Davis backers come in all stripes

In his Oct. 21 op-ed about the Troy Davis death penalty case, Spencer Lawton, the district attorney who prosecuted the case in 1991, asserts that: “The only information the public has had in the 17 years since Troy Davis’ conviction has been generated by people ideologically opposed to the death penalty, regardless of the guilt or innocence of the accused.” That is simply not true.

And the fact that it is not true matters, just as the fact that Davis, whose execution has been stayed by the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, may be innocent matters.

Neither Libertarian presidential candidate Bob Barr nor former FBI Director William Sessions can be characterized as ideologically opposed to the death penalty. That shoe does not fit. Nor does it fit the many citizens of Georgia who simply want to hold the Board of Pardons and Paroles to its word: “[We] will not allow an execution to proceed … unless and until its members are convinced that there is no doubt as to the guilt of the accused.”

Lawton is resorting to ad hominem attack on the moral integrity of the concerned members of the public who have stepped forward to challenge the legitimacy of using the power of the state to execute Davis.

Certainly, many are categorically opposed to the death penalty. But that does not mean they are not especially concerned and aggrieved when that power is wielded without due regard for the weakness of the case against the accused.

Nor does that approach recognize that many, myself included, who oppose the death penalty do so not on the grounds that it is morally untenable in all cases, but rather out of the well-founded concern that it is too awesome a power to be wielded by human hands. We know too well the truth of the oft-recalled adage: “To err is human.”

Many of us can imagine a crime that would, in our judgment, justify the use of the death penalty. No one, however, or at least no one guided by any moral precepts, can justify the use of the death penalty when there is significant question as to guilt.

Is there significant question, or has all the uproar been the machinations of a splinter group with an independent agenda? Doesn’t it matter that men like Barr and Sessions share the concerns of the good souls who spend night after night at vigils? Doesn’t it matter that three justices of the Georgia Supreme Court think the offers of proof made by Davis’ attorneys create sufficient doubt as to the fairness and accuracy of his conviction that he should be granted a new trial? Doesn’t common sense tell us that when the case depends on eyewitness testimony, and seven out of nine witnesses have recanted —- and of the remaining two, one may well be the killer and the other changed his contemporaneous statement that he could not identify the killer when he testified two years later that he saw Davis do it —- this evidence will not, in a civilized society, support an execution?

Do I know to a certainty whether Davis is guilty? Of course I don’t. I know very little about that night, essentially only that someone shot and killed Officer Mark MacPhail, a heinous act that caused a tragic death. I know Davis was tried and convicted, and sentenced to death. I know that convictions deserve deference, but I also know that all too many verdicts do not speak the truth.

What do I think? I think this case tests our commitment to justice, and right now we are failing the test. Doubt about Davis’ guilt abounds, and it abounds for many sound reasons. To let this execution proceed, to take Davis’s life in the name of the good people of Georgia, breaches a sacred trust. We all deserve better.

> Anne Emanuel is a professor of law at Georgia State University and chaired the American Bar Association’s Georgia Death Penalty Assessment Team from 2004-06.