Quote :

"Troy Davis is waiting in his jail cell, hoping his advocates outside can convince the US State of Georgia not to execute him according to its schedule on Wednesday, September 21. Davis, now 42, was convicted in 1991 of the 1989 killing of Mark MacPhail, an off-duty police officer who was working an overnight job as a bus station security guard when he was shot dead while intervening in an argument. The 1991 trial put Davis, who has always maintained his innocence, on death row based on the testimony of nine witnesses and no physical evidence. Since the trial, seven of the nine witnesses have changed their stories, saying they cannot identify Davis as the killer."

http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/features/2011/09/2011917143731110559.html


Should we end capital punishment so innocent people aren't murdered?

Quote :

"“Better that 10 guilty men go free than to convict a single innocent man” or has it become too easy to ignore the reality of wrongful conviction; as long as it isn't happening to our own neighbors? The Innocence Project has now had some 100 death sentences overturned based upon post-conviction evidence. According to their study of the first 70 cases reversed: • Over 30 of them involved prosecutorial misconduct. • Over 30 of them involved police misconduct which led to wrongful convictions. • Approximately 15 of them involved false witness testimony. • 34% of the police misconduct cases involved suppression of exculpatory evidence. • 11% involved outright evidence fabrication. • 37% of the prosecutorial misconduct cases involved concealing exculpatory evidence. • 25% involved knowing use of false testimony. Keep in mind; these statistics involve Death Penalty cases wherein the State sought to literally kill the innocent person who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. How many of those 100 innocent, wrongly accused citizens were convicted in the media before jury selection ever began in their trial? How many were wholly deprived of their Constitutional Presumption of Innocence? If we allow ourselves to make watershed decisions far "upstream" about whom is and is not deserving of the protections afforded by our Constitution, our entire system of justice becomes a hollow shell with a predetermined outcome."

http://knowledgebase.findlaw.com/kb/2009/Jun/CS060809.html

9/21/2011 3:05:47 PM

capital punishment has no place in an imperfect justice system

9/21/2011 3:12:44 PM

requirements for using capital punishment should be revamped.

however, it should remain as an available option, but primarily for those literally pose too great a danger to society to remain alive.

9/21/2011 3:47:31 PM

Multiple appeals and 2 trips to the Supreme Court and you still think this guy is innocent? That nearly a quarter of a century later, 7 aren't saying he didn't do it but saying they're not sure that he did, yet 2 have not changed their story.

Then there's the bloody shorts that were not allowed as evidence. The guy shot someone in the face, then killed a cop. Calling him innocent is politicizing, not actually looking at the case or the appellate history.

Further reading http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troy_Davis_case

[Edited on September 21, 2011 at 4:23 PM. Reason : .]

9/21/2011 4:16:29 PM

Quote :

"requirements for using capital punishment should be revamped."

including much harsher penalties for those in a position of power that abuse that power in trials involving the death penalty.

9/21/2011 4:24:02 PM

Should we end life imprisonment so innocent people aren't tortured and then murdered?

Quote :

"including much harsher penalties for those in a position of power that abuse that power in trials involving the death penalty."

I'm down with this, as well as extending capital punishment to aggravated sexual assault.

[Edited on September 21, 2011 at 4:42 PM. Reason : .]

9/21/2011 4:29:42 PM

I'm not sure if this should be a debate on capital punishment or a debate on the inefficiencies of our court system. The original trial was in 1989... over twenty years ago.

I understand there are ethical, social, and financial burdens of capital punishment vs. life sentence, but it seems irrelevant to study the outcome if the process if flawed to begin with (although the third burden is tied into this).

9/21/2011 6:39:08 PM

Quote :

"Multiple appeals and 2 trips to the Supreme Court and you still think this guy is innocent? That nearly a quarter of a century later, 7 aren't saying he didn't do it but saying they're not sure that he did, yet 2 have not changed their story. Then there's the bloody shorts that were not allowed as evidence. The guy shot someone in the face, then killed a cop. Calling him innocent is politicizing, not actually looking at the case or the appellate history. "

I agree with this.

In the 2 different news reports I read about this (admittedly not the most research i could do), neither one offered support for why this guy actually might be innocent.

9/21/2011 6:42:34 PM

Why is it you get so many people to turn out for this guy, but there are probably hundreds of other people with life w/o parole sentences with probably 'less' evidence/testimony used to convict them than Troy.

People need to stop pretending they really care about the guy or know anything about the case (and law/justice in general) so much as they are just against capital punishment. Is it too much to start a "hes guilty but the death penalty is wrong/not warranted in this case" protest?

9/21/2011 7:07:11 PM

Quote :

"Should we end capital punishment so innocent people aren't murdered?"

Hahaha, oh, pryderi. Your style is, as always, ludicrous. If innocent people weren't getting murdered, we wouldn't have to discuss the death penalty to begin with, because there'd be no capital crimes.

Quote :

"The Innocence Project has now had some 100 death sentences overturned based upon post-conviction evidence."

Yes, they have. I love when this figure gets trotted out, listing people who weren't wrongfully executed as a basis for showing how many people are wrongfully executed.

I agree that requirements should be revamped. Some of the people we off don't really need to be offed (and, in a world where the Unabomber and Charles Manson are kept alive in prisons for life, some of the people we don't off really do need to be offed).

Give this cop-killing asshole the needle, regardless of what his lawyer's excellent PR has managed to churn out.

9/21/2011 7:24:01 PM

Quote :

"Yes, they have. I love when this figure gets trotted out, listing people who weren't wrongfully executed as a basis for showing how many people are wrongfully executed."

So, GrumpyGOP what you're saying is that it's ok with you if innocent people get executed.

BTW, no one's arguing to let Troy Davis go free.


[Edited on September 21, 2011 at 7:36 PM. Reason : /////////////]

9/21/2011 7:32:30 PM

Quote :

"Troy Davis Execution Delayed Supreme Court Could Stay the Execution of Troy Davis. By COLLEEN CURRY Updated 1 min ago Troy Davis' execution was delayed tonight as the Supreme Court weighed arguments by Davis' legal team and the state of Georgia over whether he deserves a stay. At 7:05 p.m. tonight, five minutes after his scheduled death, Davis' supporters erupted in cheers, hugs and tears outside the jail in Jackson, Ga., as supporters believed Davis had been saved from the death penalty. But the Supreme Court only granted a temporary reprieve as it considers the decision. "

http://abcnews.go.com/US/troy-davis-execution-delayed-supreme-court-decision/t/story?id=14571862

[Edited on September 21, 2011 at 7:39 PM. Reason : ...........]

9/21/2011 7:39:19 PM

Quote :

"So, GrumpyGOP what you're saying is that it's ok with you if innocent people get executed."

No. I'm merely clarifying the "overturned cases" statistic, which gets trotted out every so often and which primarily serves to demonstrate that people who were not wrongfully executed were not, in fact, wrongfully executed.

9/21/2011 8:05:10 PM

It's "trotted out" to illustrate that there are people that have been wrongfullly executed.

9/21/2011 8:13:08 PM

Something it can't possibly do. It shows that people may have been wrongly convicted or maybe even sentenced. A death sentence that is overturned is not a death sentence carried out.

[Edited on September 21, 2011 at 8:28 PM. Reason : d]

9/21/2011 8:28:18 PM

Government is infallible?

9/21/2011 8:31:18 PM

But, Grumpy, those are the ones that the Innocence Project caught! Imagine how many it missed?

Then multiply that like by 1000 to get how many are killed by our prisons besides that. But who cares, executing people is barbaric. Torturing them for decades and letting them die is humane.

All this argument ever boils down to is an abritrary notion of justice. My opinion is that in order for our species to thrive, the wicked must be punished and the punishment should generally fit the crime. For me, there exists crimes for which death is an appropriate punishment.

[Edited on September 21, 2011 at 8:39 PM. Reason : .]

9/21/2011 8:31:24 PM

The government has no business killing civilians. Private companies should be the ones killing civilians. Let the free market decide who gets the chair and who gets to walk.

9/21/2011 9:55:30 PM

Quote :

"In the 2 different news reports I read about this (admittedly not the most research i could do), neither one offered support for why this guy actually might be innocent."

Bingo. it seems like every time any person is about to be executed, we get about 15 bajillion news stories about why the guy might possibly be innocent. I'm with moron on this one that this guy is probably guilty.

9/21/2011 10:23:16 PM

Well, he's probably guilty, so fuck it, go ahead and strap him in.

9/21/2011 10:30:16 PM

SCOTUS says:




Time to:



[Edited on September 21, 2011 at 10:34 PM. Reason : ]

9/21/2011 10:32:03 PM

Celebrating death. Typical republican.

9/21/2011 10:57:17 PM

re-posted from the other death penalty thread:

Number of people executed in 2010, per country

1 People's Republic of China Officially not released. In the thousands,may be up to 5000.
2 Iran 252+
3 North Korea 60+
4 Yemen 53+
5 United States 46
6 Saudi Arabia 27+
7 Libya 18+
8 Syria 17+
9 Bangladesh 9+
10 Somalia 8+

Pretty awesome company we have there...


Also thought this was interesting:



Blue - Abolished for all offenses
Green - Abolished for all offenses except under special circumstances
Orange - Retains, though not used for at least 10 years
Red - Retains death penalty

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment

9/21/2011 11:03:13 PM

^^ I didn't make any commentary.

...and I'm barely more than nominally a Republican.

9/21/2011 11:06:36 PM

46. not bad. How many of those belong to Texas?

9/21/2011 11:08:29 PM

^^^ those numbers are meaningless since they are not "per-capita".

[Edited on September 21, 2011 at 11:09 PM. Reason : ]

9/21/2011 11:09:23 PM

^ Nope. The company speaks for itself. The per-capita argument is a red herring.

9/21/2011 11:25:17 PM

Quote :

"Should we end capital punishment so innocent people aren't murdered?"

Innocent people are murdered everyday, regardless of capital punishment.

9/21/2011 11:37:26 PM

^^ Its not a red herring, its statistics.

You'll find that more people die on the road in the US than in, say, Mozambique... so by your logic the US has more dangerous roads.

[Edited on September 21, 2011 at 11:39 PM. Reason : ]

9/21/2011 11:38:59 PM

@AnnCoulter Ann Coulter
ONE TROY DAVIS FLAME-BROILED, PLEASE -

9/22/2011 12:14:44 AM

Quote :

"Nope. The company speaks for itself."

Interesting. To the best of my knowledge, Nazi Germany was the first country to undertake a major anti-smoking campaign. Ol' Adolph, for all of his bad ideas, had it right when he suggested that smoking probably wasn't good for you. And that's about the worst company you could be in. If you were in the second country to start such a campaign, would you be complaining, "No, look at the terrible company you're in!"

On that list you have a number of countries that execute people for political/social/religious offenses. Here, we just kill you if you murder somebody or commit treason (and we haven't done it for the latter in quite some time). Furthermore, for ranking purposes 3 of 11 is right -- per capita does matter.

9/22/2011 2:04:45 AM

According to everyone who called into the radio station (all black djs) I was listening to this morning (in Charlotte) not only should he not have been killed, but he was also innocent.

9/22/2011 9:05:05 AM

It just feels at this point that there is reasonable doubt that he was guilty. In my eyes that's not enough to kill someone.

As I get older and older I think the death penalty should be abolished. The fact that people have been proven innocent from death row should show us that our system is flawed and that chances are good that an innocent man has been killed while his guilty counterpart is walking free.

9/22/2011 9:22:53 AM

Now explain to me why you're cool with torturing innocent people for decades and letting them die in prison.

9/22/2011 9:42:38 AM

Make no mistake the black radio DJs and the black community in general believed this whole case was a race thing, which is why they believe he was innocent. They think the man just picked some random poor black guy and planted evidence on him. It didn't help that this happened in Savannah, GA.

Hindsight is 20/20 why are these people recanting after 20+ years? That is a question that should be asked. Were they forced into corraborating a story, none of them him have said as such?

Just because he maintained his innocence doesn't mean he was really innocent.

9/22/2011 9:55:43 AM

One of the Greatest hip hop albums of all time.

9/22/2011 10:11:29 AM

A race thing?

7/12 jurors that decided he was guilty were black.
7/12 jurors that sentenced him to death were black.

9/22/2011 10:40:53 AM

B0bbyD1g1tal Bobby T
Why am I not surprised that you eat human flesh? RT @AnnCoulter ONE TROY DAVIS FLAME-BROILED, PLEASE - bit.ly/qPQnV7

9/22/2011 11:35:20 AM

^^but the black media is spinning it as a race thing, using that if he was white his execution would have been stayed.

9/22/2011 12:14:39 PM

Quote :

"A race thing? 7/12 jurors that decided he was guilty were black. 7/12 jurors that sentenced him to death were black."

oh really well then everything checks out, your narrow metric of racial fairness has been satisfied

9/22/2011 12:26:47 PM

Well, the "race thing" case was presented with even less evidence.

9/22/2011 12:48:18 PM

From what I read he was most likely guilty but not enough to warrant the death penalty. I was completely against him being executed, and it was sad to watch helpless as political forces executed him. You would think humanity would trump politics but once you lose a seat you dont get it back.

9/22/2011 10:44:45 PM

If politicians can kill people, people can kill politicians. Or not.

9/23/2011 12:38:16 AM

^^ "Most likely guilty but not enough to warrant the death penalty" is a meaningless statement. Legally speaking, there is no higher burden of proof for the death penalty. If you are guilty "beyond a reasonable doubt", that's good enough for a conviction, good enough for incarceration, and good enough for capital punishment. Per the law, you can say that you aren't convinced enough of his guilt to convict and punish him at all, but you cannot say that he's guilty enough to convict and incarcerate, but there's too much doubt surrounding his case to allow him to be put to death.

9/23/2011 1:18:16 AM

I notice there were not a lot of publicized protests and complaints when Texas fried the white-supremacist who dragged the black guy to death behind his pickup:

http://articles.cnn.com/2011-09-21/justice/justice_texas-dragging-death-execution_1_lawrence-russell-brewer-john-william-king-shawn-berry?_s=PM:JUSTICE

9/23/2011 1:58:57 AM

Quote :

"Per the law, you can say that you aren't convinced enough of his guilt to convict and punish him at all"

I'll go with that one then.

9/23/2011 8:12:42 AM

^^Silly GrumpyGOP, they only execute innocent black people. Didn't you know?

9/23/2011 9:13:53 AM

^^ so, then, why aren't you convinced? because the media is telling you so? because they are showing you all of the evidence that purports his innocence and nothing else?

9/24/2011 1:49:54 AM

It's cheaper to keep them in prison for life.

9/25/2011 12:55:38 AM

It's cheaper still to not bother funding a police force and court system.

9/26/2011 2:05:22 AM