In the early hours of Thursday last Troy Davis was executed by the US State of Georgia by lethal injection. He had spent 16 years on death row, throughout which time he protested his innocence. All but two non-police witnesses have withdrawn their testimonies since his conviction, many of them citing coercion on the part of the police to ensure Davis’ conviction. One of the two remaining witnesses is the alternate chief suspect who is implicated by 9 separate witnesses’ affidavits. The case for Davis’ conviction was also completely devoid of any physical evidence.
Now, I am no legal expert nor do I claim to have any particularly unique knowledge of this or any other legal case. However, one of the most integral principals of any Democracy based on Rule of Law is the presumption of innocence until proven guilty. The issues with evidence Davis’ conviction raised above would seem enough to cast considerable doubt as to Davis’ guilt, certainly enough to warrant clemency of execution.
Davis is dead now. The US State of Georgia killed him. There is no going back on that decision. No future revelations will make any difference now that the ultimate punishment has been dealt. That a man can be sent to his death by a modern, democratic state on seemingly questionable evidence, all the while adamantly protesting his innocence seems bizarre, if not barbaric.
The Troy Davis case, if nothing else, raises serious questions about the use of the death penalty by any state and has added credence to the many advocates calling for its abolition.
An individual is only justified in the taking of a life in cases of self defence. Otherwise, they are deemed “murderer”, the most heinous form of criminal. Should not a similar moral code apply to a state? The killing of a convict is not in self defence; it is an act of revenge, of punishment, of a twisted justice.
What kind of message does a government that kills its own citizens in pursuit of “justice” send out? Violence begets violence, begets violence. It legitimates violence as a valid form of pursuing justice.
130 people have been released from Death Row in the US following their eventual proving of their innocence. How many were not so lucky? The Northwestern University School of Law Center on Wrongful Convictions has found there to be at least 39 cases where executions have taken place in the US with serious doubts about guilt or with compelling evidence of innocence. Surely the Troy Davis case moves this to 40.
It is as important for a legal system to ensure that no innocent people are punished as to ensure that the guilty are brought to justice. The death penalty simply does not conform to this norm of the Rule of Law. It is a cruel, irreversible punishment on behalf of a state. It is also an ineffective form of punishment.
For one it is tremendously expensive. True, the actually cost of execution is not that much as compared to paying for a convicts stay in prison for years and years. However, any state with even a smattering of respect for the Rule of Law and the principle of “innocence until proven guilty” has a lengthy and incredibly expensive appeals process that dwarfs the expense of keeping a convict in prison.
It is also an ineffective form of deterrent. True, it is better in this regard than the alternative offered by states such as Ireland and the United Kingdom where the death penalty has been replaced by ever dwindling prison sentences where a killer being released in under a decade is a fairly common event.
In Canada, however, the death penalty has been replaced by prison sentencing where “life means life”. Capital murder resulting in a mandatory 25 years in prison. Here, murder rates have seen a steady decline since the abolition of the death penalty in 1976. The rate of conviction for murder has also been doubled to 20% as juries are much more comfortable casting judgement when their decision will not result in the killing of the convicted.
The death penalty is a barbaric throwback to a less civilised, more violent world. It is time to move on and the European Union should take the lead in promoting the norm already established internally that the death penalty is just plain wrong.
First published in:
Issue 1 68th International Conference Paper of the European Youth Parliament in Zagreb
Other version published in Trinity News, 4 October 2011
