By the time you read this column, Troy Davis may be dead. My deadline is 1 p.m. on Wednesday, September 21, 2011. Six hours later, Troy Davis is scheduled to be executed for a crime we cannot be sure he committed.

 

Davis has been on death row for a bit more than two decades, convicted of the 1989 slaying of a police officer in a fast food restaurant parking lot. Late at night. Since the trial seven of the nine eyewitnesses have recanted their testimony, saying they were coerced.

 

Of the remaining two eyewitnesses, one – who first fingered Davis, could also have been the triggerman. Davis has always maintained his innocence. Don’t they all? But no physical evidence has ever existed to link Davis to the crime.

 

For me, though, my opposition to the death penalty does not focus on guilt. Whether or not Troy Davis is guilty, the state of Georgia should not execute him. History will judge us even more harshly should he be innocent.

 

The justice system that found him guilty I have no confidence in, especially when he is black, and in Savannah, Georgia. The civil rights movement has long since seen its heyday, racism is not vestigial in the south. It remains more cleverly disguised, and strong among those practitioners of hatred.

 

I spent this past weekend in Atlanta, Georgia, on a short family vacation. I had some time to kill Friday afternoon before our evening’s activity, and I wandered from the hotel to Congressman John Lewis’ office, on the 19th floor of an office building.

 

Congressman Lewis, with his proud history as a civil rights marcher, is a staunch death penalty opponent. As a federal representative, though, he is powerless to stop the murder of Davis. I still left him a note begging him to work harder, and use his political finesse to give Davis a reprieve.

 

From there, I meandered over to the Georgia state capital, a gold-domed structure, hardly as pretty as our own. The Office of Governor Nathan Deal was quiet a few minutes before quitting time on Friday afternoon.

 

The governor’s office in Georgia is powerless to stop an execution, as the Board of Pardons and Paroles retains sole authority to grant clemency in such cases as Troy Davis’. Nevertheless, I scribbled out another note to Governor Deal, again, protesting the use of such barbaric punishment, especially in a case where guilt is hard to measure.

 

The receptionist in the Governor’s office, a kindly young woman with shoulder length blond hair and two different color fingernail polishes, said she would relay my note to the Governor’s constituent services office, where many thousands of other similar such comments from all over the world were being catalogued.

 

Should Troy Davis be dead when you read this, his life was not lived in vain. More than a million people around the world protested his death. The board of Pardons and Paroles received 600,000 signatures petitioning the state to spare Troy Davis’ life. These appeals fell on deaf ears.

 

But the efforts to rescue Davis from death row show exactly how out of step the United States is globally. The U.S. is the only western industrial democracy that regularly executes its perpetrators of crime.

 

When an American state outlaws the death penalty, the Italians light up the Roman coliseum in honor of the recognition of the sacredness of life. I want to be in Rome when the Italians do that for Connecticut.

 

It may never happen in Georgia. And when we contemplate the life of Troy Davis, we should know whose company we are in. China, Iran, North Korea, Yemen and the United States carried out the most executions in 2010. Iran and North Korea are sworn American enemies, yet they look a lot like us in punitive measures.

 

Is this who we want to be as a country? I think not. We are the myths we make. Wandering through the Georgia state capital, you see the busts of the state’s forefathers, sculpted in white marble for time immemoriam.

 

William Few, 1748-1828, was a U.S. senator, banker, and a signer of the U.S. Constitution. The pedestal honoring him reads “His course in the national council was marked by integrity, fidelity and ability.” The radical in me wants to scrawl in black marker “and slaveholding and racism and misogyny, too.”

 

This is how we as a society whitewash history, and become blind to the evil monsters that lurk within our own dark hearts. The U.S. Constitution that Few signed considered people like Troy Davis to be property, worth 3/5ths of a white man.

 

Between 1972 and 1976, that same Constitution, according to the U.S. Supreme Court, prevented capital punishment as cruel and unusual. A series of cases in 1976 led the court to allow bifurcated trials which separate guilt and sentencing phases of trial.

 

This, combined with strict evidence rules, prevents jurors from seeing the whole story of a crime. At least three jurors in Troy Davis’ bifurcated trial said they would not have convicted if they knew the whole story.

 

But whether or not Troy Davis is guilty or innocent, we should not execute him. And we who oppose this type of cruel and unusual punishment have a duty to speak out. And we must challenge others to dethrone our baser animal instincts.

 

Before I left the Georgia state capital, I wanted to register my displeasure with a member of the Legislative branch. I found Senator Jack Hill, a Republican from Georgia’s fourth district, working late on a Friday afternoon on his newsletter.

 

Senator Hill is a powerful man, chair of the appropriations committee, which controls spending for state agencies like the Pardons and Paroles board. His secretary invited him out to speak with this Yankee.

 

Senator, I said, I know I am not a constituent, but I beg you to do your best to help spare Troy Davis’ life.

 

The Senator is a thick man, several inches taller than me. With a Georgia accent, he recommended that I address my grievance to the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles.

 

Senator, I replied, you could speak out against it, and your words carry weight. He replied that he could, but he wouldn’t.

 

It is probably not fair of me to read a racist undertone into his comments. But as I walked towards the twin towers (as they call them) housing the Pardons and Paroles office, I couldn’t help but think he was fine with two different water fountains.

 

Go figure that the Pardons office was locked up tight. On my way home, I ran into a protest of several hundred people (that grew to several thousand people) in Woodruff Park in downtown Atlanta. The director of Amnesty International gave me a blue t-shirt emblazoned with white letters: “I am Troy Davis.”

 

I wore it all weekend, and people constantly asked me about it. Some called me Troy. It was a great way to start a conversation, and educate people about the injustice of the death penalty.

 

Because if we in a democracy persist with killing those who kill others to show people killing is wrong, and we accidentally execute an innocent man, are we all murderers?

 

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