In the matter of Troy Davis
On September 21st, 2011 the State of Georgia executed Troy Anthony Davis. There are a number of histories of Davis’ life after his arrest for the murder of off-duty police officer Mark MacPhail. Mother Jones has a good one here: http://motherjones.com/mojo/2011/09/troy-davis-executed-georgia and a summary of the case here: http://motherjones.com/mojo/2011/09/troy-davis-death-penalty-georgia The wait to see if the Supreme Court of the United States would stay Davis’ execution was brilliantly covered by Amy Goodman at DemocracyNow! http://www.democracynow.org/ I watched via The Nation’s http://www.thenation.com/ web site.
You might note that all of those cited above are considered left-leaning, liberal publications and organizations. Fair enough. My feelings and thoughts are not guaranteed to delight the hearts of anyone with fixed political philosophies, especially those most easily defined by bumper stickers. That’s both sides of the field, folks.
Much of the outrage over Davis’ execution comes from the lack of physical evidence linking him to the murder. Davis’ trial was not based on the kind of forensic evidence that gladdens the heart of any decent fan of CSI. No fingerprints, no blood spatter, no DNA to be found. What you had were witnesses and there’s one huge problem right there. Witness testimony is so often unbelievably wrong-we do not observe well in times of stress and some of us do not observe well at even the most conducive times-that it is well worth reading this excerpt from the book Being Wrong by Kathryn Schulz http://beingwrongbook.com/blog/memory-troy-davis WARNING FOR SOMETIMES GRAPHIC DESCRIPTIONS OF CRIMES SUCH AS RAPE AND MURDER.
Right, so the evidence against Troy Davis wasn’t much. Seven of the witnesses who testified against him have recanted. The ballistics evidence given at trial was faulty as well but let’s go back to the witnesses for a moment.
Police officers know how they phrase a question to a victim or a witness is a huge, crucial part of the investigative process. There is a vast difference between spreading out five photos of similar-looking suspects and laying out one photo, saying “That’s him, isn’t it?” before going on with the charade of the photo line-up. There are hundreds of ways, many very subtle to encourage a witness in the ‘right’ direction from laying out the preferred suspect’s photo first and on and on.
I’m not going to suggest there is any overt evil intent when a detective or police investigator ‘helps’ a witness. In some cases, likely many, officers may be absolutely certain they know who did it. I mean one hundred percent certain. Now they have to get this mess over with so the widow and the children can get on with things.
Was racism involved? When you look at the statistics in the state of Georgia, the percentage of African-American residents, thirty-point-five percent in 2010 and the percentage of African-American prisoners which is sixty-four percent you have to wonder. I have to wonder. Then I have to involuntarily groan because that same statistic is sometimes used by racist pieces of work to slander African-Americans.
How you look at anything depends on where you’re looking from, where you’re standing. Rashomon ought to have taught us all that.
Here’s something else every human alive ought to understand; you can be badly mistaken. You can be wrong. None of us are infallible. The Innocence Project http://www.innocenceproject.org/ has exonerated two hundred and seventy three convicts through DNA review and that, friends and neighbors, is both good and very bad. That’s a lot of wrongful convictions. That’s a lot of people who served time for crimes they did not commit. That is a lot of mistakes.
Was racism a factor in Troy Davis’ trial and conviction? I don’t know. I wasn’t there. I do know there are a ton of racists who will swear up, down and sideways they aren’t racist at all. They’re “honest”. I would not be at all surprised to find out that race was a factor. I’m not easily surprised by how low people will go. It’s a wonder that I don’t live in a tower.
The biggest problem for Troy Davis was that he couldn’t be completely exonerated. That’s what really was wanted here. The legal system is like one of those giant machines in Star Wars. Once it gets in motion it is very hard to stop it. There was no DNA-bearing evidence to retest. The weapon was never found. The machine could not be stopped without evidence of something, criminal collusion among the police, the investigators, the prosecutors or most preferably with iron-clad evidence to show that, no, Davis didn’t do it, this guy did.
And the witnesses…some say they were led to accuse Davis by the police and that could have happened. Some say now they’re not certain. Some say they were threatened if they didn’t testify against Davis.
Some, very likely according to a number of psychologists, may have begun to question themselves as the words ‘death penalty’ became more real. The truth is that for some the notion that this man is going to die if I’m one hundred percent certain literally changes what one hundred percent certainty is. You’d better be more than one hundred percent certain; you’re staking a life on this.
I don’t know if Troy Davis was guilty of that murder or not. I wasn’t there and that’s my criteria; I wasn’t there and even if I was if the lighting was poor, if the scene was chaotic I wouldn’t know for certain anyway.
None of this is the point for me though I am certain in my heart every single point matters desperately to Troy Davis’ family and to those who worked hard to keep him off the execution table.
Nor does it matter to me that MacPhail’s family wanted Davis executed. Only the dimmest of ‘journalists’ use the word ‘closure’ anymore because it does not exist. You do not get closure, what you get is a subtle signal that it’s time to get on with life and put that mess as much behind you as you can.
The courts really don’t care what the family of the victim wants unless it falls into line with their own goals.
The same night that Troy Anthony Davis was put to death another man was executed in the state of Texas. You won’t hear a lot about his execution though a few brave souls who protest all executions were outside the prison while the state of Texas took Lawrence Brewer’s life. The reason for this is simple; if you’re against capital punishment because of the possibility of error you don’t want to get involved in Brewer’s case. He not only confessed to one of the most horrendous murders on record not to mention to take place in a state in which I resided at the time of the murder, he bragged on it. When he was asked before his execution if he was sorry he said no, he’d do it again given the chance.
The only piece I saw on Brewer’s execution was in The Atlantic here http://www.theatlanticwire.com/national/2011/09/other-execution-scheduled-tonight/42771/ I would advise you that if you trigger at all from violence or racism don’t read that piece. Brewer was in the opinion of many, an opinion I share, a phenomenal waste of oxygen. I’ll give here the cleanest version I can. One night in 1998 Brewer, who is a self-proclaimed white supremacist, and a few of his drinking buddies got hold of an African American man named James Byrd Jr, beat him, chained him to the bumper of their truck and dragged him through the streets of Jasper, Texas as parts of Mr. Byrd fell off until he was dead.
That was the cleaned-up version of the story.
I lived in a very conservative city in those days. I promise you only a very few liberals lived there. I also promise you that not one person, even the one who once admitted his daddy was in the KKK had any reaction to this crime other than oh no, you didn’t.
Brewer was nobody’s poster child. Brewer wasn’t the least bit sorry, so he said and at some point you have to believe people when they speak. James Byrd Jr died an awful death for no other reason than the color of his skin.
And yet Ross Byrd, James Byrd Jr’s son objected to the death penalty given the men who killed his father. http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/09/21/us-texas-execution-son-idUSTRE78K35B20110921
Ross Byrd said “You can’t fight murder with murder.” You can explain to me patiently that it isn’t murder, it’s execution and I will point out to you that the cause of death on Troy Davis’ death certificate reads “homicide”.
Ross Byrd protested the execution of his father’s murderers and nobody listened to him. The only family minded, so we’re told, is the family that wants the execution to go forward. That sounds like bullshit to me.
I think Ross Byrd is right. I think it is utterly hypocritical to murder and claim justification when the perpetrator is locked up and not going anywhere. Self-defense is one thing. I’m all for self-defense or defense of a potential victim. I have weapons.
But killing to demonstrate killing is wrong is utter nonsense. Execution is not more cost-effective than life without the possibility of parole.
And from my point of view, life in prison without the possibility of parole is…brace yourselves…far more satisfyingly punitive.
Imagine Lawrence Brewer in the fiftieth year of his sentence. Imagine an old man who no one fears anymore in a prison surrounded by people who may hate him for what he did so long ago. Imagine the not-knowing when someone, perhaps someone who read of that long ago crime decides to exact a little personal justice. Imagine this has happened more than once. Imagine that at some point an old man gets as close to regret as his leathery soul can; “Man, I shoulda done something else, anything else that night.”
Any society must protect itself from those who do not understand that their immediate want is more important than another person’s safety, their emotional state, their life. We have to. There are people who do horrible things to other people and they must be kept from doing such when we can. That’s life and it sucks.
But execution really does not belong in any ethical, moral society. Not even for Lawrence Brewer who was as close to a total piece of shit as a human could get.
I wept when Troy Davis’ execution was announced because this is wrong. I didn’t weep for Lawrence Brewer because I’m not that nice; it was still wrong. Most nations have recognized that killing in the name of the government or some notion of justice is rather barking.
Either we are a civilized nation or we are not. Either we are a moral nation or we are not.
I’m leaning toward not, to be honest; we play at morality by trying to keep a close eye on what our citizens are doing with the contents of their underwear while we execute, while we provide millions if not billions to nations that treat their citizens like chattel…how did Mubarak get that quarter of a billion dollar yacht while his people had to work sixty hours a week to get nothing better than bread to eat? We deny basic necessities to our own people in the name of some twisted form of morality.
Morality begins here; if we end executions and tell those who loooooove executions to work out their bloody fantasies with video games we’ve made one step in the right direction.
You might say “You’ve never been the victim of a violent crime.” Wrong. I have. I don’t owe you the details and here’s one reason; I sometimes wonder if those who want the details are getting off on them. I don’t share them around. I like not juicing people up that way, even those who swear that’s not what’s happening. While sometimes we must accept that what is said is what is meant we must also accept that sometimes people lie, even to themselves.
I am all for locking someone up and throwing away the key. Rapists, murderers, victimizers of children, the elderly, the defenseless…yeah, here’s the rest of your life surrounded by concrete and people with worrying ideas of what ‘fun’ is. I don’t mind that at all.
I mind being a murderer no matter how many hands are between me and the execution table. You can’t teach how wrong killing is by killing. We should be smarter than this by now.
You might note that all of those cited above are considered left-leaning, liberal publications and organizations. Fair enough. My feelings and thoughts are not guaranteed to delight the hearts of anyone with fixed political philosophies, especially those most easily defined by bumper stickers. That’s both sides of the field, folks.
Much of the outrage over Davis’ execution comes from the lack of physical evidence linking him to the murder. Davis’ trial was not based on the kind of forensic evidence that gladdens the heart of any decent fan of CSI. No fingerprints, no blood spatter, no DNA to be found. What you had were witnesses and there’s one huge problem right there. Witness testimony is so often unbelievably wrong-we do not observe well in times of stress and some of us do not observe well at even the most conducive times-that it is well worth reading this excerpt from the book Being Wrong by Kathryn Schulz http://beingwrongbook.com/blog/memory-troy-davis WARNING FOR SOMETIMES GRAPHIC DESCRIPTIONS OF CRIMES SUCH AS RAPE AND MURDER.
Right, so the evidence against Troy Davis wasn’t much. Seven of the witnesses who testified against him have recanted. The ballistics evidence given at trial was faulty as well but let’s go back to the witnesses for a moment.
Police officers know how they phrase a question to a victim or a witness is a huge, crucial part of the investigative process. There is a vast difference between spreading out five photos of similar-looking suspects and laying out one photo, saying “That’s him, isn’t it?” before going on with the charade of the photo line-up. There are hundreds of ways, many very subtle to encourage a witness in the ‘right’ direction from laying out the preferred suspect’s photo first and on and on.
I’m not going to suggest there is any overt evil intent when a detective or police investigator ‘helps’ a witness. In some cases, likely many, officers may be absolutely certain they know who did it. I mean one hundred percent certain. Now they have to get this mess over with so the widow and the children can get on with things.
Was racism involved? When you look at the statistics in the state of Georgia, the percentage of African-American residents, thirty-point-five percent in 2010 and the percentage of African-American prisoners which is sixty-four percent you have to wonder. I have to wonder. Then I have to involuntarily groan because that same statistic is sometimes used by racist pieces of work to slander African-Americans.
How you look at anything depends on where you’re looking from, where you’re standing. Rashomon ought to have taught us all that.
Here’s something else every human alive ought to understand; you can be badly mistaken. You can be wrong. None of us are infallible. The Innocence Project http://www.innocenceproject.org/ has exonerated two hundred and seventy three convicts through DNA review and that, friends and neighbors, is both good and very bad. That’s a lot of wrongful convictions. That’s a lot of people who served time for crimes they did not commit. That is a lot of mistakes.
Was racism a factor in Troy Davis’ trial and conviction? I don’t know. I wasn’t there. I do know there are a ton of racists who will swear up, down and sideways they aren’t racist at all. They’re “honest”. I would not be at all surprised to find out that race was a factor. I’m not easily surprised by how low people will go. It’s a wonder that I don’t live in a tower.
The biggest problem for Troy Davis was that he couldn’t be completely exonerated. That’s what really was wanted here. The legal system is like one of those giant machines in Star Wars. Once it gets in motion it is very hard to stop it. There was no DNA-bearing evidence to retest. The weapon was never found. The machine could not be stopped without evidence of something, criminal collusion among the police, the investigators, the prosecutors or most preferably with iron-clad evidence to show that, no, Davis didn’t do it, this guy did.
And the witnesses…some say they were led to accuse Davis by the police and that could have happened. Some say now they’re not certain. Some say they were threatened if they didn’t testify against Davis.
Some, very likely according to a number of psychologists, may have begun to question themselves as the words ‘death penalty’ became more real. The truth is that for some the notion that this man is going to die if I’m one hundred percent certain literally changes what one hundred percent certainty is. You’d better be more than one hundred percent certain; you’re staking a life on this.
I don’t know if Troy Davis was guilty of that murder or not. I wasn’t there and that’s my criteria; I wasn’t there and even if I was if the lighting was poor, if the scene was chaotic I wouldn’t know for certain anyway.
None of this is the point for me though I am certain in my heart every single point matters desperately to Troy Davis’ family and to those who worked hard to keep him off the execution table.
Nor does it matter to me that MacPhail’s family wanted Davis executed. Only the dimmest of ‘journalists’ use the word ‘closure’ anymore because it does not exist. You do not get closure, what you get is a subtle signal that it’s time to get on with life and put that mess as much behind you as you can.
The courts really don’t care what the family of the victim wants unless it falls into line with their own goals.
The same night that Troy Anthony Davis was put to death another man was executed in the state of Texas. You won’t hear a lot about his execution though a few brave souls who protest all executions were outside the prison while the state of Texas took Lawrence Brewer’s life. The reason for this is simple; if you’re against capital punishment because of the possibility of error you don’t want to get involved in Brewer’s case. He not only confessed to one of the most horrendous murders on record not to mention to take place in a state in which I resided at the time of the murder, he bragged on it. When he was asked before his execution if he was sorry he said no, he’d do it again given the chance.
The only piece I saw on Brewer’s execution was in The Atlantic here http://www.theatlanticwire.com/national/2011/09/other-execution-scheduled-tonight/42771/ I would advise you that if you trigger at all from violence or racism don’t read that piece. Brewer was in the opinion of many, an opinion I share, a phenomenal waste of oxygen. I’ll give here the cleanest version I can. One night in 1998 Brewer, who is a self-proclaimed white supremacist, and a few of his drinking buddies got hold of an African American man named James Byrd Jr, beat him, chained him to the bumper of their truck and dragged him through the streets of Jasper, Texas as parts of Mr. Byrd fell off until he was dead.
That was the cleaned-up version of the story.
I lived in a very conservative city in those days. I promise you only a very few liberals lived there. I also promise you that not one person, even the one who once admitted his daddy was in the KKK had any reaction to this crime other than oh no, you didn’t.
Brewer was nobody’s poster child. Brewer wasn’t the least bit sorry, so he said and at some point you have to believe people when they speak. James Byrd Jr died an awful death for no other reason than the color of his skin.
And yet Ross Byrd, James Byrd Jr’s son objected to the death penalty given the men who killed his father. http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/09/21/us-texas-execution-son-idUSTRE78K35B20110921
Ross Byrd said “You can’t fight murder with murder.” You can explain to me patiently that it isn’t murder, it’s execution and I will point out to you that the cause of death on Troy Davis’ death certificate reads “homicide”.
Ross Byrd protested the execution of his father’s murderers and nobody listened to him. The only family minded, so we’re told, is the family that wants the execution to go forward. That sounds like bullshit to me.
I think Ross Byrd is right. I think it is utterly hypocritical to murder and claim justification when the perpetrator is locked up and not going anywhere. Self-defense is one thing. I’m all for self-defense or defense of a potential victim. I have weapons.
But killing to demonstrate killing is wrong is utter nonsense. Execution is not more cost-effective than life without the possibility of parole.
And from my point of view, life in prison without the possibility of parole is…brace yourselves…far more satisfyingly punitive.
Imagine Lawrence Brewer in the fiftieth year of his sentence. Imagine an old man who no one fears anymore in a prison surrounded by people who may hate him for what he did so long ago. Imagine the not-knowing when someone, perhaps someone who read of that long ago crime decides to exact a little personal justice. Imagine this has happened more than once. Imagine that at some point an old man gets as close to regret as his leathery soul can; “Man, I shoulda done something else, anything else that night.”
Any society must protect itself from those who do not understand that their immediate want is more important than another person’s safety, their emotional state, their life. We have to. There are people who do horrible things to other people and they must be kept from doing such when we can. That’s life and it sucks.
But execution really does not belong in any ethical, moral society. Not even for Lawrence Brewer who was as close to a total piece of shit as a human could get.
I wept when Troy Davis’ execution was announced because this is wrong. I didn’t weep for Lawrence Brewer because I’m not that nice; it was still wrong. Most nations have recognized that killing in the name of the government or some notion of justice is rather barking.
Either we are a civilized nation or we are not. Either we are a moral nation or we are not.
I’m leaning toward not, to be honest; we play at morality by trying to keep a close eye on what our citizens are doing with the contents of their underwear while we execute, while we provide millions if not billions to nations that treat their citizens like chattel…how did Mubarak get that quarter of a billion dollar yacht while his people had to work sixty hours a week to get nothing better than bread to eat? We deny basic necessities to our own people in the name of some twisted form of morality.
Morality begins here; if we end executions and tell those who loooooove executions to work out their bloody fantasies with video games we’ve made one step in the right direction.
You might say “You’ve never been the victim of a violent crime.” Wrong. I have. I don’t owe you the details and here’s one reason; I sometimes wonder if those who want the details are getting off on them. I don’t share them around. I like not juicing people up that way, even those who swear that’s not what’s happening. While sometimes we must accept that what is said is what is meant we must also accept that sometimes people lie, even to themselves.
I am all for locking someone up and throwing away the key. Rapists, murderers, victimizers of children, the elderly, the defenseless…yeah, here’s the rest of your life surrounded by concrete and people with worrying ideas of what ‘fun’ is. I don’t mind that at all.
I mind being a murderer no matter how many hands are between me and the execution table. You can’t teach how wrong killing is by killing. We should be smarter than this by now.