A broke clock is right twice a day, and every once in a while our resident righty FED UP gets it right(pun intended), as in this comment regarding the pending execution of Troy Anthony Davis, even though the case against him as fallen apart.
FED UP said;
You DO NOT know that he did not commit that crime and I do not know that he did!
This my friends is REASONABLE DOUBT for Dummies. This is why Troy Davis should not be executed. This is why Troy Davis should be granted a new trial. This is why I am against the death penalty.
Troy Davis and the politics of death.
Troy Davis has three major strikes against him. First, he is an African-American man. Second, he was charged with killing a white police officer. And third, he is in Georgia.None dare call it racism, but the fact remains there are more blacks than whites on death row, because they're well....black.
More than a century ago, the legendary muckraking journalist Ida B. Wells risked her life when she began reporting on the epidemic of lynchings in the Deep South. She published “Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases” in 1892 and followed up with “The Red Record” in 1895, detailing hundreds of lynchings. She wrote: “In Brooks County, Ga., Dec. 23, while this Christian country was preparing for Christmas celebration, seven Negroes were lynched in twenty-four hours because they refused, or were unable to tell the whereabouts of a colored man named Pike, who killed a white man ... Georgia heads the list of lynching states.”
Barring some miraculous intervention by Gov. Rick Perry, Duane Buck will become the 11th person to be executed this year in Texas’ death chamber and the execution will be wrong—not because of some anti-death penalty view I may have but because his death sentence was definitively the result of race.
Buck, an African-American, was convicted in 1997 for the 1995 double murder of his girlfriend and her companion. During Buck’s 1997 trial, his defense attorney called a psychologist named Walter Quijano who testified during the punishment phase of the trial and who, upon cross examination by prosecutors with the Harris County District Attorney’s Office, stated he believed that because Buck was black, he posed a greater risk of “future dangerousness” in the prison setting. Future dangerousness is a critical factor a capital jury must consider in deciding whether the death penalty is appropriate in a given case.
In 2000 U.S. Senator John Cronyn, then Texas’ attorney general, said that Buck’s case was one of six his office had identified in which Quijano had introduced race into jury deliberations. Then Attorney General Cronyn said that all of the condemned inmates were entitled to a new punishment hearing. Five of those inmates was given new punishment hearings by various federal courts which resulted in each being re-sentenced to death. One of the five has been executed.
Neither state nor federal courts ever ordered a new punishment hearing in Buck’s case. Why Buck’s trial attorney would call a psychologist who had a history of injecting race in the trial process is not readily available in the public record. What is known is that state and federal courts over the last few weeks have rebuffed the determined efforts by Buck’s current attorneys, David Dow and Katherine Black, to secure a new punishment hearing. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals yesterday denied Buck’s last legal opportunity to get a new punishment hearing.
Is Duane Buck guilty of the crimes he was convicted of? Yes. Should he be executed because he's black? No. And FED Up, before you tune up your spin machine, just because I oppose the death penalty doesn't mean I want rapist and murderers to go free, or live among civil society. It means I want them to spend the rest of their natural lives in behind bars. I oppose the death penalty because I'm pro life. For real.
Under Politics 101, a conservative governor, especially in Texas, would not intercede in a case that has been rejected by the courts and the pardon board. But these are not normal political circumstances. Gov. Perry is running for the presidency of the United States and has already faced serious media questions about his refusal to stop the 2004 execution of Cameron Todd Willingham, despite compelling evidence indicating the condemned inmate was innocent. The Buck case offers the governor an opportunity to redeem himself, especially among African-Americans who believe the death penalty in Texas unfairly targets blacks. A thirty-day reprieve would not cost the governor a single point among his conservative political base because chances are the courts would not order a new punishment hearing during the reprieve period and the pardon board most certainly would not. Thus, the only thing a reprieve would probably accomplish is a few more months of life for Duane Buck—an insignificant price considering the good will the governor would benefit from granting the reprieve.
As I said in my opening, barring some miraculous intervention by Gov. Perry, Buck will be executed tonight.
Thou Shalt not Kill. That means everybody.
The primary reason God hates murder is that out of all creation, only human are made in the image of God (Genesis 1:26-27; 9:4-6). Even before the codification of the Ten Commandments at Mount Sinai the murder of other human beings was wrong (Genesis 4:8-12; 4:23-24; 9:4-6; Exodus 1:16-17). While on earth, Jesus spoke out against murder (Matthew 5:21-26; Mark 10:17-19). We also see in the writings of Paul (Romans 1:18, 29-32; 13:8-10; Galatians 5:19-21), James (James 2:8-11; 4:1-3), Peter (1 Peter 4:15-16) and John (Revelation 9:20-21; 21:7-8; 22:14-15) that murder is wrong.
WWJD?
