We Are All Troy Davis
Troy Davis was buried on Saturday and several thousand people gathered to pay tribute and promised to continue the fight to abolish the death penalty. Mourners chanted, “ We are All Troy Davis.”
A lot has been said and written since Troy Davis was executed by the state of Georgia. Michael Moore has vowed to donate the proceeds of Georgia sales of his newest book Here Comes Trouble to the Innocence Project. You can read Moore’s Democracy Now interview here.
Even right-of- center New York Times columnist Ross Douthat wrote that the execution of Troy Davis should cause us all to reexamine the criminal justice system. Douthat wrote “If capital punishment disappears in the United States disappears in the United States, it won’t be because voters and politicians no longer want to execute the guilty. It will be because they’re afraid of executing the innocent.” Read the whole column here.
Former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens criticized the death penalty calling it pointless and needless, and while Stevens says he "can't say that the Court misapplied the law in any way." He is still troubled by Davis’ execution, "It's an example of cases in which there's some -- perhaps remote -- possibility of error, and whenever there's error in a death case, you cannot be very happy about that particular penalty." Click here to see the article.
One of the most moving pieces of commentary was from Jen Marlowe at Racewire. Marlowe writes about how the machinery of death sparked a global movement to save Troy Davis that was both deeply personal and managed to cross the race, class, political and cultural lines that normally divide people.
Read Marlowe’s article here.
