In this post I'll be linking to news analysis of the execution. The next posts will focus on commentary and editorials.
Today's New York Times reports, "In Death-Penalty Debate, Execution Offers Little Closure." It's by John Schwartz.
The nature of those doubts and the arguments for Mr. Davis’s innocence could be, and will be, debated endlessly. And while no judge who reviewed the minimal physical evidence and the testimony and witness recantations ever overturned Mr. Davis’s conviction — one judge dismissed the defense arguments as “smoke and mirrors” — activists portrayed the case as a symbol of the fallibility of eyewitness identification, of the intransigence of the justice system and of its unwillingness to correct errors — and even as a failure of the nation itself.
“The execution of an innocent man crystallizes in the most sickening way the vast systemic injustices that plague our death penalty system,” Denny LeBoeuf, director of the Capital Punishment Project at the American Civil Liberties Union, said in a statement.
Amnesty International, which mobilized much of the opposition to the Davis execution, pledged to redouble its efforts against the death penalty in the United States, and the executive committee of the N.A.A.C.P. voted this week to raise the death penalty to the forefront of its list of priorities in future advocacy.
Stephen Dear, executive director of People of Faith Against the Death Penalty, an interfaith advocacy group based in Carrboro, N.C., said his group also planned to use the momentum generated by religious leaders who opposed the Davis execution to galvanize broader opposition. “This has been a teachable moment for America’s religious leadership: that the death penalty is so awash with bias and errors that there’s no morally acceptable alternative but repealing it,” Mr. Dear said.
But can the debate over the death penalty even be called a national conversation, or is it simply two factions shouting past each other? Does it change hearts and minds, or harden advocates in their positions? Brawls, after all, do not persuade.
This execution underscores the uncomfortable relationship Americans have with the death penalty. A Gallup poll last October showed that 64 percent of those surveyed supported it for those convicted of murder, a level that had been relatively consistent for the previous seven years. Support had been higher — 80 percent in 1994 — but it has slipped, in part because of the hundreds of convictions overturned because of DNA evidence.
Gallup has asked whether people favor life imprisonment without parole as an alternative to the death penalty, and those surveyed are almost evenly split, with 49 percent supporting capital punishment and 46 percent preferring life imprisonment.
AP's Greg Bluestein files, "Death penalty opponents regroup after Davis' death." It's via the San Francisco Chronicle.
Capital punishment critics are regrouping after the execution of Georgia inmate Troy Davis, trying to figure out the best way to harness the anti-death penalty sentiment the case created. Among the goals: get new like-minded people registered to vote.
"Tell them to get engaged in the political process because that's where change is going to come," said Helen Butler, executive director of the Atlanta-based Coalition For The Peoples' Agenda.
Butler was among a group of about two dozen death penalty opponents who met Thursday night in Atlanta to discuss how they could abolish capital punishment in Georgia. They are a small piece of the hundreds of thousands of people the Davis case attracted, from well-known supporters like the pope and former president Jimmy Carter to those much-less politically active.
Laura Moye of Amnesty International said she expects the Davis execution to be used to rally repeal movements across the country. She plans to meet with activists in Georgia over the next few days to plot out an attempt to banish capital punishment there.
"I'm meeting people who didn't really ever speak about the death penalty and now they are. They're hungry about the information and now they know," she said.
And:
Already, there are calls for lasting changes to the capital punishment system from Davis' advocates. Former President Carter said he hopes "this tragedy will spur us as a nation toward the total rejection of capital punishment." Filmmaker Michael Moore posted a statement on his website calling for a boycott of Georgia.
The Rev. Al Sharpton, who visited Davis on death row, said he will push for a national ban on capital punishment in cases that rely on eyewitness testimony. Maryland passed such a law in 2009.
"We must not only mourn what happened to Troy Davis but take strong measures so that it does not happen again," Sharpton said.
The Davis execution comes at a time when death penalty decisions are under increased scrutiny. The number of executions has dropped by half over the last decade, from 98 in 1999 to 46 in 2010. Illinois abolished capital punishment in March and several other states, including California and Connecticut, are expected to consider similar proposals next year.
Today's Atlanta Journal-Constitution carries, "Troy Davis lost his life, will he win the PR battle," by Steve Visser.
The Rev. Raphael Warnock told the college students in a church outside the state prison near Jackson Wednesday night that they had joined the fight for racial justice in America with the stand against the execution of Troy Anthony Davis.
The battle was bigger, he said, than saving Davis' life. He said he talked to the condemned man this week and he asked him what he should tell the people.
"He said, "Tell them I am already victorious," said Warnock, the senior pastor at Atlanta's Ebenezer Baptist Church.
Stan Gunter had to agree. The executive director of the Georgia Prosecuting Attorneys Council said that Davis and the mega public-relations machine behind him had managed to distort the facts of the murder case down to sound bite of "seven witnesses recanted or they backed off their testimony" which had allowed the well-funded NAACP and Amnesty International to portray Davis as an innocent man.
Court after court has upheld the legitimacy of the Davis conviction for the murder of Savannah Police Officer Mark Allen MacPhail and dismissed his claims of new evidence exonerating him. But despite the fact that the execution appears solidly grounded in law, by Wednesday night Davis' supporters appeared to have grown to include even supporters of the death penalty who doubted its fairness in this case in part because of the forces aligned against it.
"Troy Davis execution: Did the death penalty deliver justice?," by Patrik Jonsson at the Christian Science Monitor.
For thousands around the world, Mr. Davis's death marked a grave injustice, given vexing questions and new doubts about his guilt.
But while many saw the execution as symbolic of a fallible justice system, and an immoral punishment, others found their faith in the system reaffirmed by an abundance of court and executive reviews that, time after time, let the verdict against Davis stand.
The Davis case is but one in a long series of death penalty cases that push individual states to debate the morality, legality, and efficacy of the death penalty.
And:
One problem, legal analysts say, is courts are vested in jury verdicts, which can be fallible. Doubts alone are rarely enough to overturn a finding of guilt, but in cases like Davis's, where there is impassioned belief of innocence, it "raises doubts about whether the legal system can tolerate this potential error in allowing a person to be executed," says James Acker, a criminologist at State University New York in Albany.
But the Davis case also had powerful emotional impact that made him a cause célèbre among human rights activists working to end the US death penalty. A black man being executed for the murder of a white man in the Deep South raised longstanding and deep-seated concerns about racial inequities in the justice system.
Davis's execution stood in sharp contrast to the execution the same day in Texas of Mr. Brewer, a white man convicted and sentenced to death for a heinous hate crime against a black man.
"Can we have the death penalty and actually avoid the possibility of killing innocent people?" writes Rashad Robinson, executive director of the activist group Color of Change. "In a criminal justice system that routinely misidentifies black suspects and disproportionately punishes black people, black folks are more likely to be wrongfully executed."
Earlier coverage of Troy Davis' case and execution begins at the link.
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