Troy Davis

[karma_aster]

I hope to god that we haven't just killed an innocent man.

And I hope that the outcome of this all isn't more violence.

I still don't know how I ultimately feel about capital punishment, I just know that I feel sad about all of this, and I hope so very much that we haven't made a horrible mistake.

Comments

[greycoupon]

The police certainly thought there would be violence. They had hundreds of state troopers down in Jackson and even made all the students leave before word from SCOTUS came down. They thought they would riot. Instead people cried but mostly dead silence. Same at the capital.

Waaay too tired to discuss the case bug me when I've slept and sobered up. Troy was no angel but this case was all on the witness testimony. The same witnesses that recanted. That's just wrong.

Feelings versus thought

[ed_rex]

My personal feelings about capital punishment are pretty simple: for certain brutal crimes, I'm all for it.

My thoughts, on the other hand, are very nearly as simple.

1. I don't trust the state to get it right.
2. I don't trust the state to get it right.
3. I don't trust the state to get it right.

If there is the remotest chance that an innocent will be exocuted, then capital punishment is wrong.

If there is the remotest chance that race, or wealth, or sexuality, or popularity will determine whether an accused will be executed instead of serving time, capital punishment is wrong.

You know that mistakes are made in the criminal justice system. There are errors, there is corruption, there are just plain bad defence lawyers (or no lawyers.

We've seen a number of Canadians who would have been eligible for execution in Texas serve 10 or more years who, recently, were found to have been wrongly convicted. They're still alive, so some kind of reparations can be made

Re: Feelings versus thought

[karma_aster]

That's my major issue with the whole thing. There are people on death row who, very fortunately, have been exonerated in time, but there are others who weren't so lucky and had thier names cleared posthumously, and that's just wrong.

I'm aware that, as much as I'd truly like to believe otherwise, there are people in this world with no capacity for empathy or compassion, and they have no intention of redeeming themselves, but sometimes those people are really good at hiding themselves.

And sometimes there are also people who seem utterly hopeless and destined to come to no good end and they totally suprise you by having A Moment and completely turning thier lives around.

And that's what leaves me so damn conflicted on capital punishment. Some people are monsters, but not everyone in the prison system is, and, despite our best efforts, sometimes we get it wrong and people are incarcerated who never should have beenAnd death is very, very final. You can't take that back once it's happened. And is it really a deterent? Because I haven'

Re: Feelings versus thought

[ed_rex]

To me, your first paragraph makes the whole case. If there's any chance that we will kill an innocent person, we can't kill anyone.

As for those monsters you talk about, yes they exist, and yes they should be locked up - and they can be locked up. Which gives us the chance to go some way to repairing the damage when we, as we sometimes will, imprison an innocent.

... I haven't really seen a significant decrease in violent crime that can be directly correlated to the use of capital punishment.

Correlation doesn't prove causation, of course, but when Canada banned the death penalty, the murder rate when down; I believe that other countries have had similar experiences.