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Thursday, September 22, 2011
News Troy Davis: dead; Society: cruel
Posted By Rhiannon Fionn on Thu, Sep 22, 2011 at 8:54 AM
- Amnesty International
- Dead. Forever.
In case you didn't hear, there were two executions in the U.S. last night. The execution that got the most press was Troy Davis, in Georgia. He maintained his innocence even on his deathbed:
"It's not my fault; I did not have a gun," he said while strapped to a gurney, according to witness Rhonda Cook of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. "I did not personally kill your son, father, brother," he said, Cook reported.Read the entire MSNBC.com article here.
And, listen, let me clear this up right now: I'm not anti-execution; I'm anti-executing-the-wrong-person.
Was Davis guilty? I don't know.
Does he have the right to have his guilt proven beyond a reasonable doubt? I thought so. Apparently, though, once you're snagged by the system, however faulty, good fucking luck getting free, or even getting heard.
Last night, Davis was supposed to be killed at 7 p.m., but wasn't until after 11 p.m., following the U.S. Supreme Court's unanimous decision to not to stay his execution. Oh, and, by the way, this was Davis' fourth time on the gurney.
As the world waited, many of its citizens begging the system to listen to the inmate and give him a chance to prove his innocence, I couldn't help but wonder what was going through his mind during that time. I couldn't help but think that such behavior — on the system's part — amounted to cruel and unusual punishment, which I thought was unconstitutional according to the Eight Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
Of course, Davis isn't the only imprisoned person screaming innocence. Take Darryl Hunt, for example. He spent 19 and a half years in prison, serving a life sentence for rape and murder in North Carolina, only to be exonerated. (There are many more stories like theirs here: The Darryl Hunt Project)
This is why so many people are against the death penalty: The system is flawed, and innocent people are sometimes imprisoned and even killed, effectively murdered by their government. That we know for sure.
While the government can release a confined man, and even offer him some sort of settlement — as if any settlement could ever give him that lost time back — death is forever. There are no take backs with execution.
And now Troy Davis is dead, screaming innocence until his last breath.
Way to be, America — capital of moral dogma.
Speaking of...
Comments (12)
Showing 1-12 of 12
Anyone who has read transcripts of the trial and evidence would see why a jury of his peers (7 blacks, 5 whites) took only 2 hours to convict him. Now 20+ years later memories dim and bleeding hearts looking for a cause latch onto this one, and he plays it to the hilt.
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You mean the lack of physical evidence (eg: a murder weapon), and the eyewitness testimony that 7 of 9 witnesses have recanted? Yup, bleeding hearts.
I have not followed the Davis case so I will not comment on it specifically. However your assertion that capital punishment is "unconstitutional according to the Eighth Amendment" is patently false.
The Bill of Rights, the first ten Amendments, were passed as a whole simultaneously. Incorporated in the BOR is the Fifth Amendment, which provides that one may be "deprived of life" after "due process of law".
Had the Eighth Amendment been ratified after the Fifth, there might be a valid constitutional argument that its ratification justifies a discussion as to whether its "cruel and unusual" language necessitates a revisiting of the "depriv(ation) of life" clause of the Fifth. However, as they are in all practical matters simply separate choruses of the same song, no such argument exists.
I didn't assert that capital punishment is cruel and unusual; I asserted that sending a man to the death chamber four times, then making him linger there while our government wrings their hands is cruel and unusual.
How can the Casey Anthony case hold so much doubt that she IS innocent AND contain evidence linking her as highly probable in the cause of her own daughter's death - yet she still goes free. But the Troy Davis' case holds so much doubt that he is guilty and no evidence links him except for that of the (7 out of 9), "oh I take it back about saying I saw him do it" witnesses that admit police coersion - yet he gets murdered. Baffling...????
White Americans are on display to the rest of the world as the pompous idiots many of them grow up to be even more and more now. This time the invention of the internet and a more borderless world was not used for their personal, greed-driven gain. One up for that!
We do know that minorities are not in power to use power for destruction. If in doubt, refer to the recent economic destruction through enterprise. It's elementary America! Wake up!
i feel like another officer killed him, because he ran upon something corrupt in the department, and this poor guy was in the wrong place at the wrong time, but it will come out, because God sees everything, as far as the cop's family, they are racist, they don't have an ounce of God in them to let this happen, killing him won't bring that cop back.
He has several chances to prove his innocence. How many more should we have given him? None, in my opinion. He shot a man in the face earlier that same day, then shot the police officer. He got what he deserved and who knows how many lives were saved by locking him up!
The cop's family didn't "let" ANYTHING happen. Troy Davis shot and killed a cop (after casually shooting someone else the same day) and then fled to Atlanta where he was caught, and then tried/found guilty/& given more chances to prove his innocence than any criminal in history. But liberal idiots who pay no attention to the real details will continue to cry foul based on what other liberal idiots say. Sheep.
And as far as the people who recanted their testimony, they in effect were saying, "sorry, I was lying then but now I'm telling the truth". So NOW we're supposed to believe them. But since they're not lying under oath now, there's nothing that can be done to them. Maybe we shudda given a new trial and got those dumbasses on the stand and let the prosecutor have his way with them. They'd all be in prison now.
Well, RF, the only reason he was sent to the death chamber so many times is because he kept filing so many last minute frivolous appeals trying to save his sorry ass. This would have been over with 20 years ago if the justice system had functioned properly and his sentence was carried out as it should have been, instead of costing us all millions of dollars in taxpayer money. Unfortunately too many liberal judges granting favoritism to a convicted criminal.
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