At 11:08pm on September 21, 2011, Troy Davis was announced dead after receiving his execution after the announcement that his sentence would not be commuted. The problem with this particular execution is that the case against him had fallen apart over his years on Death Row. Troy Davis was accused of the murder of an off-duty Savannah Police Officer, Mark MacPhail in 1989. Of the nine witnesses that testified against him originally, seven have recanted. With this much reasonable doubt, one would think that the court system would stall the execution for further investigation and yet, they did not. The United States Supreme Court, the Georgia Supreme Court, and the Georgia Governor all refused any action to stop this possibly baseless execution of a man who may have been innocent. It calls into question the purpose of the Death Penalty and the aptitude of the US government system. A huge outcry against the act came from the public. Protests and vigils popped up all over the country, though most prominently in Georgia. Pleas were made to as many government officials as possible to attempt to stay this execution and yet it still came to be.
The biggest human rights violation is that of the right to life. Many people see rights as a give and take. You take someone else's rights away, you forfeit yours, but if there is any possibility that the wrong person as been accused of taking those rights away their rights should be restored, in my opinion. The right to a fair trial was also dismissed in this case, if you ask me. Was all the evidence re-evaluated? I highly doubt it or his execution would have been pushed at least a week or so down from its original date. The rights to life and fair trial are incredibly important to human rights ideals and to deny them with such doubt cast upon the original trial is an injustice.
As I was listening to the live coverage of Troy Davis's case I was sick to my stomach.It seemed clear to me that there was too much doubt to put this man to death without further inquiry. Someone who denied his crime even up to his last words is not a guilty man. It seems too much to me that the government of the United States and of Georgia only wanted someone to pay for the crime and at that point they did not seem to care if it was the correct person. All of this puts the Death Penalty even further into question for me and several other people in this country. If there is even a small likelihood that the person is innocent should we allow the Death Penalty to be even pulled into play? I can't for the life of me understand the use of the death penalty. To me it says, "We're going to kill you for killing someone, but we will not get any punishment for taking your life at all." I cannot agree with that in any sense.
Should the Death Penalty exist when there are still possibly innocent men being executed in the United States? Why has the United States not gotten rid of this punishment when so many of the European and other western countries have? Do you think that what happened to Troy Davis was justified?
The existence of the death penalty is not the problem; those who wrongly enforce it are. Let's face it, the U.S. court system is not perfect and neither is any other country's court system around the world. While this is not an excuse for the loss of what seems to be an innocent person's life, the main issue that needs to be addressed is the structure/process of the court system. There seems to have been a complete lack of communication or negligence of proper procedures in Troy Davis's case. The focus of his case should have been on the phrase "beyond reasonable doubt"- and the fact that seven out of nine witnesses recanted speaks to this in particular. It is a known fact that eyewitness testimony is not a valid indicator of reality in most cases; people can easily be confused by outside factors- or people can even confuse themselves! Those who were involved in the decision/verdict of Troy Davis's trial should have weighted the other evidence against this convicted man more heavily. I am also confused; how could our court system allow a man to be executed if any hint of reasonable doubt exists? This man's right to a fair trial was violated without a doubt. Hopefully the occurrence of human rights violations such as this can be avoided in the future.
ReplyDeleteWhat happened to Troy Davis is terrible. There was more than just a reasonable doubt, there was a significant doubt. All but two of the "eyewitnesses" recanted their statements and said they had lied. The fact that the court system failed him is horrendous. To make it worse, this event exposed government corruption. The eyewitnesses who recanted often expressed that the police pressured them to lie, because they wanted somebody to pay for their death of their colleague. This whole thing is outrageous and the United States judicial system should be ashamed.
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