A busy and exciting week for me, until I notice my TL with lots of people protesting against Troy Davis' death sentence and pleeing for his commutation. It seems unbelievable - unreal - if you were to see it on a TV show or movie.
But it's no TV show or movie. Troy Davis faces possible execution tonight! The clock is ticking on the life of Georgia death row inmate Troy Davis. A judge recently signed his death warrant and the Georgia Department of Corrections has set his execution by lethal injection for the evening of Sept. 21. Yes it is today! The death penalty is a violation of Christian belief and faith…it violates the sanctity of life....Jesus reminded us that he who hasn’t sinned will cast the first stone…When Jesus taught love, he taught mercy. You can’t delegate God’s power to give and take life to the state. Human beings are imperfect; it is impossible to make a perfect justice system with fallible human reason....One innocent death is too much
The death penalty violates the right to life. It is the ultimate cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment. An execution, just like torture, involves a deliberate assault on a prisoner. It is also discriminatory and is often used disproportionately against the poor, the powerless and the marginalized, as well as against people whom repressive governments want to eliminate. The death penalty does not deter crime more than other punishments. International human rights treaties prohibit courts sentencing anyone who was under 18 years old at the time of the crime to death, or executing them. But a small number of countries continue to execute child offenders, violating their obligations under international law.
Troy Davis will be sentenced to death without any physical evidence linking him to the crime. His conviction was based on the testimony of nine witnesses. Since the original trial, seven of the nine have recanted their testimony, citing police coercion and fear of the prime alternative suspect. Evidence of Troy's possible innocence was finally last year heard but ignored by a judge who himself admitted Troy's conviction was "not ironclad." The judge instead ruled that Troy had not "proven innocence" - hardly a standard to be set for the defence in a capital punishment trial. In the testimonies at the new trial, a new eyewitness identified Sylvester "Red" Coles as the actual killer. That witness joins nine others who have signed affidavits pointing to Coles as the real killer.
In logic, an argument is not considered valid if counterexamples exist. Troy's team has shown counterexamples that are reasonable and probable - with even stronger evidence that another person was responsible, than was used to convict Troy. International standards on the death penalty require that any person sentenced to death, have the ability to appeal for clemency. Clemency is the last-ditch effort to avoid a death sentence and it matters not whether one is guilty or innocent. Innocence is of little use it seems, when appealing a death sentence in the courts. This is where clemency is _supposed_ to be used to prevent an execution where serious doubts remain over the conviction or where the punishment does not seem proportional to the circumstances of the crime.
The "system" has failed Troy Davis from day one. Even when granted an unusual request to have a new trial to 'prove his innocence' the system essentially rubber-stamped a conviction that should never of happened. To say with certainty why the system has continued to fail Troy is to speculate somewhat. The crime was a horrendous one - the killing of a police officer. In 1989, Officer Mark Allen MacPhail was shot and killed in Savannah, Georgia. Officer MacPhail was doing off-duty (but Police-uniformed) security work that night. MacPhail was shot to death when he went to assist someone in trouble.
Executing Davis will not achieve 'justice' - even a death penalty advocate would have to conceed that executing the wrong person is more of an insult to the dead officer than imprisoning the perpetrator. October 10th marks the World Day Against the Death Penalty, a day marked to urge countries around the world that still implement capital punishment to abolish it.
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