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The government's power of life and death...

Troy Davis was executed in Atlanta a few hours ago. As I read through the case, it seems he was an innocent man in the wrong place at the wrong time. Jurors found him guilty, but later decided against this plea due to the recanted testimony of eye witnesses. The prosecution was very much interested in the conviction for the "tough on crimes" angle that DAs are known for in the US.

But on a personal level, I can only feel that an innocent man had the deck stacked against him.

Link

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Defiant to the end, he told relatives of Mark MacPhail that his 1989 slaying was not his fault. "I did not have a gun," he insisted.

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Davis was declared dead at 11:08 ET. The lethal injection began about 15 minutes earlier, after the Supreme Court rejected an 11th-hour request for a stay.

The court did not comment on its order, which came about four hours after it received the request and more than three hours after the planned execution time.

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Though Davis' attorneys said seven of nine key witnesses against him disputed all or parts of their testimony, state and federal judges repeatedly ruled against granting him a new trial.

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About 10 counterdemonstrators also were outside the prison, showing support for the death penalty and the family of Mark MacPhail, the man Davis was convicted of killing in 1989. MacPhail's son and brother attended the execution.

"He had all the chances in the world," his mother, Anneliese MacPhail, said of Davis in a telephone interview. "It has got to come to an end."

I can understand a weeping family. But should he have been executed when no gun was found?

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He was convicted in 1991 of killing MacPhail, who was working as a security guard at the time. MacPhail rushed to the aid of a homeless man who prosecutors said Davis was bashing with a handgun after asking him for a beer. Prosecutors said Davis had a smirk on his face as he shot the officer to death in a Burger King parking lot in Savannah.

No gun was ever found, but prosecutors say shell casings were linked to an earlier shooting for which Davis was convicted.

And through all of this, even though you have only two witnesses who didn't recant their testimony, the prosecution had little evidence to convict him. Troy was given the chance of a new trial, but even that failed.

And I can't help but hate the fact that the prosecutors truly gloated over their victory:

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Spencer Lawton, the district attorney who secured Davis' conviction in 1991, said he was embarrassed for the judicial system -- not because of the execution, but because it took so long to carry out.

"What we have had is a manufactured appearance of doubt which has taken on the quality of legitimate doubt itself. And all of it is exquisitely unfair," said Lawton, who retired as Chatham County's head prosecutor in 2008. "The good news is we live in a civilized society where questions like this are decided based on fact in open and transparent courts of law, and not on street corners."

It's sad to see judges not grant a new trial. It's worse that almost everyone involved in the case had thought he deserved just that. It was mainly government officials who thought to continue with this execution.

Long story short, our government having the power of life and death should be a very frightening prospect for all.

Yeah, this whole thing is just... well, it's a pretty serious fucking miscarriage of justice is what it is. I've been following the story since this morning and, like you said, there is way too much doubt surrounding this case for them to gone through with the sentencing. I mean, most of the witnesses who recanted even admitted that they were coerced into fingering Davis as the killer. On top of them never finding the .38 that was used as the murder weapon, there was also some shady stuff going on with the ballistics testing that matched the bullets found in officer MacPhail with some other bullets in a crime Davis was supposedly involved in earlier the same evening. And in the 19 years he's been incarcerated, they never even let the guy take a polygraph test to see if he was lying or not.

This is messed up. You expect to see this kind of insane injustice to taking place in a ham-handed dystopian fiction. Just what the fuck is wrong with the Supreme Court? How can they sit by and let an execution take place, when it's not even clear if the person's guilty of anything besides being in the wrong place at the wrong time? I'm feeling angry, disgusted, and depressed right now.

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"What we have had is a manufactured appearance of doubt which has taken on the quality of legitimate doubt itself. And all of it is exquisitely unfair," said Lawton, who retired as Chatham County's head prosecutor in 2008. "The good news is we live in a civilized society where questions like this are decided based on fact in open and transparent courts of law, and not on street corners."

The only thing I can safely say right now is that I want to punch Spencer Lawton in the goddamned face.

But, yeah, this is a pretty fucking serious violation of justice. Don't know what to say beyond that. Hope it'll inspire a change for the better. Doubt it actually will.

EDIT: And Jagos, please don't try to turn this into something it isn't. This is not "the government having the power of life and death". It's a sick violation of justice that casts a stark light on a lot of the flaws in our system.

I dunno I guess technically it is both, it's just that "governmental power of life and death" reads more "death panels omg" not "one of the myriad problems with our justice system".

The major difference between this and Death Panels is that this is a thing that actually exists.

I'd say the existence of the death sentence is a much bigger problem than any other problem with your judical system. Barbaric, ineffective, sets a bad example, etc, we've had that thread before.

Now I'll just slip in some generic outrage here. "It is exquisitely unfair"? Oh it is, Mr DA guy. Why don't you tell it to the guy you just got killed oh wait you can't because he's dead. Yeah, it sure sucks to be you.

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Originally Posted by Mr.Bookworm (Post 1156050)

EDIT: And Jagos, please don't try to turn this into something it isn't. This is not "the government having the power of life and death". It's a sick violation of justice that casts a stark light on a lot of the flaws in our system.

I could swear I explained how the evidence for him committing the murder just did not add up. I don't know about wrongfully accused, but having no murder weapon, few eyewitness testimony, and no video or evidence does mean that the government sentenced him to execution for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Actually, a Jury of his peers found him guilty and a Judge sentanced him to execution. Along the way, trusted law enforcement abused their positions and power to coerce and obsfucate.

"The Government" didn't really do shit.

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"The Government" didn't really do shit.

Under mainstream schools of political science, the judiciary is generally understood to be a branch of government.

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I'd say the existence of the death sentence is a much bigger problem than any other problem with your judical system.

I think the latter compounds the former.