A battle lost, but the struggle goes on!

During my trip to the state penitentiary where I do volunteer work, I talked so several men about the murder of Troy Davis.  They felt devastated and frustrated that they could not sign petitions, make phone calls and do other things to fight for his life  They knew that I have advocated for Troy’s life for over two years, and asked me how the frustration would effect me.  I told them this was a battle lost, but the struggle goes on until the US abandons this barbaric practice.  Below you will find a couple right wing reactions, a compelling argument from Keith Olbermann, and an introduction to a case that may be the next one to capture international attention.

There was no shortage of InsaniTEA.  Tea Party Nation said the real injustice is that Troy was not executed sooner.

The following is about the delay in the last hours before the murder.  Apparently Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia objected to any consideration whatsoever.  Here is Scalia’s twisted rationale from Freakout Nation.

The Supreme Court today invoked a rarely used procedure giving Davis an opportunity to challenge his conviction. Joined by Justice Clarence Thomas in dissent, however, Justice Antonin Scalia criticized his colleagues for thinking that mere innocence is grounds to overturn a conviction:

This Court has never held that the Constitution forbids the execution of a convicted defendant who has had a full and fair trial but is later able to convince a habeas court that he is “actually” innocent.  Quite to the contrary, we have repeatedly left that question unresolved, while expressing considerable doubt that any claim based on alleged “actual innocence” is constitutionally cognizable

… [emphasis original]

How absurd!  What better evidence could there be of the need to keep a Democrat in the White House until Injustices Roberts, Alito, Scalia, Thomas, and Kennedy have been replaced with Justices.

Keith Olbermann and Liliana Segura provided a compelling argument opposing capital punishment on Countdown.

Darrow was right!

Now, here is a case that could be the next high profile fight.

Yes, Troy Davis has been killed, after a roller coaster ride through the end stages of an execution. But he left a message behind, which said this, in part:

This fight to end the death penalty is not won or lost through me but through our strength to move forward and save every innocent person in captivity around the globe. We need to dismantle this Unjust system city by city, state by state and country by country.

I can’t wait to Stand with you, no matter if that is in physical or spiritual form, I will one day be announcing,

“I AM TROY DAVIS, and I AM FREE!”

I want to take him at his word, and as it turns out, right after I wrote my final post about Troy’s execution, someone suggested I look at Reginald Clemons’ case, pending in Missouri.

The more I look at it, the more I’m gobsmacked by the idea of this man ending up on Death Row when he was never convicted of the crime committed — the rape and murder of two white teenagers. Under the prosecutor’s theory of the case, Clemons was an accomplice. It is a case with a lot of twists and turns in it, but there are facts which have been clearly established. The fact sheet with the entire story is here. I suggest you read it before going further.

Here’s some of what you will learn:

• At the time of the crime, Reggie Clemons had a clean record, was in school studying to become a mechanic. There does not appear to be any common link between the victims, Clemons, or his friends.
• The original suspect was a cousin of the victims, Thomas Cummins, who eventually implicated himself in the crime after his initial story came up short. Charges against Cummins were dropped and charges brought against the three African-American teenagers who were in the area that night. Clemons was one.
• Police beat Clemons, denied him an attorney after he asked for one, and coerced a statement from him, admitting to rape of the girls but not pushing them off the bridge.
• Thomas Cummins retracted his confession, claiming it had been beaten out of him. He settled his police brutality complaint and prosecutors dropped all charges. They ignored Clemons and his co-defendants’ claims of police brutality, dropped the rape charges, and charged them all with capital murder. Clemons charges stemmed from their theory of the case; namely, that he was an accessory to murder by virtue of being in the same location.
• Reggie Clemons had extraordinarily ineffective attorneys. One of them was practicing tax law in California while returning to Missouri for court appearances.
• The prosecutor improperly excluded African-American jurors from the panel. It was so egregious he was later sanctioned for it.
• One of his co-defendants, Marlin Gray, was executed in 2009.

There’s more. But this gives you a flavor of what this case is about. As if all of that isn’t bad enough, there’s this nugget, discovered after 8th Circuit Court of Appeals stayed his execution: There is a rape kit from one of the victims in the police evidence room that has never been tested and was never brought forth at trial. A rape kit! Something that would have proven or disproven Reggie Clemons’ coerced confession. [emphasis added][emphasis original]

Inserted from <Crooks and Liars>

Now, I’m not claiming that this man is completely innocent, but the case has a really bad stink to it, especially considering that the white confessed murderer, with a family that could afford a good lawyer, went free, and the three black “accessories” got capital murder convictions, based on coerced confessions.

The possibility of killing an innocent person remains so high that there can be no justification to continue the death penalty.  The civilized nations of the world have realized that capital punishment is barbaric.  Isn’t it time for the US to become civilized?

You can sigh Amnesty International’s NOT IN MY NAME pledge here.