Tag: death penalty

Troy Davis will die tomorrow

… for a crime he quite possibly didn’t commit.

… for a crime he’s innocent of, as likely as not. (Wikipedia here; the views of former Reagan/Bush FBI Director William Sessions - the key word is “intolerable” - here).

Yes, this case raises questions about the death penalty, though not ones that a moral cretin like Rick Perry will pay any attention to. But would it really be better to lock an innocent man up for the rest of his life? The deeper problem is a criminal justice system where “due process” produces infinite delay but where the doctrine of “finality of judgment” makes it impossible to review in any forthright manner cases where the wrong guy get bagged for the crime.

The notion that a man can be executed - or kept in a cage forever - because his lawyers failed to prove his innocence (after a flawed, but procedurally correct, initial conviction) ought to outrage everyone with a sense of natural justice.

2 + 2 = Banana

That’s Rick Perry’s brand of logic: government is incompetent, and the State of Texas death-penalty machinery is infallible.

Rick Perry, who believes that government never does anything right, and that public servants are overpaid parasites, also believes that the State of Texas is infallible in carrying out the death penalty. Perry says he’s never worried about the possibility of executing an innocent person.

The problem is, I believe him. He really hasn’t worried about that. He’s some combination of moral monster and moral idiot.

Footnote And yes, it’s appalling that the “small government” crowd applauded at the mention of 234 executions, as if their team had scored a touchdown. It’s possible to believe in capital punishment, either as policy or as morality. But cheering for it?

Let’s say it clearly: the Republican activist base consists largely of worshipers of evil. The god they believe in accepts human sacrifice. They call him “Jesus,” but the true name of the god they adore, and who accepts their sacrifices, is Moloch.

[Update: From C.S. Lewis, The Last Battle. (“Aslan” is Christ, and “Tash” is a demon). Aslan says,

If any man do a cruelty in my name, then, though he says the name Aslan, it is Tash whom he serves and by Tash his deed is accepted.

/update]

And if you think that cheering for death is a fringe position within today’s GOP, ask yourself why not a single candidate tonight dared to rebuke that element of the crowd.