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TechnoratiCapital Punishment Is Wrong, Unfair
This is a rewrite.
In the column originally prepared for this space, I said that Troy Davis was scheduled to die Monday -- to be killed, actually, by an executioner for the state of Georgia.
But -- stop the presses! -- that's no longer accurate. On Monday, Davis, 40, will still be alive. Or at least, he won't be dead because of anything the state did. That's because on Friday, an appeals court granted him a stay.
This is Davis' third stay, his third hairsbreadth escape from execution. If there is any justice, it will be his last. Meaning not that he will be killed, but that he won't, that the state of Georgia will finally come to its senses.
Davis was convicted in the 1989 death of Mark MacPhail, an off-duty Savannah police officer who was trying to break up a parking lot altercation when he was shot. But Davis is connected to the crime by no forensic evidence whatsoever.
He stands condemned solely on the word of nine witnesses, seven of whom have since recanted. Two of the seven say they were intimidated into lying by police. Of the two who have not recanted, one is a man named Sylvester Coles, who is said by some witnesses to be the real shooter.
For many of you this is an old story. I've written about it before as have others. Luminaries like Jimmy Carter and the pope have also spoken out on Davis' behalf. Is it too much to hope somebody will finally listen?
Understand: I oppose the death penalty for many reasons.
- In the first place, it is biased by race: Offenders whose victims were white are more likely to be put death than those whose victims were of some other race.
- In the second place, it is biased by gender: Male offenders are more likely to be put to death than females who commit similar crimes.
- In the third place, it is biased by class: Those who can afford high-priced lawyers are more likely to escape execution (paging O.J. Simpson) while those who can't are more apt to wind up in the death house.
- In the fourth place, it has no deterrent effect.
- In the fifth place, it is more expensive than the alternative: Life in prison without parole.
- In the sixth place, it is wrong -- and not just wrong, but crude, cruel and immoral. No government should arrogate unto itself the right to put its citizens to death.
But you know what? Put all those reasons aside. Because the thing that troubles me more than all of them combined, the thing that makes Davis' case an abomination, is the simple possibility, indeed, the likelihood, that we will get it, have already gotten it, flat-out wrong.
Who can doubt? There are few things less perfect than human beings, after all, yet that's what is required for anyone to feel even marginally sanguine about this custom of state-sponsored death: perfection. We need to believe that in this most somber of endeavors, unlike in all others, human beings will somehow magically make no mistakes, get everything right, be flawless.
I would not wager the change in my sofa cushions on the ability of government to spell my name without error. Yet day after day, we blithely wager the lives of other people on the ability of government to administer justice without error.
It's a delusion that does not bear scrutiny; if you look too closely, the facade cracks and you are forced to ponder what's being done in your name. So most of us would, I expect, look the other way, think not too long upon it, if Troy Davis were put to death, proclamations of innocence on his lips as they have been for almost 20 years.
Maybe you're telling yourself, Pitts has no idea whether Davis is innocent or not. Well, you're right. I don't know; you don't know. And that's the point.
8 Comments so far
Show Allwhat about justice?? obviously in the case being discussed about Mr. Davis, true justice is not being served, in fact the opposite is happening - possible innocence, or in any case un-proven guilt, is being oppressed by corrupt government. this is absolutely terrible.
but to take one case, no matter how wrong or heart wrenching and generalize it for every situtation - even the majority of the cases - is wrong too.
i believe when someone willingly kills another human being its more than just another casualty... that someone was a human being (and for all intensive purposes of this argument, they were "innocent"). their innocence in this situation was stolen from them by another, murderous, human. to pay for the stolen innocence the murderer must be punished. he must give up what he has taken. and that would happen to be his life. does that sound wrong? it's not that pro-capital punishment people think of murderers as lesser people or barely human....they are people who have a right to live. however, when they take another's right to live, their has to be just compensation...otherwise the person who was murdered is left unjustified. they got screwed over when they got murdered and they got screwed over again when the guy gets life in prison.
that's how i see it. however, i only strongly advocate this for first degree murders...people who actively seek the destruction of others. second degree maybe...it depends on the case i guess... however, i'm very hesitant to advocate it for mansluaghter. mainly because there are more cases of accidents leading to friends or relatives dying. i hate those stories... and to have the person who feels completely terrible and sorry about what they did get sentenced to death it just doesn't feel right. especially if their family members cuz then they've already lost someone, and then to loose another to death row.... i can't see myself supporting that.
what i'm talking about is deliberate, "I'm going to kill him!" situations... or a criminal running from the law and he murders a driver to steal his car, and then shoots a cop...stuff like that.
basically, i believe in justice. i believe the government has the ability, nay the responsibility and the duty, to administer justice to criminals; nonetheless, they can, and often do, abuse the law without getting caught, and that's sad too.
There is more than just a capital punishment question here. If Davis is innocent, (which question easily defers to the obvious question of whether there is reasonable doubt to his guilt) the larger question is of wrongful convictions.
In this particular case, I see a few big factors in perpetuating a wrongful conviction:
1. Elected judges: Many states elect, rather than appoint judges. This places severe pressure of opinion to convict, even in cases which shouldn't go to trial in the first place. Furthermore, this pressure increases, rather than decreases, as the severity of the potential punishment increases, as mistakes become more grave.
This effect may be even worse for appellate judges. District appeals courts often deny, on policy, all requests for retrial and acquittal. Part of their justification is that the case can be appealed at a state level, even though state-level appeals are discretionary and usually not even allowed. Thus state appeals are guaranteed to be impossible and the entire criminal procedure is unconstitutional.
2. Punishment of perjury: Perjury is a serious crime, espectially when committed by police and those working on an investigation. In this case, however, threatening to punish witnesses for perjury only deters them from speaking the truth. Judges need to welcome recantations of testimony and district attorneys need to promise leniency for honesty.
3. Claims of innocence in appeals briefs: Innocence is not a valid case for appeal or retrial. There have been cases of politicians and trial judges who become convinced of a convict's innocence, but their hands are tied. The governor can issue a pardon, so why couldn't he issue a retrial as well? Or why couldn't there be a public petition for retrial?
As far as the death penalty goes, I believe it should be abolished, but even in states that will not be abolished, as Ron Huff, criminology professor at Ohio State University has suggested, we can urge state legislatures to pass a law stating that the death penalty cannot be applied in convictions lacking physical evidence, or where the majority of evidence is eyewitness testimony.
I disagree with claims of racism, and think they distract from what is important here. Yes, the criminal justice system is racist as a whole, but this is so similar to the case of Randall Dale Adams (of the film and book "The Thin Blue Line), a white man, that what stands out to me is the blind fury on the part of police departments when one of their own goes down.
Investigations of police murders seem to be based on easing emotions, striking out blindly, rather than finding the culprit. And their emotions lead them to insane actions, such as threatening witnesses and coercing false confessions. The irony here is that if Davis is innocent, the main result of police reaction to the murder is to guarantee the freedom of a cop-killer. If Davis is found innocent, I am confident that the investigation will not continue--a wrongful conviction is a dead-end.
And the death penalty crowd are all saying: "Do you want a cop-killer to go free?" The answer is "No, and that's precisely what you would do if you executed Davis."
It seems to me the United States Government is going the World over in places like Syria, Pakistan. Somalia, Yemen, Afghanistan, Iraq and so on and so forth and ordering that children, men women, the elderly, basically anybody "In the way" executed.
None of those people had trials.
If a Troy Davis can be on death rowShouldn't the GW Bushes of the world suffer the same fate?
PK
Sioux Rose
Last night I viewed--for the first time--the fine film, The Green Mile, and recommend it. Watching the local probably Christian citizens sitting there for a close-range view of a highly primitive-style human execution was quite the testament against the death penalty. Many people presume this strategy costs the state less, but due to appeals, it's quite the contrary. Life in prison for the most heinous is the sanest policy. It's quite indicative of this Mars rules nation that it would post The Ten Commandments in the very courthouses endorsing state-sanctioned executions. Insane!
Here's the kicker. The people who are "pro-life" are the biggest supporter of capital punishment. Now I'm pretty sure we're talking about life in both cases. If you're pro-file, you have to be against capital punishment. Period.
So: Troy Davis has three times been exposed to the terror of death and then snatched back from the brink. When this kind of thing is done with water, it's called waterboarding. Except that with waterboarding there is at least the excuse (repeated as often as it is discredited) that it produces something useful. But what is the intended product of appeal-boarding? Is not the torture in this case fundamentally gratuitous?
That which the Americans are pleased to call their justice system does not offer the choice between capital punishment and life without parole. It inflicts a near-life sentence, punctuated by appeal-boarding, and then kills the prisoner anyway.
Speaking of which, I do not believe Pitts' assertion that the proper alternative to execution is perpetual unrelieved imprisonment. One look at a prison shows that this is hardly an improvement. Medieval Europe was much more civilized: It allowed the murderer to expiate his crime by undertaking a long and dangerous pilgrimage to a holy place. The enlightened Dutch criminologist Hermann Bianchi suggests that we devise a modern equivalent. I agree.
Wie geht's?
I'm intrigued by your pilgrimage alternative, which I'm sure you see would be bitterly opposed. I'm not familiar with the custom you describe, although of course I know that religious pilgrimages have been conducted ever since manunkind invented holy places.
If such custom was viable, this implies that murderers were trustworthy, or at least not generally sociopathic-- because such a pilgrimage would be undertaken independently (unless the pilgriminal was escorted or guarded). How quaint.
It would never get off the ground in These Days of Modern Times, though; first of all, the pilgrims would be in the wind before they finished their first "Hail Mary".
Secondly, to the troglodytic mind-set of both backwards law enforcement authorities and reactionary prole and bourgeois citizens, the pilgrim would have "freedom". I can just see the local police union president, a beefy man with a face like a cherry-colored toad, frothing at the mouth at the idea of Mumia abu-Jamal setting out on a pilgrimage.
Look inwardly for strength and peace of mind and abolish the death penalty here in the USA. Until we do so we are still just barbarians no better than murderers or thieves. Thou shalt not kill includes revenge killings as well if you believe in that sort of thing. Leastways, that’s how I see it.