This article is about the death penalty, abolish the death penalty and the consequences if it is abolished. What has just about everyone questioning our criminal justice system? Troy Davis. For those of you who have little or no knowledge about the this case, Troy Davis is a Georgia man who was executed September 21, 2011 for the 1989 killing of an office duty police offer, Mark MacPhail. "Davis was identified as the shooter by witnesses who later claimed to have been coerced by investigators. He was prosecuted and convicted based on the same dubious eyewitness testimony, rather than forensic evidence."
"Since the verdict, 7 of 9 witnesses in the case changed or retracted their accounts, and new witnesses have pointed to the possibility that another man at the scene fired the weapon." More than half of the witnesses have changed their story, since his execution was based on the witnesses and not forensic science, he should have been a free man. The murder weapon was never found, but the defense lawyers cast doubt on a ballistics test that linked shell casings at the scene to casings found at another shooting, for which Davis was convicted.
The argument about capital punishment being immoral has been a losing one in U.S politics for awhile. I feel that capital punishment will be good to abolish, so we will not execute the innocent. "If capital punishment disappears in the United States, it won't be because voters and politicians no longer want to execute the guilty. It will be because they're afraid of executing the innocent." Davis case has millions wondering about our system, he received a level of legal assistance, media attention and activist support.
The consequences of not having the death penalty "can be brutal, overcrowded, rife with rape and other forms of violence- a life long prison sentence can prove to be more cruel and unusual then a speedy execution." People may not think of this as justice, I will not think of this as justice if something was to happen to my family, but before we execute someone we need to be positive that the inmate is the one that did the crime based on forensic evidence.
The Troy Davis case has shed some light on issues we the americans prefer to ignore; the overzealousness of cops and prosecutors, the limits of the appeals process and the ugly conditions, the more than 2 million Americans currently behind bars face. We want a judicial system that we can trust with matters of life and death, a system that can protect us from wrongful execution.
Minnpost
"Since the verdict, 7 of 9 witnesses in the case changed or retracted their accounts, and new witnesses have pointed to the possibility that another man at the scene fired the weapon." More than half of the witnesses have changed their story, since his execution was based on the witnesses and not forensic science, he should have been a free man. The murder weapon was never found, but the defense lawyers cast doubt on a ballistics test that linked shell casings at the scene to casings found at another shooting, for which Davis was convicted.
The argument about capital punishment being immoral has been a losing one in U.S politics for awhile. I feel that capital punishment will be good to abolish, so we will not execute the innocent. "If capital punishment disappears in the United States, it won't be because voters and politicians no longer want to execute the guilty. It will be because they're afraid of executing the innocent." Davis case has millions wondering about our system, he received a level of legal assistance, media attention and activist support.
The consequences of not having the death penalty "can be brutal, overcrowded, rife with rape and other forms of violence- a life long prison sentence can prove to be more cruel and unusual then a speedy execution." People may not think of this as justice, I will not think of this as justice if something was to happen to my family, but before we execute someone we need to be positive that the inmate is the one that did the crime based on forensic evidence.
The Troy Davis case has shed some light on issues we the americans prefer to ignore; the overzealousness of cops and prosecutors, the limits of the appeals process and the ugly conditions, the more than 2 million Americans currently behind bars face. We want a judicial system that we can trust with matters of life and death, a system that can protect us from wrongful execution.
Minnpost
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