It's a rare and joyous day when I approvingly post the words of a conservative writer on this blog, but this is just such a day. So let this serve as my standing ovation for Kathleen Parker:
I stayed up late Wednesday night in the hopes that the U.S. Supreme Court would call off the execution of Troy Davis. Instead, at 11:08 p.m., he was pronounced dead.
One minute he was lifting his head from the death gurney, pleading his innocence in the killing of a Georgia police officer 22 years ago and beseeching God to bless the souls of his executioners. Then the drugs entered his veins, he blinked a few times, appeared to yawn, according to witnesses, and entered the sleep from which there is no waking. ...
That we grant the state the power to end a citizen’s life is a harrowing-enough thought. That we do so even when we know with certainty that sometimes innocents are killed is beyond comprehension.
In Davis’s case, opinions clearly differed. Seven of the nine witnesses who identified him as the shooter have since recanted. Even so, a federal judge ruled last year that the recantation testimony cast “minimal doubt” on Davis’s conviction.
Minimal? Isn’t any level of doubt enough?
Apparently, even the Supreme Court didn’t think so. After delaying Davis’s execution for four hours Wednesday, the court allowed the execution to proceed.
Those recantations surely should create sufficient doubt, not to exonerate Davis but at least not to kill him — even if you support the death penalty, as many sane and lovely Americans do. That said, I’m not so sure a sane and lovely person would or should cheer the death penalty, as some audience members did recently upon Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s expression of pride in his administration of ultimate justice. More convicted individuals have died in Texas under Perry’s watch than in any other state. ...
I don’t judge those for whom the ultimate justice brings solace or that most prosaic of catharsis — closure. Everyone understands the reflex to destroy the destroyer. But I do judge us. This nation. This society. This culture. The urge for justice and its close relative, revenge, is human, which is by definition also to err. ...
Thanks to DNA testing, we know that scores have been on death row who should not have been. Extrapolating, we can safely conclude that some innocents have been wrongfully executed. These facts alone should be all we need to retire the guillotine, in the hopes that we might yet evolve to a higher level of humanity. Never mind the other factual arguments — that capital punishment is not an effective deterrent and that, given our appeals process, executing someone is more expensive than keeping him in prison for life.
When we join together to administer death, we become something other than a civilized community of men and women. No matter how we frame the arguments or justifications, we become executioners. Where there is doubt, as there seems to have been in Davis’s case, we become murderers.
No one is recommending that Davis should have been given a free pass. Life without parole is no picnic. But we might sleep easier had we not participated in killing a man without the moral certainty that he was guilty. [emphasis mine]
I posted Ms. Parker's words here, not just because I agree with her, but because she expressed this horror so eloquently. I don't do eloquence, my forte is angry ranting, and last night I was very angry that no one had the guts to say, "We might have erred here so we're not going to kill Troy Davis." No one.
Oh yes, America is exceptional alright. Even Mexico, that "backward" country to our south, has abolished the death penalty.
--Trakker
Lawyers say
So few prisoners say "I'm innocent," when they could confess or offer mitigating circumstances in confidence to their lawyers, that their lawyers tend to believe that they're telling the truth, that they are innocent.
The law only concerns itself with process, not guilt or innocence which are hard to prove either way.
Posted by: horsec | September 22, 2011 at 06:54 PM