The execution of Troy Davis in Georgia should serve as a reminder to us all of just how flawed the death penalty system is in this country. It should shake up the criminal justice system and force the United States government to face its own ugly truths about capital punishment in the twenty-first century.
When I first got wind of the Troy Davis case and reported it here in The Examiner, it seemed as if he was going to have his real day in court instead of the fabricated one that ended up in the taking of his life. For any state in the USA to come back later and say "Oops, we might have made a mistake" simply should not cut it any more.
When a state kills those whose guilt is not beyond a reasonable doubt or even those who were not properly judicially served, let alone kills those who had no evidence, not even a murder weapon with which to condemn the accused, it not only performs injustice against the wrongly convicted, it is a disservice to the American people, its laws, its Constitution and those whom it is designed to protect and serve. The legitimacy of the death penalty is not only up for question, so is the true purpose of its strength in acting as a deterrent, or even "payback" (state-sponsored retribution) for the crime.
To watch the state of Georgia willfully participate in this should be a horrific reminder of the travesty of justice in the death penalty to the whole nation. Troy Davis' death should be met with swift retribution against the death penalty, which has always been flawed on several accounts, notwithstanding the fact that it is a laugh in the face of the Bill of Rights itself.
Georgia says that it gave Troy Davis more 'due process' than any single man would have a right to expect. But it did not.
Guilty beyond a reasonable doubt means just that and in Davis' case, there was plenty of reasonable doubt and then some, including the absence of a murder weapon and recanting witnesses who stated that they were coerced by the police into lying. Not only that, but a review of one particular brief in the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals shows that the person who was actually seen with a gun in his hand only moments before Officer Mark McPhail was shot in Savannah apparently got away with the murder. One of the judges who reviewed the case agreed that Davis should have a new trial, but it only took the two who didn't agree to keep him tied to the apparent lies that convicted him.
Under the circumstances, it appears that instead of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, what Davis got was "guilty until proven innocent," in a case in which he should not have been convicted in the first place.
U.S. District Judge William Moore held an evidentiary hearing to examine new claims, and new evidence, presented by Davis and his attorneys. Under federal law, Judge Moore reminded the litigants that Davis had the nearly insurmountable post-conviction burden of establishing by "clear and convincing evidence'' that no reasonable juror would have convicted him based upon the new evidence.
It shouldn't surprise anyone that Davis failed to meet that burden of proof. It was turned around to mean the opposite of what "guilty beyond a reasonable doubt" truly means. If he was wrongly convicted in the first place, and he was...then there was no way for him to be able to prove that he would never have been convicted. By Georgia's own version of the US Constitution, Troy Davis had to prove he 'wouldn't have been convicted' instead of proving that he was innocent of the crime, which most still believe he was.
Georgia thumbed its nose at the new evidence presented and simply ignored the considered judgments of experts that he shouldn't have been convicted at all, let alone sentenced to die. Georgia has never been known in this country for applying righteousness judicial measurements to many cases, especially and in particular those involving black males. But we do note that the man who was seen with the gun in his hands just before the officer was shot is also a black man who may have been rightfully convicted if the police had not coerced the witnesses in the first place. One of those nine witnesses who did not recant, by the way, and according to the 11th Circuit Court brief, is the one who was seen with the gun in his hand while chasing a homeless man across the street and also threatening him with it. Officer MacPhail's decision to respond to the homeless man who was crying out for help cost him his own life.
Troy Davis' case left us with a staunch reminder of how inhumane and cruel the death penalty system and still leaves us with the question of just who actually did kill Officer MacPhail so many years ago. If his actual killer is never caught, then the officer's murder was certainly not vindicated in the death of Davis; and never will be.
Davis' death should cause us all to work hard to change this area of the law.
Though his sister, Martina Davis Correia, who took his case to every place that she could take it while she lived, is now also gone; it remains in the hands of those who know that Troy Davis was never truly proven guilty to revisit the death penalty and demand its reform, or its own demise.
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