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Wednesday 21 September 2011

Troy Davis And The Roar Of Death Penalty

Troy Davis And The Roar Of Death Penalty
These days, the death penalty is more popular than the president.
At a Republican debate, saying that Rick Perry has executed over 200 people during his time as governor of Texas caused the public to explode, quite frankly, frightening the applause.
As Elizabeth Flock BlogPost points out, it appears that the death penalty is something that we as a friendly country. And this is new - 44 years ago, only 40 percent of people support the death penalty for someone convicted of murder - smaller than the percentage of those who opposed it.
But now, according to opinion polls, support for the death penalty, a person convicted for the murder of as many as 64 percent, while only 20 percent of people oppose.
Run the culprit? Sounds like a plan.
But the problem is that nothing is ever that simple. We have the idea that each implement a feature of Hitler. This is why we want to execute.
But the perfect Hitler are quite low.
And so every few months or so we are faced with a modified version of a classic problem. This month, it is embodied by a man named Troy Davis, convicted of shooting police in Georgia.
"I would rather see ten guilty go free than one innocent man die," some say.
"I would prefer to carry eleven people than just one," say others.
Except that they are executed are more theoretical, black and white. They are actually shades of gray man, pleaded guilty souls like Lawrence Brewer, and men like Troy Davis, who has attracted support from high-level personalities of Desmond Tutu, Jimmy Carter, who says he has not receive a fair trial that the testimony of eye witnesses used to convict him was called into question.
If you want to roar. But, says the death penalty means reconciled to the idea that every so often someone comes along and you're screaming in the State executing an innocent man, or that you have someone in the executing State, which has not received a fair trial.
There are positions on both sides of the issue. There are people whose crimes are so heinous, that even if the usual kind tend to feel that death is the only way. And on the other hand there are people whose studies were so bad that they put to death seems less appropriate than offering abject apologies.
These days, most everyone in the execution of those guilty.
But where do we find these people very guilty, and the perfect process, resulting in the conviction perfect? For forty years we have seen a flowering of science and excellence in the courtroom. But the process is more accurate now?
And 'robust, easy to contrast the theory. But then the facts are slippery and non-academic juries.
Guilty? Innocent? Can we say of our seats? Beyond a reasonable doubt?
There is a growing pile of information suggesting that if a person is convicted depends as much on what the judge ate that morning, the non-verbal signals oblivious to the officer shows line-up, or some links Equally obscure factors to the facts of the case. Sometimes we agree that this is justice. Other times, the glove does not fit, and we go out in a fog.
There is no revelation. The legal system has been designed with the hope that people are flawed and even better, and the only way around it was to build a frame with the closest margin of error, you can give to the test chance to contest the issue when they seem unfair. And we are not so barbarous that we were. In the early days, not DNA, and the men were killed for being witches. Now we know better. And we are constantly learning.
Gallup statistics show that the majority of Americans in peace the current margin of error.
Maybe they are. But then there is Troy Davis. Nine hundred thousand signatures on online petitions. Publishers outraged. Twitter fire.
Tonight there is a man trapped in the margins. Maybe he is guilty. Maybe he is innocent. But amid all the tweets and the protests and petitions, the outrage and outpouring of the questions I hear this strange noise.
Most Americans support the death penalty. In theory.

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