Troy Davis is dead, killed — murdered, some would even say — by the state of Georgia for a crime he may well not have committed.
While many questions remain about the case against Davis, even after his death, there’s one I want to focus on here: Who will be the next Troy Davis? Because someone will be. Our system of justice guarantees it.
Update: The Supreme Court won’t stop the execution. At this point, if you’re wrongfully convicted and sentenced to die for a crime you didn’t commit, with no more evidence than the state had against Troy Davis, I guess you’re toast.
I reiterate my earlier statement. Tonight, the state of Georgia will kill a man who is very likely innocent. Tonight I am ashamed to be a Georgian.
Update: Checking the news upon arriving at home, I read that the execution has been delayed by an appeal to the Supreme Court. As of 9:42 pm, there is no word yet from the Supreme Court.
Unless something changes between now and 7:00 pm, today I am ashamed to be a Georgian.
“The struggle for justice doesn’t end with me. This struggle is for all the Troy Davises who came before me and all the ones who will come after me. I’m in good spirits and I’m prayerful and at peace. But I will not stop fighting until I’ve taken my last breath.”
Even Republicans are having funny reactions to their last debate. One Huntsman staffer said she’s “sick and sad” over the behavior of the crowd at the last two debates. Funny. “sick and sad” is exactly how some of us would describe that behavior.
Funnier still? Even Rick Perry was “taken aback.” Taken aback? Perry got even more applause for touting his record of 234 executions on his watch as governor of Texas.
Never struggled? Perry’s body count even surpasses that of famed “Texecutioner” George W. Bush, who racked up 152 executions during his term as Texas governor. Perry has managed to beat Bush by more than 80 executions, and will probably make it 100 if he doesn’t end up moving to the White House. And he never struggled with it? Not even once? There is at least one case Perry should have struggled with.
As someone who watched both movies about the West Memphis Three several times, and read the book about the case, this is fantastic news.
Damien Echols, Jessie Misskelley, Jr. and Jason Baldwin, collectively known as the West Memphis Three, have been in prison since 1993 for the murders of 8-year-old boys Christopher Byers, Steve Branch and James Michael Moore. On August 19, 2011, they have been freed. A live stream of the WM3 public hearing in Jonesboro, AK is below.
The West Memphis Three’s sentences have been converted to 18 years with credit for time served, as well as 10 years SIS (suspended imposition of sentence), which is like parole without the restrictions. The WM3 just have to stay out of legal trouble for the next ten years to avoid returning to prison.
As you read this, Damien Echols, Jessie Misskelley, Jr. and Jason Baldwin are being freed. The convictions of the West Memphis Three were not overturned. Instead, they agreed to what is called an Alford plea.
I walked in the door minutes ago, looked over the hubby’s shoulder, saw the headline and was stunned. It’s probably one of the best endings to this chapter of a long story that almost certainly isn’t over yet.
Casey Anthony is free, having been released from prison and whisked away to a secret post-prison life.
Both Casey Anthony’s defense team and her parents issued statements after her acquittal. Her parents, in their statement, said something that the defense couldn’t say, but might have alluded to: We may never know what happened to Caylee.
Three years later, and we don’t know what happened to this child. Let’s remember there are countless missing children whose names we don’t even know. We don’t know what happened to them either, and may never know. There’s 48 cold cases of missing kids in Maryland alone.
“If there was any justice in this world…” People usually say that when they believe they’ve witnessed a miscarriage of justice in either the legal or cosmic sense. Someone walks away scott free, though common sense and everything but concrete evidence says they’re guilty. Someone with little to recommend them in the way of talent, intelligence or ambition falls ass-first into good fortune, while others more talented and deserving toil in obscurity. Someone gets way more than their 15 minutes in the spotlight, while others get no time at all.
We’ve probably all said it, after witnessing things like those described above. “If there was any justice in this world,” somebody would be getting what we think they deserve. Of course, we don’t stop to think that “If there was any justice…” is just the flip side of saying, “There but for the grace of God go I.”
And so, we’ve finally come to the end of the Casey Anthony trial…
On the one hand, this doesn’t feel like justice.
I haven’t written much about it but, crime buff that I am, I’ve been following the Casey Anthony trial pretty closely. The armchair psychologist in me was pulled in by the strangeness of both the accused and he family. Now, it seems there’s going to be a verdict in half an hour.
The 30 minute advance notice has been given for the verdict of the Casey Anthony trial. The verdict will be read at 2:15 p.m.
Court administration spokeswoman Karen Levey today gave reporters covering the Casey Anthony case a rundown of what will likely happen once a verdict is reached in the murder trial.
Chief Judge Belvin Perry will warn those in the courtroom not to express approval or disapproval with the verdict.
Then jurors will return to the courtroom and the foreperson will hand verdict forms to a court deputy. The judge will review the forms and then hand them to a court clerk, Karen Delpilar, to read aloud.
Perry will then have jury members polled individually to confirm that their verdict is true and correct.
If Casey Anthony is convicted of first-degree murder as charged, there will be a 48-hour break before the penalty phase of the trial begins.
If I had to hazard a guess…. (more…)
As my husband and I watched anxiously for news of the outcome of the New York state senate vote on marriage equality, my thoughts drifted back to one last worrisome aspect of the Supreme Court's Walmart ruling — what it means for minorities. It may not be obvious, but there's a connection. Let me explain.
On discrimination, the court effectively lowered the bar for employers (having a non-discrimination policy is apparently, in the court's view, proof enough that there's no discrimination going on) and raised it for employees (unless you actually have written proof that you've been personally discriminated against, get back to work). That's troubling enough in and of itself, but I expect little different from this court. What troubles me more is a theme I've heard in some progressives' responses to the court's ruling, and the implications for progressive change, especially where minorities are concerned.
The Supreme Court's Dukes vs. Walmart, raising the bar for plaintiffs in class action suits, means workers who already have it bad in this economy probably won't have it any better, and won't be able to do much about it.
The lesson Dukes and other workers will learn after Dukes v. Walmart was best summed up by Bart Simspon, in the Simpsons eisode "Homer at the Bat."
Marge: What makes you think this Darryl Strawberry character is better than you?
Homer: Marge, forget it. He's bigger than me, smarter than me, faster than me, stronger than me, and he already has more friends around the plant than I do.
Bart: You make me sick, Homer! You're the one who told me I could be the best at anything if I just put my mind to it!
Homer: Well, now that you're a little bit older, I can tell you that's a crock! No matter how good you are at something, there's always about a million people better than you.
Bart: Gotcha. Can't win, don't try.
It’s Walmart’s world, and the rest of us are just living in it. That seems to be the take away from the Supreme Court’s ruling in Duke v. Walmart. The court ruled on a narrow aspect of the case, but the > decision has broad and foreboding implications for workers, women, minorities, and the course of progressive change going forward.
In March, when I first wrote about this case I began with a warning: “If you think conservatism’s war on America’s working- and middle-classes is only happening in Wisconsin and a few other states, you’re wrong. If you think that it’s only a war against public employees, you’re more wrong than you know.” I wrote that the court could possibly strip from private sector employees their last effective tool for seeking justice in the workplace.
Having read the news of the court’s decision in Walmart’s favor, I fear I was more right than I expected.
If you think conservatism’s war on America’s working- and middle-classes is only happening in Wisconsin and a few other states, you’re wrong. If you think that it’s only a war against public employees, you’re more wrong than you know. Dan Rather recently filed a story about a class action lawsuit against Wal-Mart that will go Supreme Court later this month. The court’s ruling could seriously impact American workers and consumers — a decision in Wal-Mart’s favor could strip private-sector workers their last effective tool for seeking justice in the workplace.
"Though this nation has proudly thought of itself as an ethnic melting pot, in things racial we have always been and continue to be, in too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards."
- Eric Holder, United States Attorney General
Ed. Note: The second half of this post was written before the reading of the constitution on the House floor, at the opening of this session of Congress, and has since been updated.
Like a lot of people, when the new GOP majority in the House announced that they would begin this session by reading the constitution on the floor of the house, I was both amused and bemused. On one hand, I thought sarcastically, it might be educational. Some of them seem to know less about what’s in it, than about all the things of which they’re fond of saying "That’s not in the Constitution," while waving around the copy of the constitution they keep in their front pockets. (I’d wave around the copy I have on my iPhone, but I don’ thing it would have the same dramatic effect.)
I was bemused, because I wondered how conservatives would handle some uncomfortable parts of our history reflected in the Constitution. When I found out, I was more angry than amused, and more bitter than bemused. Congressional conservatives proved themselves to be callow and cowardly regarding the Constitution — unwilling to understand it in anything except a literalist framework, and unable to face up to the contradictions between our history and idealized image of ourselves, when the Constitution lays them out in black and white.
When I began hearing a few months ago about the rash gay youth driven to suicide by bullying, I immediately wanted to write about it. But when I sat down and started taking in the stories, I found I couldn’t. So many of the details were so close to my own experience growing up that I initially found it too painful to write about. In fact, I was a bit surprised that those memories were still as painful as they were, decades after the fact.
I also considered including the stories in the LGBT Hate Crimes Project, because strongly believed that they should be called hate crimes. I was aware, however, that the question was still a subject of debate. Should these cases, involving suicide, be considered hate crimes?
The LGBT Hate Crimes Project is back. After a period of inactivity, plus some hosting problems, the site is back up. It disappeared after my initial hosting account expired. After a brief, and unfortunate, switch to what turned out to be a disreputable host, I’ve returned my original host. In the meantime, I’ve had to restore the site from my files. So there are corrections that were made before that have to be made to some entries again. And there are updates that were added before that have to be added to some entries again. Those tasks will be ongoing. In the meantime, there are new entries coming this week.
With the passage of the Hate Crimes Prevention Act last year — which expanded existing hate crime law to include crimes motivated by the victim’s gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, or disability — I wondered if I needed to continue with the LGBT Hate Crimes Project. I it as a Wikipedia project in July 2007, when I noticed — while doing research for a round-up post on hate crimes — that number of anti-LGBT hate crimes I knew of were not included on Wikipedia.
I soon found out why so many were not entered on Wikipedia.
Well, maybe. But not until President Palin’s second term. Via Jill at Femeniste and Jezebel’s Anna North comes this bit of insight from Harvard Law School 3L Stephanie Grace, who felt the need to clarify her statements after a dinner conversation with fellow law students about race:
… I just hate leaving things where I feel I misstated my position.
I absolutely do not rule out the possibility that African Americans are, on average, genetically predisposed to be less intelligent. I could also obviously be convinced that by controlling for the right variables, we would see that they are, in fact, as intelligent as white people under the same circumstances. The fact is, some things are genetic. African Americans tend to have darker skin. Irish people are more likely to have red hair. (Now on to the more controversial:) Women tend to perform less well in math due at least in part to prenatal levels of testosterone, which also account for variations in mathematics performance within genders. This suggests to me that some part of intelligence is genetic, just like identical twins raised apart tend to have very similar IQs and just like I think my babies will be geniuses and beautiful individuals whether I raise them or give them to an orphanage in Nigeria. I don’t think it is that controversial of an opinion to say I think it is at least possible that African Americans are less intelligent on a genetic level, and I didn’t mean to shy away from that opinion at dinner.
I also don’t think that there are no cultural differences or that cultural differences are not likely the most important sources of disparate test scores (statistically, the measurable ones like income do account for some raw differences). I would just like some scientific data to disprove the genetic position, and it is often hard given difficult to quantify cultural aspects. One example (courtesy of Randall Kennedy) is that some people, based on crime statistics, might think African Americans are genetically more likely to be violent, since income and other statistics cannot close the racial gap. In the slavery era, however, the stereotype was of a docile, childlike, African American, and they were, in fact, responsible for very little violence (which was why the handful of rebellions seriously shook white people up). Obviously group wide rates of violence could not fluctuate so dramatically in ten generations if the cause was genetic, and so although there are no quantifiable data currently available to “explain” away the racial discrepancy in violent crimes, it must be some nongenetic cultural shift. Of course, there are pro-genetic counterarguments, but if we assume we can control for all variables in the given time periods, the form of the argument is compelling.
In conclusion, I think it is bad science to disagree with a conclusion in your heart, and then try (unsuccessfully, so far at least) to find data that will confirm what you want to be true. Everyone wants someone to take 100 white infants and 100 African American ones and raise them in Disney utopia and prove once and for all that we are all equal on every dimension, or at least the really important ones like intelligence. I am merely not 100% convinced that this is the case.
Please don’t pull a Larry Summers on me,
CRIMSON DNA
Woah.
Well, I’m glad she cleared that up. Now, where to begin?
I know there are differences on same-sex marriage, but surely we can agree that our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters deserve to visit the person they love in the hospital and to live lives free of discrimination.
There are, I have been reminded throughout the marriage equality debate, limits to what what president can do. A president can’t simply make marriage equality a reality by edict. Nor can a president ban or prohibit marriage equality by declaration. Of course, I’ve never argued that a president could or should be able to do either.
But, there are and have always been things that a president could do, if so inclined, that would move the issue forward in a way that could make a real difference in the lives of many Americans, and open the minds of many more — by stroke of the pen or use of the “bully pulpit” that comes with the office. I have just been waiting for a president who could.
And finally, one did. That’s the only way I can think of to describe Obama’s move to stop hospitals from denying visitation to same-sex partners.
I suppose it’s no secret anymore. We went down to the courthouse this morning, and got a place in line.
At least 16 couples were waiting at 7:15 a.m. inside the city’s Moultrie courthouse, which houses the marriage bureau and is just blocks from the U.S. Capitol.
Sinjoyla Townsend, 41, and her partner of 12 years, Angelisa Young, 47, claimed the first spot in line just after 6 a.m.
“It’s like waking up Christmas morning,” Young said.
Washington will be the sixth place in the nation where gay marriages can take place. Because of a mandatory waiting period, however, couples won’t actually be able to marry in the District of Columbia until March 9. Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Vermont currently issue licenses to same-sex couples.
…Terrance Heath, 41, planned to be at the courthouse with his partner, Rick Imirowicz, 43. The two have been together for 10 years and have a 7-year-old and a 2-year-old, but Heath said Wednesday feels like “a step forward.”
“My husband has always been my husband to me, but having that legal recognition, that legal protection, makes it easier to deal with any number of situations,” said Heath, a writer and blogger. “If you tell people you’re married, you don’t really have to explain much beyond that.”
The two, who live in Maryland, plan to marry on March 9, the first day possible.
The gay marriage law was introduced in the 13-member D.C. Council in October and had near-unanimous support from the beginning. The bill passed and D.C. Mayor Adrian M. Fenty signed it in December, but because Washington is a federal district, the law had to undergo a congressional review period that expired Tuesday.
We were number 12 in line.
With reports that of kidnapping and criminal association have been filed in the case of 10 Baptist missionaries from Idaho, accused of kidnapping 33 Haitian children, it seems that several things are — or may be — going on. The news about the background of the groups leader, 40-year-old “businesswoman” Laura Silsby is enough cause for concern.
A CBS News employee who witnessed today’s court proceedings says Silsby told the judge: “We were trying to do what’s best for the children.”
When the judge asked, “Didn’t you know you were committing a crime?” Silsby quietly answered, “We are innocent.”
But CBS News correspondent Bill Whitaker reports there are serious questions tonight about Silsby’s motives. The 40-year-old business woman, who convinced members of Idaho’s Central Valley Baptist Church to follow her dream of an orphanage in Haiti, has a troubling financial history.
She’s been the subject of eight civil lawsuits, 14 for unpaid wages, Whitaker reports. Her Meridian, Idaho house is in foreclosure. She’s had at least nine traffic citations in the last 12 years including four for failing to register or insure her car.
It suggests that perhaps Silsby, in convincing the church members to “follow her dream” of an orphanage in Haiti, may have actually have conned them in to becoming accomplices in what sounds more and more like a typical trafficking operation.
Over the past week, I had some downtown from work, and I used it to do some much needed editing on the LGBT Hate Crimes Project. (Yes, to those who emailed me about the various spelling and typographical errors, I did read your emails. And, no, the errors are not a sign of lack of care on my part. But the sheer volume of these stories makes me more driven to record as many as I can than to spend time editing the ones I have recorded.) It brought be back to some stories I’d researched and intended to write up. So, I’m getting back into that now.
One of the reasons I started the LGBT Hate Crimes Project was to because, while researching a post on the Hate Crimes Bill, I noticed several that I was aware of (had read and/or written about) weren’t listed on Wikipedia. I soon found out why they weren’t — and never will be — listed on Wikipedia. The story of Narcisso P. Leggs’ murder is a prime example.
OK. I plead guilty to this When I got my iPhone 4, I gave Parker my old iPhone 3G (with parental controls in place, phone service deactivated, everything restored to factory settings, history wiped clean, and internet access and the App Store on lockdown) to play games on, etc. But does that make me a “Scrooge”? Puh-leeze. An eight-year-old needs the latest iPhone?
It’s happening again. I’m getting that “I’ve got a book in me, if I can make time to write it,” feeling. Of course, that “if” is the big, and the deciding, factor.
I was never one of those who claim “there’s no such thing as bisexuality.” I’ve known too many bisexuals to buy that the “don’t exist.” So, I’m not surprised that a study now indicates there is too such a thing as bisexuality. In men, that is.
Apparently, it’s hard to build a successful television show around someone who’s (a) unlikeable and (b) had no discernible talent beyond reproducing.
It’s not that I don’t trust the guy, and maybe the whole Weinergate thing has me a little gun shy, but am I the only who thinks Obama tweeting for himself may not be the best idea?
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