This serves no useful purpose. The deterrent value is zero, and millions are convinced this proves once again that a black man can’t get a fair trial in America. Especially in the South.
Poking through the case against him—as minimally reported by the press but re-examined numerous times by the legal process—“beyond a reasonable doubt” on the part of the original jury is not beyond question. There is no new exculpatory evidence beyond witnesses recanting. [Would you recant testimony if it meant sparing a man’s life? I sure might.]
Again, to avoid the tall weeds of the particulars—and every advocate is an expert—the legal process has been observed every step of the way. It’s not the legal system’s job to retry a case from scratch every year for decades. Davis was convicted in 1991; he’s had 20 years of appeals on numerous and varied grounds including whether the electric chair is unconstitutional under the 8th Amendment.
[Lethal injection is now the plan; Troy Davis has just been granted an 11th hour stay.]
This isn’t a legal question, then. The law has been observed, and now it requires its pound of flesh.
The wisdom of extracting this pound of flesh is at question here. Law and its enforcement is not an end in itself; it’s the means to a better polity.
Not only does this serve no good purpose, it will make things worse in our country. This is unwise.
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LATE ADD: The Supreme Court’s stay has been lifted.
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LAST ADD: Troy Davis is dead.
“Wisdom”? “Polity”? Modifiers implying approval/disapproval? What are these old-fangled concepts of which you speak? Just because an entity is allowed to do something doesn’t mean it ought to do it?
Limits went out the door a long time ago.
& a failure of “statesmanship,” JLW. White supremacist murderer Lawrence Brewer, meanwhile, he of the infamous and storied Texas dragging/murder of James Byrd Jr., was executed today, with barely a whimper or note. I ran across it by near-accident.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/21/lawrence-russell-brewer-executed_n_974926.html?icid=maing-grid7|main5|dl2|sec3_lnk2|97852
Byrd’s sisters also were among the witnesses in an adjacent room.
“Hopefully, today’s execution of Brewer can remind all of us that racial hatred and prejudice leads to terrible consequence for the victim, the victim’s family, for the perpetrator and for the perpetrator’s family,” Clara Taylor, one of Byrd’s sisters, said.
She called the punishment “a step in the right direction.”
“We’re making progress,” Taylor said. “I know he was guilty so I have no qualms about the death penalty.”
Appeals to the courts for Brewer were exhausted and no last-day attempts to save his life were filed.
So it goes: when the system works, or doesn’t violate our druthers, we fail to note it. No vigil outside the prison gates for the late Mr. Brewer, I make it.
Good to hear from you, Mr. Wall. You write good stuff.
Would you recant testimony if it meant sparing a man’s life? I sure might.
I might too, but in general people don’t. Certainly not as close to unanimously as they did in this case. And since there’s no physical evidence of his guilt, those recanting witnesses leave quite a void behind them.
But this is all beside the point. We execute several dozen people every year, and anyone who thinks that every one of them is guilty has no acquaintance with human fallibility. Supporting the death penalty (as most of our fellow citizens do) means accepting the killing of innocents.
Supporting (government policy) means accepting the killing of innocents.
The war on drugs.
Border/Immigration policies.
Interventionist foreign policies.
Depending on your predilections, you could even say that about economic, energy, environmental, health, science, and even water policies.
Compared to many of those, the death penalty’s number of innocent deaths is positively paltry.
And opposing (government policy) means accepting the deaths of other innocents.
* Had we not invaded invaded Iraq, Saddam would have murdered some people who are alive today.
* Some of the people killed in the War on Drugs would have killed innocents, had they been left alone.
* etc.
Clearly the only moral option is to have no opinions at all.
This is fair. Generally, though, supporters of these policies acknowledge that this is simply an acceptable coast compared to the benefit of the poicy Further, ther is at least a claim that all innocent deaths a result the wrong people being in the wrong place at the wrong time. In the case of the death penalty, everyone agrees that it is such a deliberate policy with the direct aim of only killing those who are guilty, while acknowledging that mistaken executions are completely unacceptable within the scope of the purpose of the policy. This is not the case wrt to the drug war, border war, or war wars. There, there is straightforward acknlowledgement that mistakes are going to happen, and that the policy simply demands the cost be accepted. For the death penalty to work on its own claim – to administer justice – the execution of innocents defeats the policy. A small minority if any death-penalty proponents defend it on a cost-benefit analysis that takes mistaken executions as a real but acceptable cost.
This does not show that capital punishment is a more barbaric policy than the others you mention. And I grant that all those distinctions I just listed need to be made (and accepted) to distinguish the implications of policies’ respective error costs; i.e. the way Mike left it simply didn’t create any distinction at all (no offense, Mike).
But I nevertheless think this is a relevant distinction to make when trying to understand the way people approach the failure rate of capital punishment vis a vis the collateral damage rate for the policies you mention. (And I use those terms advisedly.)
No offense taken, of course. I simply thought the explicit victim vs. collateral damage distinction was clear enough not to require explicit mention.
explicit victim vs. collateral damage
Lawrence Brewer was also executed last night. He got less press than Troy Davis.
There are a huge number of folks out there who think that the death penalty is an appropriate penalty for a non-zero number of offenses and even if Troy Davis was innocent (which they don’t know, they’ll point out… as if “beyond the shadow of a doubt” doesn’t mean something very specific) it doesn’t mean that they should abandon the policy entirely.
Why, look at Lawrence Brewer, they will say.
There are a great many folks out there who will see Troy Davis as collateral damage.
I wouldn’t mind seeing Brewer locked up for the rest of his life. If he ever got to the point of seeing the horror of his actions and feeling remorse, I’d consider that a minor victory.
The people you’re citing as favoring his death are the victim’s family. There’s a good reason we don’t look to them to set punishments.
“Compared to many of those, the death penalty’s number of innocent deaths is positively paltry.”
What deaths of “innocents” are you referring to? Who and when? Mumia? Of course, unfortunately, he wasn’t deep-fried.
Mike Schilling: “I might too.” Well, good for you. You would take it upon yourself to let a convicted murderer walk, simply because you were opposed to capital punishment.? If this is the case, why should you even be allowed to sit on the jury of a death penalty case ? Also, if you were a witness or a juror in penalty case and decided you’d recant your testimony to save someone’s life, well off to prison you’d go, and rightfully so. People can’t pick and choose when they are going to lie or when they are going tell the truth in a murder case , or in any case, for that matter.
Again, I ask–out of the thousands of death penalty cases, name one where the evidence later showed an innocent man was executed.
The people you’re citing as favoring his death are the victim’s family.
While they are certainly included in the group of folks who favored his death, I’d say that you will find that the death penalty tends to poll very well.
I’d suggest that Lawrence Brewer provides one hell of an example of why the death penalty tends to poll very well.
You would take it upon yourself to let a convicted murderer walk
That is, walk around his cell.
JB – no, I don’t think there are. There are a very few. Among the minority of death-penalty supporters who even consider the Troy Davis case in any way, and among the minority of them who seriously consider the possibility that he was innocent a real possibility, the majority, like 97%, will deny that he was innocent, as the Judge above does. Perhaps a few will say that, yes, if he were innocent they would still support the death penalty, but they wouldn’t positively accept the cost of an innocent person being executed now and then as an acceptable cost for their policy, because their actual position would remain that innocent people are not put to death. This is because, in most of these cases, if they came to know to a certainty that an innocent person had been executed, it in fact would shake their support for the death penalty (maybe not completely reverse it, but cause them to seriously reassess), because they too can imagine what it would be like to be wrongly convicted of a capital crime, be sentenced to death, and then be executed, all while having been innocent of the crime. And it is too horrific to contemplate. So they don’t. And their support for capital punishment lives on.
This is because, in most of these cases, if they came to know to a certainty that an innocent person had been executed, it in fact would shake their support for the death penalty (maybe not completely reverse it, but cause them to seriously reassess), because they too can imagine what it would be like to be wrongly convicted of a capital crime, be sentenced to death, and then be executed, all while having been innocent of the crime. And it is too horrific to contemplate.
I don’t know about that. Let’s look at, say, abortion. Is someone getting an abortion in the second or third trimester as a form of birth control an acceptable price to pay for having abortion remain safe, legal, and rare?
Is there a number, any number, of abortions being done for reasons having to do with other than rape, incest, or the mother’s life being put in danger that would make you say “maybe we need to put more effort into trying to stop this sort of thing”? Any number at all?
(Now, of course, the numbers don’t map 1:1 between the two issues. Fetuses being what they are and all.)
If there is not a number that would make you waver in your support for abortion, can you see how maybe one or three innocent people dying over the course of a few decades might not get anyone to reconsider, even for a moment, support for the death penalty?
NB: I heard Dick Gregory on Imus this morning. He was at Huntsville, TX to vigil the execution of Lawrence Brewer. Good man. He said “The state shouldn’t kill.” I cannot agree with his reasoning, except perhaps aesthetically.
Also, this has to be said: the very vast majority of people who are opposed to capital punishment, in any form, are staunch supporters of pro-choice.
And conversely, the vast majority of supporters who are pro-life, are also staunch supporters of the death penalty, where and when applicable.
Why is that?
And for that matter, who cares what that hideous, grotesque, washed up, lizard lounge singer, Tony Bennett, has to say about 9/11…he said we deserved it because of our policies in the Mideast.