execute. Then in 1976 the Supreme Court overturned the previous ruling due to Gregg V. Georgia as long as the states adhered to the 8th amendment guidelines.
The death penalty dates as far back as the Eighteenth Century B.C. in the Code of King Hammurabi of Babylon, which codified the death penalty for 25 different crimes. We as Americans derive our modern system from the English common law system and it has evolved into what it is today. The problem with our system, as I said before, it is flawed. We’ve executed innocent people. Therefore, it is flawed. Take the case of Earl Washington. Mr. Washington with an IQ of 69 was charged with the 1982 murder and rape of Rebbecca Lynn Williams, a nineteen year old mother of three in the state of Virginia, after confessing to five false confessions. During the confessions Washington said that he raped and killed Rebbecca Lynn Williams. Questioning revealed that Washington did not know the race of his victim, the address of the apartment where she was killed, or that he had raped her. Washington also testified that Ms. Williams had been short when in fact she was 5’8″, that he had stabbed her two or three times when the victim showed thirty-eight stab wounds, and that there was no one else in the apartment when it was known that Ms. Williams’ two young children were with her in the apartment on the day of the crime. Seventeen years later he was eventually released due to Gov. Gilmore overturning his convictions due to the new DNA findings. This is a case of the police wanting a scapegoat and they found one in Mr. Washington. Another very interesting case is that of the “West Memphis Three”. A great documentary called “Paradise Lost” is based on their case. Talk about a true travesty of justice!One was on death row and the other two were serving life in prison. All three were released from prison after about 20 years behind bars.
This is a blurb from my final paper that I wrote in my Corrections class. I got an “A”.
Congrats on the “A”! Yes, I’ve always believed Blackstone’s maxim “better that ten guilty persons escape than one innocent suffer.” But in today’s Teahadist America, I’m sure that’s a minority position. And don’t forget, “…an eye for an eye…” in the bible was an admonition to be merciful and limit punishment Scripture scholars tell us that the “eye for eye” mandate is actually an attempt to limit violence in early Hebrew culture. As we know from experience, violence tends to escalate: If you cut off my finger, I retaliate by cutting off your hand. Eye for eye reduced such escalation.
WOW! Way to go America. I want to get into this field for what reason?
Hey, it’s not “America,” it’s just the clown-car sub-part of America, who happened to be visiting Georgia, I guess. And the CJ field is honorable and necessary. It’s just that due to its nature, it’s so easy to overstep and then justify it on the grounds of expediency, and next thing you know, you’re living in an authoritarian/totalitarian nation wondering “what happened”?