Thursday, September 22, 2011

The Davis Case

I don't know if Troy Davis was innocent or not. He asserted he was until the moment he was executed, last night in Georgia.

What I do know is that if we discover that someone else was responsible for the 1989 murder of Mark MacPhail, we'll have no way to correct things.

6 comments:

Brad Carlson said...

....if we discover that someone else was responsible for the 1989 murder of Mark MacPhail, we'll have no way to correct things.

This has the makings of a scene right out of "Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad."


Frank: Hey! The missing evidence in the Kelner case! My God, he really was innocent!
Ed: He went to the chair two years ago, Frank.
Frank: Well, uh...

Mr. D said...

I remember that scene, Brad. Much funnier than what's going on at this moment, though.

Bike Bubba said...

Really, from the moment we put anyone in jail, we have no way to correct the loss of their liberty, either.

Count me in with those who would agree that the death penalty should only be administered in pretty clear cases with aggravating circumstances, though.

Mr. D said...

Count me in with those who would agree that the death penalty should only be administered in pretty clear cases with aggravating circumstances, though.

If you're going to support the death penalty, that's the only way to do it, BB.

I've been struggling with this issue for a long time now and I find myself against the death penalty. The problem for me is that there are some fairly straightforward arguments against the death penalty that you can make in good faith, but some death penalty opponents seem incapable of making good faith arguments. That tends to cloud things, at least for me.

At some point I'll have to write a longer post about it.

Brad Carlson said...

Yeah, I suppose I shouldn't be so jocular. But in a way, ridiculing the handling of this whole thing isn't totally out of bounds. From what I understand, there wasn't even any DNA evidence incriminating Davis, which would seem to undermine the status of "beyond a reasonable doubt."

Bike Bubba said...

Did anyone read Ann Coulter's column? Apparently, the prosecution didn't have just 9 witnesses, but rather 34, 27 of whom are standing by their story, and also have some pretty good ballistic evidence.

And what DNA evidence are you going to get with a handgun murder, really? Let's be serious here.

In short, if Coulter can be trusted, Davis is one guy who deserved to die.