On Wednesday, Sept. 21, 2011, Troy Davis died, and along with him died the faith that many Americans had in their nation’s justice system. Davis’ execution by Georgia State Prison not only called into question how justice is served, but in fact, if it is served at all.
Do we as a nation, along with those in power who create and enforce the laws that govern our country, have a clear understanding of what justice means? Surely, no social institution is perfectly designed to function efficiently and without error. The intent may be pure, but with the flaws of man always at work, the systems that police our country will forever be subject to fault and scrutiny.
The way in which our society functions will always be influenced by bias, prejudice, favoritism, socioeconomic class and race. It’s an unsettling notion, but nonetheless true.
The case of Troy Davis is not the first and surely will not be the last case that displays the flaws within the system, and how the people within it refuse to acknowledge them. To still sentence a man to death after new evidence, as well as the recanting of seven witness testimonials, is the refusal of those at power to acknowledge that for the 20 years Troy Davis was incarcerated, they could have been wrong.
Continuing with the punishment with so much doubt surrounding his guilt was a means to deliver the message that whether right or wrong, the authority is still the authority.
Troy Davis’ case in particular sent shock waves around the world, even causing protests in France. The execution called on everyone — Americans as well as people from other countries — to question America’s ability to be just.
For the two decades Davis was imprisoned, our beloved motto “innocent until proven guilty” became a hollow statement, not the attitude our criminal justice system is meant to have.
It has been argued that Troy Davis’ case may not have incited the reaction that it did if Troy Davis was not black. Despite the possibility of such a suggestion, would his race matter if the end result was unjust all the same? Racial tensions have, are and will forever serve as the foundation for many of the social ills that plague our nation. They cannot be denied, for to deny them would be to forget about the history of America, as well as to fantasize about its future.
Despite those racial tensions, everyone who was in favor of Troy Davis being exonerated was able to recognize an injustice — not to a black man, but to an innocent man. Collectively, people of all races and ethnic groups protested for him because they realized that an injustice done to one American could potentially be an injustice done to all.
In a Sept. 23 article for The Huffington Post, Kevin Powell, a political activist, wrote: “There is yet another great and bloody gash on the soul of America right now, because we allowed a state-sponsored killing of a potentially innocent man to occur in our name, on our watch.”
Unfortunately, he is correct, and that self-inflicted wound will never heal, not for Davis’ family, nor for the family of Mark MacPhail, the off-duty police officer Davis supposedly murdered.
Peace can never be found in death, and in the case of Troy Davis, neither can justice.