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Saturday, September 24, 2011

Re: Troy Davis

A reader named Bill, having read the post on The Execution of Troy Davis, refers me to a column by Ann Coulter who lays out the facts of the case in her characteristically (and regrettably) acerbic style. It's not hard to see why none of Mr. Davis' appeals went anywhere. He certainly didn't have much going for his claim that he was innocent. Here's her lede:
For decades, liberals tried persuading Americans to abolish the death penalty, using their usual argument: hysterical sobbing.

Only when the media began lying about innocent people being executed did support for the death penalty begin to waver, falling from 80 percent to about 60 percent in a little more than a decade. (Silver lining: That's still more Americans than believe in man-made global warming.)

Fifty-nine percent of Americans now believe that an innocent man has been executed in the last five years. There is more credible evidence that space aliens have walked among us than that an innocent person has been executed in this country in the past 60 years, much less the past five years.

But unless members of the public are going to personally review trial transcripts in every death penalty case, they have no way of knowing the truth. The media certainly won't tell them.

It's nearly impossible to receive a death sentence these days -- unless you do something completely crazy like shoot a cop in full view of dozens of witnesses in a Burger King parking lot, only a few hours after shooting at a passing car while exiting a party.

That's what Troy Davis did in August 1989. Davis is the media's current baby seal of death row.
If you're interested in the official account of what transpired that night twenty two years ago (why does justice take so long?), and why none of the dozen or so courts which heard his appeals were moved to change the original verdict, read the rest of Coulter's column at the link.

Perhaps the most interesting fact that Coulter adduces was that all of the state's thirty four witnesses, and seven of the twelve jurors, were black. So much for the hoary old chestnut that since Davis was black and the twenty nine year-old policeman he murdered was white there must be white racism afoot in the court's verdict and sentencing.