Derry, Northern Ireland

Derry, Northern Ireland
A book I'm working on is set in this town.

Wednesday, September 21, 2011

Death Penalty

I'm opposed to it. Period. End of discussion. And I say this as someone who's had a family member murdered and seen the son-of-a-bitch who killed him walk. I see it as state-sanctioned murder that has killed innocent people in the past and will do so again, maybe as soon as tonight.

Seems there's a black guy on Georgia's death row named Troy Davis whose execution was set for 7pm but got stayed to give the Supreme Court time to consider his appeal. They'd stayed an execution in Texas because a black man was sentenced to death after a so-called psychiatrist testified during the penalty phase that black men were more prone to commit violence than white ones, and that guy's guilty of the murders he committed; he actually admitted he shot his ex-girlfriend and her male companion and had zero regrets.

But Troy Davis has consistently maintained his innocence, was convicted solely on eye-witness testimony (testimony that has since been recanted by the witnesses, who claim the cops coerced and tricked them) and apparently someone else admitted to the crime. However, our glorious Supremes denied his appeal (Antonin Scalia apparently gave the word), so Davis will be killed. You see, the victim was a cop and was white, and this is Georgia. And never you mind how unspeakably corrupt and racist the capital punishment system is in this whole country, let alone that diseased state, white folk have to get their revenge on someone black, whether they did it or not. Reminds me of this infamous quote by a British officer during the Zulu Wars in Africa; he had black soldiers helping fight the Zulus yet still ordered his white soldiers to fire on any and all blacks fighting, snapping, "Kill 'em all, let God sort it out."

So...Davis will, effectively, be lynched to please those of light skin. And nothing will change. America is too blood-thirsty a nation at heart to allow it.

At the same time, the man who dragged James Byrd to death behind his pickup truck (for no more reason than he was black) was killed, tonight. That was a viciously brutal crime committed by a racist redneck that so shocked even the state of Texas, for the second time in its existence it sentenced a white man to die for murdering a black man. And that was just as wrong.

The death penalty does not work as a deterrent. It does not work as a cost-saving measure. It does not work as justice. Considering how many men and women sentenced to die have been exonerated thanks to The Innocence Project, and considering how many times misconduct by the police and prosecutors has been proven in those cases, anyone who says the death penalty is useful in any way, form or fashion is nothing but a blood-thirsty zealot out to satisfy some sick perverse desire for pain and destruction. And it is scum like that who are destroying the soul of this nation.

Seriously, when it reaches the point where people cheer during a debate over usage of the death penalty and letting the sick die, and when they say "It takes real guts to execute someone innocent," and when not one politician will take issue with those explosions of pleasure at the thought of causing human suffering, you know the country is doomed to revert to barbarism. The Mongols aren't at the gate; they built the damned thing to keep their evil hidden.

God damn the GOP for setting this up. God damn them. And to hell with any political leader who will not stand up to it, I don't care which party they are part of.

UPDATE:
They did it. Motherfuckers.

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