By Linda Felaco
At 7 p.m. tonight, the state of Georgia will execute a man who many people believe to be innocent. In the 22 years that Troy Davis has spent on death row for the 1989 murder of Savannah police officer Mark MacPhail, the majority of the eyewitnesses who testified against him in his trial have recanted their testimony, claiming coercion or intimidation by the police, and the police investigation has become a textbook case of how not to handle eyewitness testimony.
Doubts about Davis's guilt are so strong that no less than William Sessions, the FBI director under Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and Clinton, has written an editorial arguing that Davis should not be executed. Even Former U.S. Representative Bob Barr, a Georgia Republican and self-proclaimed death penalty supporter, has written that "the level of doubt inherent in this case is troubling." In an editorial last week, he further stated that "imposing an irreversible sentence of death on the skimpiest of evidence will not serve the interest of justice."
And yet Georgia's Republican attorney general, perhaps egged on by the recent cheers Texas Governor Rick Perry received at the Republican presidential debate for having authorized more executions than any governor in the history of the United States, today urged a state court to reject Davis's last-ditch appeal.
Why is it, I wonder, that these same Republicans who are so convinced that the government can do nothing right and that all government programs should be systematically dismantled and their functions carried out by private organizations are simultaneously so sure that every death sentence handed down by a judge, who is after all part of that very government they so despise, is absolutely, positively 100% correct and infallible?
Did I mention that there has never been any physical evidence tying Davis to the crime? Just those nine eyewitnesses. Seven of whom now say the police coerced or intimidated into giving their testimony. Some of whom testified that another suspect confessed committing the crime to them. One of whom confessed witnessing this other suspect, a relative of his, commit the crime.
A judge ruled that the recantations were unreliable. Problem there is, those witnesses were crucial to Davis's original conviction. So if their recanted testimony is unreliable, what makes their original testimony any more reliable?
But our government, which according to Republicans has made such a botch of education, health care, and pretty much any other function it carries out, is somehow completely reliable when it comes to establishing guilt.
The blood lust of the death penalty advocates is so strong that they'll kill the wrong person just to be able to kill someone to avenge another death. But not only is it wrong to kill someone for a crime they didn't commit, but it also means the true perpetrator walks free. This, you'd think, would give them pause. But no, the machinery of death must not be stopped. Apparently, as long as someone's dying, the system is working.
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UPDATE, 8 P.M.
Troy Davis is still alive as the Supreme Court weighs his lawyers' argument for a stay of execution. Meanwhile, in Texas, white supremacist gang member Lawrence Russell Brewer has become another notch in Rick Perry's execution belt for the infamous 1998 dragging death of James Byrd Jr., a black man from East Texas.
UPDATE, 12 A.M.
Troy Davis died at 11:08 p.m. He maintained his innocence to the very end and implored the victim's family to dig deeper and find out who the killer really was.