NEWS FLASH

Former Commissioner Of Georgia Department Of Corrections Calls For Abolishing The Death Penalty | In a gripping article for the Daily Beast titled “I Ordered Death in Georgia,” Allen Ault, who oversaw the Georgia Department of Corrections from 1992 to 1995, calls for abolishing the death penalty. Writing that he oversaw the executions of five inmates whose names and faces he will never forget, Ault reveals that he privately tried to convince Georgia officials to commute Troy Davis’s sentence. He concludes that the “United States should be like every other civilized country in the Western world and abolish the death penalty.”

NEWS FLASH

Carter: ‘The Death Penalty System In Our Country is unjust and outdated’ | In a statement on Troy Davis’ execution last night, Georgia Democrat and former President Jimmy Carter said “this tragedy will spur us as a nation toward the total rejection of capital punishment.” He added, “If one of our fellow citizens can be executed with so much doubt surrounding his guilt, then the death penalty system in our country is unjust and outdated.” Media Matters’ Simon Maloy urges Fox to question the GOP candidates tonight about whether they can support a system with a margin of error.

NEWS FLASH

Troy Davis’s Death, and a Project Going Forward | The tragedy of Troy Davis’s death tonight is overwhelming. The thought of a man strapped to a gurney for hours waiting to find out if he will be unstrapped from it, if he will walk—back into his cell rather than out into the world, but still, to live—out of the room where is supposed to die is so hard to bear. Was the needle in his arm the whole time? He must have been in such discomfort. The shame is so big.

I feel some guilt for not pressing harder on the death penalty as an issue on this blog. That ends now. I’m going to make a project of consuming our culture on the death penalty and see if there are arguments we can glean from it, ideally to convince people that the death penalty is in and of itself immoral, but barring that, to convince them that the risk of executing an innocent man is just too high. What’s most powerful? What works? What doesn’t? What moves the conversation towards reconciliation, collective grieving, and a commitment to actual justice? If there’s interest in making this a reading and watching group separate from our regular book club, let me know, and I’ll try to work out a schedule.