Troy Davis and the death penalty

If you are one of the many who frequent Twitter, or simply keep a beady eye on the news, you will no doubt have heard about a man named Troy Davis.

In 1989, Troy Davis was convicted of murdering police officer, Mark MacPhail. At the time, there were nine witnesses who said they saw him beating up a homeless man, which led to MacPhail to stop the first and ended in his death. However, seven of those nine witnesses have recanted their statements, saying that the evidence they gave was wrong. Davis was originally implicated by a man named Sylvester Coles, who would later be named by some of the witnesses as the shooter. Despite all this lack of evidence and doubt surrounding his guilt, Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles – who had earlier stated that he would never be put to death unless there was no doubt about his guilt – decided that he would be executed.

Shockingly enough, one of the witnesses to the crime Davis was convicted of, later stated that he was actually illiterate, and as such could not read the police statements that he signed. Another said she heard Sylvester Coles admit to the murder (although he was rather inebriated). You would think that in a nation priding itself on ‘Justice for All’ would see this mountain of doubt and scraps of tainted evidence as proof that not only was he wrongly convicted but wrongly jailed too. Now we can add wrongly executed to that list of wrongs.

All this appears to show is that not everyone can have justice, not everyone is equal in the law, and I think that those in power in America didnot want this to be the case.

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I have several problems with the death penalty for several reasons, my main being that I find it abhorrent in civilised society. We pride ourselves on liberty, on placing the Rule of Law above anything else in the legal system, yet it is apparently acceptable to take away someone else’s life, because if it’s been sanctioned by the government then it means we can get away with encouraging someone else’s murder guilt-free.

Another major qualm I have with capital punishment is that it is goes against a major right we all have. The right to life. The death penalty exists under the pretence that we currently have the privilege of living, but should I behaviour become too illegal we should expect our life to be forfeit. It is also linked to the “an eye for an eye” mentality that I so despise. As the saying goes “an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind” and this is certainly true.

Those who advocate capital punishment often speak of justice for those who were wronged, as if seeing the death of one who deeply wronged them makes their pain lessen. This ‘justice’ they feel is not justice, but vengeance. Vengeance masquerading as justice. This sense of revenge playing dress-up is apparently an acceptable form of justice, in which we are allowed, encouraged even, to rejoice in the death of a fellow human being.