You might not have heard of Troy Davis. He wasn’t necessarily a remarkable man. But he was convicted of gunning down an American police officer 22-years-ago after being involved in a scuffle with a homeless man. But the case wasn’t exactly watertight and some said it was not impartial because Mr Davis was a black man.
He walked to the execution chamber three times throughout his time in prison but each time the execution was stayed.
He was to be put to death this morning but a last minute intervention required the US Supreme Court to rule on whether there was more to the case to be heard.
They voted unanimously that the execution should stay and that Troy Davis should die.
And he did, at 11.08pm local time, after lethal injection.
This, from the New York Times:
“His conviction came after testimony by some witnesses who later recanted and on the scantest of physical evidence, adding fuel to those who relied increasingly on the Internet to rally against executions and to question the validity of eyewitness identification and of the court system itself.
Officer MacPhail’s widow, Joan MacPhail-Harris, said calling Mr. Davis a victim was ludicrous.
“We have lived this for 22 years,” she said Monday. “We are victims.”
But this isn’t just about Troy Davis. This is about the death penalty. As the man himself pointed out.
I want to thank all of you for your efforts and dedication to Human Rights and Human Kindness, in the past year I have experienced such emotion, joy, sadness and never ending faith. It is because of all of you that I am alive today, as I look at my sister Martina I am marveled by the love she has for me and of course I worry about her and her health, but as she tells me she is the eldest and she will not back down from this fight to save my life and prove to the world that I am innocent of this terrible crime.
“In 2010, 23 countries carried out executions and 67 imposed death sentences in 2010. Methods of execution in 2010 included beheading, electrocution, hanging, lethal injection and shooting.
Countries that retain the death penalty defended their position by claiming that their use of the death penalty is consistent with international human rights law. Their actions blatantly contradicted these claims.”
The Innocence Project, which has had a hand in the exoneration of 17 death-row inmates through the use of DNA testing, sent a letter to the Chatham County district attorney, Larry Chisolm, urging him to withdraw the execution warrant against Mr. Davis.
But it wasn’t enough.
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What do you think of the death penalty? Does an ‘eye for an eye’ work, or will it make the world go blind?
This longer video from Amnesty International takes an in depth look at the case:
Top Comments
While white victims account for approximately one-half of all murder victims, 80% of all Capital cases involve white victims. Furthermore, as of October 2002, 12 people have been executed where the defendant was white and the murder victim black, compared with 178 black defendants executed for murders with white victims. - That is an appalling statistic I read today and shows why race is a major issue in the US justice system.
It does not work as a deterrent and it serves no useful purpose. I can not in good conscience support the death penalty. That said, life in prison should actually mean 'life' rather than 20 or 25 years for crimes like torture and murder.