Sometimes the only clear perspective is one from afar. British newspaper Guardian UK covered Georgia's killing of Troy Davis extensively in the weeks leading up to the execution date. Among the many articles run by the Guardian, one describing the excruciating four hours the execution event took, combined with the fact that the murder victim's family sat in the front row, staring intently as Mr. Davis died, as "the U.S. justice system at its most grotesque."
In fact, the Guardian reported, as the chemicals seeped into Davis's veins to paralyze his muscles so he would stay quiet and expressionless while he suffocated, some members of the victim's family smiled.
The family smiled at the death of a person who, with the benefit of time and the weaknesses of the evidence against him now clear, was almost surely innocent. They smiled at the death of a defendant who had been convicted on eyewitness identification and ballistics evidence, but seven of the nine eyewitnesses later recanted, one had stated on the evening of the shooting that he wouldn't be able to identify the shooter if he saw him again, and the other was himself another suspect in the shooting. The science behind the ballistics was also later discredited. And, inexplicably, Georgia state officials denied Davis the opportunity to take a polygraph examination to help bring the truth to light. But the execution served its purpose, and the feeling of revenge was enjoyed by all who, with the ignorant obstinacy of a Holocaust denier, still firmly believed Davis was guilty.
According to the Guardian, the rest of the world is sickened by our justice system. Not only for allowing what one of Davis's lawyers described as a government-sanctioned lynching of a black man for killing a white police officer in 1989, but because it is clear from the reexamination of other cases that the U.S. justice system is neither sophisticated nor functional enough to produce reliable results. This has been irrefutably proven by hundreds of cases in which prisoners have been freed after DNA evidence has been retested with modern technology not available at the time of their trials. This fact indicates that there are likely thousands more innocently imprisoned individuals in the U.S. who can never be freed because their case did not involve retestable DNA evidence (Troy Davis was one of these unlucky people). That a system with such glaring flaws is cited as justification for the government execution of citizens is shocking and appalling to the civilized world.
In fact, the Danish corporation Lundbeck, the manufacturer of one of the three lethal injection drugs used in the U.S., has implemented a new policy to take special precautions to keep its products out of the hands of U.S. jails. The company is now controlling the sale of its drugs by making its distributors promise that they will not sell to any U.S. state government entity related to the jail and prison system.
The approach they are taking - that their consciences demand they take - is to treat the administrators of our justice system like children who aren't responsible enough to handle scissors for fear they might hurt someone. This is the civilized world's view of our justice system. Or, more specifically, their view of our stubborn insistence on equating revenge with justice.
