I don’t know why I was holding out for some last-minute miracle, but I was…

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has previously said: “People who are well represented at trial do not get the death penalty.” Well there you have it. If you don’t want to be sentenced to death, stop being poor and black.

Although we may never know with certainty whether Davis was responsible for the 1989 murder for which he was executed, there are many people who are responsible, for ending Davis’ life at 11:08pm on September 21, 2011. This list starts with every prosecutor who was more concerned with getting a “win” in court than serving justice, depending on whether you believe the coercion angle it may also include the police, and every judge or magistrate presiding over the case/appeals, as well as the parole board, which consists of:

Gale Buckner, a former Georgia Bureau of Investigation agent . . . . Robert Keller, the ex-chair of a Georgia prosecutors group . . . James Donald, the former head of the Georgia Department of Corrections, Albert Murray, who led the state’s juvenile justice program, and Terry Barnard, a former Republican state lawmaker…

As well as the nominally private firms to whom the State of Georgia outsourced the execution, the executioner (or whatever they call that macabre profession these days) in their employ, the Supreme Court of the United States, and last but certainly not least, my man the President, Barack Obama who could have prevented it, but didn’t think it would be “appropriate”.

Jay Carney, White House press secretary, issued a statement at about 10 minutes before the scheduled execution, saying “it is not appropriate for the President of the United States to weigh in on specific cases like this one, which is a state prosecution.”

Rationalization, the hallmark of a sociopath. In other words, “I don’t have to make the difficult or unpopular decision to do what’s right, because of some arbitrary rule.” In other words, “I am just doing my job.” But I guess this is not particularly alarming, as Barry has the distinction of “most murders among all Nobel Peace Prize recipients”.

POTUS was just doing his job. SCOTUS were just doing their job. The appeals courts, the parole board, the prosecutors — just doing their jobs. Whoever pressed the button or pulled the trigger or depressed the plunger or however it is that they deliver the lethal chemical injection: just doing his job.

These men were also “just doing their jobs”.

 

Some tangentially related thoughts:

The death penalty is a form of “justice” that has been all-but-abandoned by every other first- and second-world country. Yet this barbaric practice is one that the United States shares with such esteemed nations as North Korea, China, Somalia, and Iran. Look on the map. Practically every country you would want to live in does not use capital punishment for any crime.  Then look at the countries colored red…

Albert Camus: “But what then is capital punishment but the most premeditated of murders, to which no criminal’s deed, however calculated it may be, can be compared? For there to be equivalence, the death penalty would have to punish a criminal who had warned his victim of the date at which he would inflict a horrible death on him and who, from that moment onward, had confined him at his mercy for months. Such a monster is not encountered in private life.”