My Response to Charles Lane’s Washington Post article on Troy Davis

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/post/troy-davis-guilty-as-charged/2011/03/04/gIQAh23BoK_blog.html?wpisrc=nl_opinions

After Troy Davis was executed, I was touched at the photos of protesters crying over his death. Yes, we should cry that the death penalty was used in this case. We should cry that our country has used capital punishment so often.

We should cry that Troy Davis is dead. We should mourn for life lost. Most importantly, we should cry for Mark MacPhail, the off-duty police officer who was murdered.

But don’t conflate tears over Troy Davis’ death with crying over a man who was innocent of the crime for which he was convicted.

Save those tears for Cameron Todd Willingham, who was convicted and executed for murdering his children by arson. Before Willingham’s execution, evidence pointed to the fire being accidental, not deliberate. We should cry that then-Texas Governor Rick Perry, when presented with a request to stay the execution in order to review new findings proving innocence, refused the stay and allowed Willingham to die. Cry that Willingham was executed as an innocent man.

In reading Lane’s article (linked above) and others written about the Troy Davis case, I believe Davis was guilty of murder. But he should not have been given the death penalty.

Lane’s article likewise agrees that the death penalty never should have been sought in the Davis case. In fact, I am eager to read Lane’s book “Stay of Execution: Saving the Death Penalty from Itself” – I am still not sure if I think that capital punishment should ever be used, but if it is, it should only be in the “worst of the worst,” as Lane argues (see link to book review here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/22/AR2010102203014.html).

Compare the murder for which Troy Davis was convicted with the horrific triple-murder Steven Hayes was convicted of – and yet both men are sentenced with the death penalty? There is no comparison.

Not that there is good murder or bad murder – every life is precious (even that of a murderer) and every murder is wrong. But when torture is involved – and death by fire is certainly torture – the crime of murder is aggravated. (I was relieved to read that the poor Petit girls died of smoke inhalation and not of the fire itself, as I had originally thought, but the terror those girls went through is unspeakable and the murderers’ evil intent was to burn the girls to death).

I would like us to get away from the idea of using the death penalty as punishment.  The death penalty should only be used to protect society, and to protect other prisoners.  This is why I don't agree with using mental illness as a defense - to me, someone who is not aware of right or wrong is more dangerous than someone who knows what they're doing is wrong.

In deciding the death penalty, judges should ask if the person will be a danger to others, his fellow inmates, the prison guards.  Someone who can kill someone by fire or any other way of torturing someone to death, is capable of the ultimate cruelty and is truly a danger to everyone.

Now, I think Davis was basically a good person who got into trouble and made mistakes, the most grievous being that of killing MacPhail, but Davis was not a monster. He was 20 at the time of the murder, and subsequently spent the latter half of his life in prison (I don’t even have time here to go into how badly our prison system needs to be reformed). I am sure he was not the same man when he was executed that he was the night of the murder – who of us remains his 20-year-old self? Impossible.

Perhaps that is why he claimed innocence – do we not often feel a separation from our younger selves? Often when I think of things I did as a teenager and young adult, I don’t recognize the person who did those things. That person is frequently a stranger to me.

Troy Davis never should have been sentenced to death. Troy Davis should still be alive. But so should Marc MacPhail.

So let’s continue to cry. Cry that we kill each other in legal punishment in order to deter more of us from killing each other. Cry that our fellow human beings murder each other in the first place. Cry and protest over every murder. Be outraged every single time someone is murdered.

Our tears should be relentless. Our tears should never stop.

Murder Trial of Steven Hayes

Monday, Oct. 4, 2010

Trial of Steven Hayes in Connecticut Home Invasion and Murder
When I first read about these indescribable (for me) murders, I cried non-stop. Everytime I had a spare moment in my thoughts, I thought about the poor girls he killed. I thought of their terror. No one should die like that. I have sleeping problems as it is, but this horrible murder upset me so much that my sleep was even further disrupted. All I could think about was those poor girls and what they must have been feeling.
I am against the death penalty, but what is justice in this instance? Cruel and unusual punishment would be to kill Steven Hayes and his accomplice in the same way they killed those girls. I don’t want anyone to suffer like that.
I am very disturbed at the mindset of these men. When I read that one of their texts said he “was chomping at the bit” to do this, I cried even more. I don’t understand that mindset. Pure evil. Even the barbaric part of my brain, although it is willing to mete out punishment, it does not relish pain for anyone.
Several years ago, I read an article about a woman who was killed by a man and his step-son in a similar manner. I cried for days about that. The barbaric part of me wanted the men to experience some of that poor woman’s pain, even if just a hand, or an entire arm. I was so angry that anyone could do anything like that to anyone else. No one should have to suffer that. It’s the worst way to die.
With these two men, the barbaric part of me feels the same. But mostly I don’t think about the men. I think about those two daughters. I am so sad for them. I wish somehow they could have felt no pain, that somehow they could have died before any pain hit them – I wish this wish could come true.
But the bottom line is I don’t want anyone to suffer pain. Although I do have a barbaric part of me, it is very small. It is getting smaller each year. But it’s still there, unfortunately. Yet the part of me that doesn’t want anyone to suffer pain is the largest part of me. I don’t even like watching movies where the villain suffers a horrible death. I hate when the audience cheers. No one deserves a horrible death.
I don’t know what kind of justice can be done to these men. I don’t want them to do to anyone else what they did to those daughters. But I don’t want anyone to do that to them either.