Gandhi once said, "An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind." Killing someone who may have killed another solves nothing. It does not deter anyone from taking someone else's life. There are those who say society has the right to put someone to death who has killed someone else. To those people I ask, "What right?" Just because a society might give itself the legal right to kill another does not make it right. No one has the moral right to take another's life.
American culture rejects the Middle Eastern practices of lopping off of a person's hand if they steal a loaf of bread or the stoning of an adulteress. We were disturbed when Kunta Kinte's foot was chopped off by his master after he managed to escape and was recaptureed. Are these practices any more barbaric than the taking of a human life? I submit they are not.
Death sentences, especially those in which there is serious doubt as to a person's guilt after they have been convicted, are reprehensible to every fiber of my being. Our legal system is rife with cases involving wrongly-convicted persons being sentenced to death. In January 2003 outgoing Illinois governor, George Ryan, commuted the death sentences of 167 persons on death row, largely because of the conduct of the Chicago Police Department and their lack of thorough investigations and targeted prosecutions in getting convictions and the death penalty in quite a few cases, many of which involving persons they simply didn't want to deal with any longer.
This summer I attended a presentation by the Innocence Project of Florida. The featured speaker was a man from Puerto Rico who had been convicted of the 1983 rape and murder of a 56 year old woman. The police had no leads or evidence point to anyone. However, a youngster made mention of a male he had seen in the area around the time of the murder. A junior high principal, overhearing the child's comment, said it sounded like Anthony Caravella, a student who attended his junior high school. The police eventually arrested Caravella and, after extensive interrogation, apparently involving sleep deprivation, charged him with the murder. His case was railroaded through the court system and he was convicted.
When the Floirida Innocence Project became involved, they read through all the police files and discovered there were several interviews with persons who vouched for Caravella's whereabouts at the time of the murder (in a nearby town, as I recall), but these interviews were never turned over to the district attorney's office. In addition, although there was no extensive DNA testing available in 1983, semen smears had been taken and preserved along with the other evidence. The DNA testing proved conclusively that Caravella could be excluded as a suspect in the rape and murder. That being the case, the court vacated his conviction and the State of Florida dropped all charges against him.
The point being that our system of justice is seriously flawed and these flaws result in the legalized murder of innocent persons. There was, and still are, serious doubts as to the culpability of Troy Davis for the murder for which he was put to death. While that makes no difference to Mr. Davis now, it does make a difference to me and should to all who believe in the American system. The death of a person cannot be undone. The legalized murder of an innocent person is particularly grievous and should never be tolerated.
