Troy Davis was executed at 11:07 p.m. Wednesday for allegedly shooting an off-duty Georgia police officer in 1989. His conviction was made in the absence of physical evidence. After Davis’ conviction, many witnesses recanted their testimony.
In light of this, his family and friends protested his pending execution, joined by prominent political and social figures for and against the death penalty and by hundreds of thousands of online activists.
Matthew Albert, a junior anthropology major at EMU, opposed Davis’ execution for the same reason many others did.
“This is the most extreme example I’ve seen yet of the mishandling of judicial matters in this country,” he said. “Despite widespread protest, even by well-known politicians, the state of Georgia essentially ignored that. In light of the witnesses who recanted, should he have been convicted in the first place?”
Nathan Mentley, a junior at EMU majoring in computer science, said he felt similarly about the case.
“Not only do I feel that taking someone’s life is an inappropriate action, I feel like the death penalty was only being used as revenge in this case,” he said. “There is a bigger injustice going on. It’s clear that the system failed. There is no way to deny that there was a reasonable doubt in the Davis case.
“Almost one million people signed the petition to grant him clemency. If you have that
many people, including highly educated and influential people like the Pope or Jimmy Carter, I think that justifies reasonable doubt. If we’re going ahead with executions in the presence of reasonable doubt, I think our legal system has failed. This case is about legal reform we need in this system.
“In 2009, he had a trial to prove his innocence. I’m not aware of any other trial in the United States in which some one had to prove their innocence. The judge said the case against Davis wasn’t ‘ironclad,’ but he didn’t prove he was innocent. That was the only trial he had after witnesses recanted.”
Social Media
Tracy Somervell, a junior art major at EMU, participated in the online campaign for these same reasons.
“The Constitution says that everybody is innocent until proven guilty and he wasn’t proven guilty,” Somervell said. “We’re killing innocent people. In a way it’s not even about who it was. Davis could have been anybody. It’s about a human being whose life was taken because our government was being really unfair.”
Since 1976, the U.S. has executed 1,188 people. In this period, 139 death-row inmates have been exonerated prior to their execution. An estimated 39 wrongfully accused people have been executed in spite of their innocence. Five people have been posthumously exonerated.
Davis’ case garnered enormous attention from online activists. Websites like Change.org spread his story to thousands of people, many of who signed online petitions for Davis’ pardon.
Somervell, Mentley and Albert all became involved in Davis’ case through these websites.
“I think it’s a good means to promote big causes like this,” Somervell said. “Where we wouldn’t be able to reach people individually, we can do that on the Internet. When like-minded people come together, really good things can happen.”
James Pinson, a journalism professor at EMU, expressed concern at the way these web-based media are affecting activist culture.
“People can be easily aroused by blogs or potentially by Twitter or their friends linking to things on Facebook, where they’re getting only one side of the story,” he said. “I don’t know if that’s the case here, but I see that in all sorts of things, issues that are left and right, because of religious or racial or ethnic kinship, where people feel like they’ve got to stick together and they’ve got to believe ‘this’ because a friend told them.”
Pinson argued that, while people’s opinions are often biased and their veracity subject to scrutiny, the rising trend of activism through sites like Facebook, are exacerbating those natural biases.
“People tend to choose what to pay attention to and they’re going to choose those outlets that they identify more with,” he said. “Social media kind of upped the ante because you’re getting these stories, not just from MSNBC or FOX News, but from a friend who is then implicitly endorsing it. Most people aren’t going to take the time to check these things out.”
As a long-time activist, Albert also expressed concern, but for different reasons.
“I feel like how instant everything has become has made activists complacent,” he said. “The thought seems to be that no reason to be there physically if you can be blogging. I feel like the need for people doing things in real life, as opposed to online, can’t be stressed enough.
“I think people should question the efficacy of social media in online petitions and so-called cyber activism” he continued. “I’ve been signing online petitions since I was 13, and as far as I know not one of them has had any significant impact. What I think actually makes a difference is people out there showing support.”
As shown by Somervell, Mentley and Albert, many people – though not all – who supported Davis did so partly out of a general moral or philosophical condemnation of capital punishment. Some argue more specifically that the judicial procedure and legal requirements surrounding capital punishment cases must be reformed.
Crime & Law
Gregg Barak, professor of criminology at EMU, said cases like Davis’ are in direct violation of U.S. law.
“The larger issue involved here transcends the administration of the death penalty,” Barak said. “It applies to capital and non-capital offenses alike. I am referring to the all-important issue of ‘wrongful convictions’ and to the inactions in the administration and to the inactions in the administration of the criminal law that are regularly carried out by prosecutors. These are in violation of Brady v. Maryland, 1963, and Giglio v. United States, 1972.
“Incredibly, while these two Supreme Court decisions remain the law of the land in 2011, they have never been codified into the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure. In fact, in April of this year the U.S. Department of Justice not only missed an opportunity to level the playing field in the criminal justice system concerning these and other Sixth Amendment rights of defendants, but it also strongly opposed a rule change that would have clarified prosecutors’ obligations to provide defense attorneys with information that indicated innocence or impeached the credibility of government witnesses, as in the Troy Davis case.”
Some states, including Michigan, have abolished the death penalty, while 36 states still practice it. According to Amnesty international, 137 countries have abolished it, including nearly all developed nations.
Though an American citizen, Chris Gardiner, EMU department head of mathematics, originally emigrated from Australia, where capital punishment has been abolished.
“We had the death penalty when I was a kid,” Gardiner said. “Since then, it’s been abolished. To my knowledge, almost the entire developed word has abolished it. Yet, not only does this country still have one, there is a sizable portion of the population who are definitely in favor of it. So cases like Davis that come up are very interesting.
“It’s certainly not the case that the guy was proven to be innocent,” he continued, “but I think it’s very clear that there was at least a reasonable doubt. My feeling is that even if I were not morally opposed to the death penalty, you’d at least have to go beyond a reasonable doubt. In this case, it seems to be without question that there is a doubt as to whether he actually committed the crime. I don’t know how you could possibly execute him.”
According to the Gallup poll, as of 2010, 64 percent of Americans were in favor of capital punishment in cases of murder. In that climate, it might be realistically impossible for the U.S. to abolish the death penalty any time soon, if ever.
Barak argues that even if capital punishment can’t be abolished, the U.S. government could at least take measures to reduce the chances of executing a wrongfully accused individual.
“If the U.S. would only follow its own Constitutional law on the Sixth amendment, this would reduce the likelihood of wrongful convictions in general,” he said. “However, with respect to death penalty capital cases and wrongful convictions in particular, some legal commentators have suggested raising the bar to include some minimal form of physical evidence be present before taking a life. This certainly would reduce the risk of wrongful convictions based exclusively on eyewitness testimony, which are notoriously unreliable, as in the Troy Davis case.
“Such reforms in the death penalty law, however, are unlikely to pass judicially or legislatively in a country where our civil and criminal rights have been eroding over the past couple of decades.”
