Unconscionable, But Who Cares?
by sarabeth at 8:30 am on July 16th, 2007 in Bush Man Date, General, PlamegateI have a distinct memory that we used to be a nation with a conscience.
In the country that we used to be, a case like that of Troy Davis would have caused spontaneous, widespread outrage:
A Georgia man is scheduled to be executed by lethal injection on Tuesday for killing a police officer in 1989, even though the case against him has withered in recent years as most of the key witnesses at his trial have recanted and in some cases said they lied under pressure from police.
[...]
Three of four witnesses who testified at trial that Davis shot the officer have signed statements contradicting their identification of the gunman. Two other witnesses — a fellow inmate and a neighborhood acquaintance who told police that Davis had confessed to the shooting — have said they made it up.
[...]
The circumstances of the case have provoked criticism beyond the usual groups that oppose the death penalty.“There is no more serious violent crime than the murder of an off-duty police officer who was putting his life on the line to protect innocent bystanders,” William S. Sessions, FBI director under presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, wrote recently in an op-ed piece in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. But “serious questions have been raised about Davis’s guilt. . . . It would be intolerable to execute an innocent man.”
In the country we have become, his case is only now starting to gain national attention. And he’s due to be executed tomorrow.
Executing Davis would be unconscionable. It looks like we’re about to find out how far we have evolved as a nation, from who we used to be. And this has nothing to do with George Bush. This is quite simply a matter of who we are.
We seem to be a nation of laws that do not deliver justice. We seem to be a nation that does not care if our laws do not deliver justice.
We care passionately about using otherwise-to-be-discarded embryos for stem cell research. We do not care about executing people who are very probably innocent of any crime.
Maybe it’s still not be too late to take action to try to influence the state of Georgia? The only information I’ve found online about registering a protest, and asking for Davis’ death sentence to be commuted, asks you to appeal to the State Board of Pardons and Paroles, rather than the Governor.
Ironic to come face to face with the word commute again, isn’t it? Scooter Libby’s sentence was commuted because it was clear to Bush that it was excessive, even though it fell within the sentencing guidelines for the crime that Bush had no doubt he was guilty of. Troy Davis is about to be executed (not just sodomized but executed) for a crime he probably did not commit, because recent laws dictate that questionable, trumped-up evidence cannot be questioned at this late stage. And Bush is planning to look the other way? He’s planning to say (even if just by omission), what can I do, it’s too late for justice?
Or maybe it’s still not too late to take action to try to pressure Bush to commute Davis’ sentence? Maybe some good can still come out of the Libby commutation?
Reconstitution 2.0 » Blog Archive » The Death Penalty In Jesusistan. Evil Unencumbered on 28 Sep 2007 at 9:43 am
[...] you could, take some time to drop by 1115.org or Mixter’s Mix (where Micki has a personal perspective on the subject of the death penalty [...]