Georgia executes Troy Davis after U.S. Supreme Court refuses to halt his killing

Troy Davis, the Geor­gia man con­vict­ed of mur­der on ques­tion­able evi­dence two decades ago, has just been exe­cut­ed by state prison offi­cials, we’re hearing.

Attor­neys for Davis, who abo­li­tion­ists have been fierce­ly ral­ly­ing to save, had asked the U.S. Supreme Court to inter­vene and grant an eleventh-hour stay only hours ago. Sad­ly, the court refused, giv­ing Geor­gia the go-ahead to put Davis to death.

Davis, who has always main­tained his inno­cence, was orig­i­nal­ly sched­uled to be killed sev­er­al years ago, but his attor­neys suc­cess­ful­ly forced the state to put off its immoral plans to kill him by chal­leng­ing his death sen­tence in court.

Out­ra­geous­ly, none of the courts or parole author­i­ties who heard the appeals filed by Davis’ lawyers were will­ing to inter­vene to save his life. Con­se­quent­ly, the state has just put a man to death sim­ply because a jury decid­ed some years ago that he com­mit­ted a crime and should lose his life as a pun­ish­ment — and nobody with the legal author­i­ty to over­turn that ver­dict has had the courage or will­ing­ness to do so.

Davis’ killing is most def­i­nite­ly a trav­es­ty. But the big­ger trav­es­ty, in our eyes, is the fail­ure of our jus­tice sys­tem to stop it. There is no ques­tion that humans make mis­takes — this is an indis­putable truth that we know about our­selves. We are capa­ble of mak­ing mis­takes as indi­vid­u­als and also as groups. Any wit­ness, jury, or judge can make a mis­take because all wit­ness­es, juries, and judges are human.

The evi­dence that the pros­e­cu­tion orig­i­nal­ly pre­sent­ed in Davis’ case has been clear­ly shown to have been flawed. Sev­en of the nine wit­ness­es called by the pros­e­cu­tion recant­ed part or all of their tes­ti­mo­ny, we under­stand. And yet, Davis’ con­vic­tion was not over­turned. It could have been, and it should have been.

But it wasn’t.

The cause of jus­tice is not served by Amer­i­ca’s use of the anti­quat­ed, immoral “eye for an eye” prin­ci­ple from the Code of Ham­mura­bi. It is time for us as a peo­ple to stop per­mit­ting our gov­ern­ment to act like an oppres­sive regime and stop play­ing God. The death penal­ty is immoral and barbaric.

It can and it must be outlawed.

The Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca can­not be a bea­con for human rights and civ­il rights as long as it is putting peo­ple to death. Espe­cial­ly inno­cent people.

Tonight, we extend a prayer for Troy Davis and his fam­i­ly, the vic­tims of a bro­ken jus­tice sys­tem. And we reaf­firm our stead­fast com­mit­ment to achiev­ing the total and com­plete abo­li­tion of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in every U.S. jurisdiction.