Opinion
Bitter fruit
TBO.com
Published: September 29, 2011
After his last chance was turned down by the U.S. Supreme Court, Troy Anthony Davis, perhaps the most notable death row prisoner in America, was executed Wednesday night by the state of Georgia.Published: September 29, 2011
His guilt was entirely in doubt, but death penalty cases are rarely about guilt. We sentence people die to re-establish our dominance. Everything else said about the death penalty, that it deters for instance, is a lie.
The strong killing the weak is objectively wrong, yet as a nation we overwhelmingly support the act. The defenses of the death penalty stem from the darkest spots of the human condition. In parts equally violent and cowardly those on the side of more death make political hay off the corpses of minorities and the poor. Victims' families look for closure in the worst possible place, forgetting that to forgive is significantly more redemptive.
Davis may well have been guilty, but even if he committed the crime he did not deserve to die. There is nothing extraordinary about granting an innocent man a reprieve. The debate should ultimately focus on the evil of the practice in general and not just on cases of questionable guilt.
With Davis' death by lethal injection, a murder committed in 1989 was repaid in 2011. This is what the majority of Americans consider justice. Blood is expected to wash away blood.
Our greatest president abhorred the military executions common during the Civil War. In almost every case Abraham Lincoln would grant clemency owing to the most tenuous of rationales. "I will say this," said Lincoln, "that I have always found that mercy bears richer fruits than strict justice." Although not opposed to capital punishment Lincoln understood 150 years ago what so few understand today: a death cannot be undone.