The Supreme Court Upholding Troy Davis's Death Penalty Would Be a Crime
Executing Troy Davis, very likely not guilty of murder, would itself be a crime
Benjamin Todd Jealous is president and CEO of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
The tragedy of the Troy Davis case is not just another bad mark on our criminal justice system, which has produced over 230 exonerations of people scheduled to die for crimes they did not commit, but it is an injustice to the family of slain peace officer, Mark MacPhail. With Davis's conviction almost two decades ago, the investigation into the shooting of Officer MacPhail ceased. Should Davis be executed, MacPhail's family members and loved ones will not truly know if the actual killer has ever been caught. They deserve genuine closure, and the community needs to know that there is no longer a killer in the streets of their city.
While the case of Troy Anthony Davis is not how we might have preferred to mark the beginning of our next hundred years, we are determined to honor our founders' vision in the best way possible, by pushing forward as they did on the long march for justice. We will stride onward—as we did 100 years ago—to realize the true promise of America and achieve a system of justice where the tragedy of Troy Davis's case is no longer possible.
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Reader Comments
troy davis guilt
If you guys would look at the AP News Report you would know that I was one of the jurists of Troy Davis's trial. Don't any of you ever check the facts. The witnesses that count are the Burger King Manager, The night clean-up man who was sitting in his car when Troy slap the young man with a gun up side of his head and knock him on to the hood of the clean-up man's car. The eight Airforce Men who were going thru the Burger King Drive-thru watching all of this happen and the young lady that the guy was talking to. they all were withing 2 to 20 feet of the incident with the outside lights on. None of these people changed ther mind. No one listen to the hoods and thugs that testified who now are changing there stories. You people need to get real and stop being so easy mislead. Next Time recognize the people who are making money out of this.
Not Black or White Issue
The issue here should not be a Black and White one. Punishing someone (especially executing him!) who is not guilty is terribly wrong for two reasons:
1. It is wrong (and evil!) to punish any innocent person; and
2. By punishing the wrong person, the justice sysem stops looking for the really guilty person!
There is a reason why outside the Supreme Court, the lady holding the scales of justice is blindfolded.
Why is it that there are seemingly reasonable people not understanding this? Let's see how many reasonable justices there are in the Supreme Court...
THE DEATH PENALTY IS ALWAYS WRONG
The execution of every innocent makes us all guilty. Only God is capable of perfect justice - men make mistakes.
I would like to think, if it were my child who was murdered, that I would still want justice - not vengeance. But, even if my grief and anger drove me to demand vengeance the courts should not be swayed by demands for revenge - but only be concerned with justice, and at the same time protecting society... Both can be achieved without another killing.
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