Troy Davis was at the centre of an international controversy this week as he was the latest person to be executed in the US state of Texas. But why the controversy - or perhaps that should be, why more so than usual?
For the past 22 years, Troy Davis has been vigorously protesting his innocence, a protestation that continued right up to the point of execution. The US Supreme Court had rejected his final request for a stay of execution just half an hour earlier; to the family of the victim, who were in the viewing gallery to the execution chamber, he said, “I am not the one who took the life of your father, brother, son.”
The death penalty remains controversial and hopefully always will for the duration of its existance!
Davis was originally found guilty of shooting an off-duty policeman. However, since then, the case has been reexamined an number of times, most recently after witnesses withdrew their statements.
There was no physical evidence against Davis, and some witnesses now say they were coerced by police. Such withdrawals of testimony were a contributing factor in the generation of a petition calling for Davis to be spared, citing grave doubts over his guilt. More than a million people had signed the petition.
It would appear that in the US, to overturn the decision of the court, the ‘offender’ has to show innocence in the light of any new evidence by applying a rule whereby they have to ‘establish that no reasonable juror would have convicted them.' As such, this ruling is a 180° turnaround from the rule of law applied at the time of trial i.e. that of proving guilt, not innocence. Davis was unable to do this.
However, because of his inability to establish his innocence doesn’t mean he was proven guilty. That said, observers and commentators of the case suggest that, in all probability he was a guilt man.
Davis was strapped to a gurney, injected with a lethal cocktail of drugs and 15 minutes later pronounced dead. His execution took place because he probably was guilty! I’m sorry, when it’s the matter of a man’s life, probably isn’t good enough for me! Yet, often, ‘probably’ is the best that can be said about the guilt of those killed by the state.
Almost as a tailpiece to this story, at a recent political debate, the Governor of Texas, Rick Perry, when asked about his record of 234 executions that he had sanctioned during his term of office, said, “I’ve never struggled with that.”
Perhaps Gov. Perry hasn’t struggled with that but I would sincerely hope that he is in a significant minority with such views.
