We can judge a society by how it deals with its most vulnerable.
And no one is more vulnerable than a man on death row hours away from execution.
Georgia executed Troy Davis last night, who was convicted of killing a Savanna cop nearly 20 years ago. The conviction has stood numerous court challenges, but Davis’ guilt was placed into doubt because seven of the nine eyewitnesses that testified against Davis recanted in a case that had little physical evidence to support the conviction.
I have no idea whether Davis was innocent or not. What bothers me about the case, however, is that there remained some doubt — which means that Georgia may have executed an innocent man.
And that should be unacceptible. That it’s not, that Americans are unwilling to see that the death penalty submerges us in a moral swamp, that it taints everyone of us who lives in the United States.
The death penalty is a barbaric failure. It offers no deterrence (otherwise why would Texas, the execution capital of the nation, have 17 percent more murders per capita than the death-penaltyless New Jersey). The machinery erected to try suspects is as rickety as America’s decaying bridges, with the ultimate, irreversible penalty being imposed and no way of guaranteeing that the person being sent to death is guilty. There always is reasonable doubt.
Albert Camus called it premeditated murder in which society is complicit. When we put anyone to death, we are all guilty of murder.
- Send me an e-mail.
- Read poetry at The Subterranean.
- Certainties and Uncertainties a chapbook by Hank Kalet, will be published in November by Finishing Line Press. It can be ordered here.
- Suburban Pastoral, a chapbook by Hank Kalet, available here.
Hank Kalet 