Daily chart: capital punishment. Last year only four countries carried out public executions: Saudi Arabia, Iran, North Korea and Somalia. But there are still plenty of countries that impose the death penalty behind closed doors.
Last week… we broke through the silence about the horror the death penalty represents. Your work brought about conversations in millions of American households, helping to change hearts and minds about capital punishment.
Now, we must achieve the mission Troy gave each of us.
As Troy Davis — a fellow NAACP activist — said so many times, “This movement began before I was born … it must continue and grow stronger … until we abolish the death penalty once and for all.”
Please take a moment to sign the NAACP pledge to fight for the end of the death penalty in the United States.
September 21, 2011 was a searing moment for all of us. Every failsafe failed.
Current Chatham County District Attorney Larry Chisolm acknowledged that if it were up to him today, he would not try this as a death penalty case. Yet, when he could have acted to stop the execution, he refused to do so.
The Georgia State Board of Pardons and Paroles, designed specifically to ensure that executions never happen amidst so much doubt, allowed it to happen anyway.
Justices on the Georgia State Supreme Court and the United States Supreme Court — men and women who know that our justice system is degraded when we allow someone to be executed even when the former warden of the very prison the inmate is in says there is too much doubt to proceed — cleared the way for the execution to be carried out anyway.
These failures are the result of a system that gives the power of life and death, God-like powers, to humans who are as prone to error and susceptible to bias as any of us.
Human nature won’t change, so the system must. This must never happen again.
I promised Troy that no matter what happened we would keep fighting until the death penalty is abolished. That is the only way we can possibly guarantee our government will never make such a tragic and irrevocable mistake again.
…..In the past two years, the NAACP and our allies have abolished the death penalty in three states. When we succeed in abolishing it in ten more, we will be in a position to ask the Supreme Court to abolish it entirely. In the meantime, there are effective strategies we can use, in even the most conservative states, to diminish its use greatly.
But we cannot do any of this without your help.
Please take the pledge today, and ask each of your friends to do the same. Help us all carry out Troy Davis’ mission.
Your work has sparked a movement. Let’s keep it going until the job is done. Together, we can ensure that Troy’s death was not in vain and this will never happen again.
In solidarity.
Ben
Benjamin Todd Jealous
President and CEO
NAACP
The tragic debacle that has been the Troy Davis execution has another dimension to it beyond racism, classism, and the miscarriage of justice in a flawed system. That dimension is capitalism: specifically, the corporatization of the prison-industrial complex. If you’ve noticed some angry tweets directed at @correcthealth in the past day, that’s because “CorrectHealth” is the Orwellian-named “medical company” that, according to the ACLU, “oversees all executions in Georgia” including last night’s. It is a for-profit company that stands to make a pile money off of every execution.
wow, just wow.
Holy fuck.
Eugene Robinson writes:
There was a chilling moment in a recent GOP candidates’ debate when Texas Gov. Rick Perry was asked about having authorized 234 executions, more than any other governor in modern U.S. history. The crowd, drawn largely from Tea Party ranks, cheered this record as if it were a great accomplishment. “I’ve never struggled with that at all,” Perry said, referring to execution as “the ultimate justice.” But he should struggle with it. We all should.
Rhonda Cook of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution talks about her role as a witness to the Troy Davis execution:
I’ve done this a dozen times before. On Wednesday, I was a media witness to Troy Anthony Davis’ execution.
If one of our fellow citizens can be executed with so much doubt surrounding his guilt, then the death penalty system in our country is unjust and outdated.
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Former U.S. President and Nobel Peace Prize winner Jimmy Carter, quoted in Ga. execution leaves debate over guilt unresolved | ajc.com Carter says he hopes the Troy Davis case will lead the nation to reject capital punishment. (via tartantambourine) Along with President Carter, I hope that the lynching of Troy Davis will be the turning point and that the USA will join the rest of the civilized world and abolish the death penalty. (via timetruthhumor) |
It is always amazing that the same people who complain that government is incompetent at everything else is infallible in the one area where mistakes result in the most egregious, irrevocable injury the state can possibly inflict.
drugs-alcohol-violence-insanity:
The fact that they keep people on death row on suicide watch is fucking weird and emphasises the barbarism of the death penalty.
It’s not enough to want the person dead, they want to be the ones killing them.
