Our Endangered Judicial Values: The Case of Troy Anthony Davis

Much has been said about America’s “moral crisis” and our “endangered values.” Former President of the United States and Governor of Georgia, Jimmy Carter, devoted a whole book to the issue. As an American citizen and student of our democratic system, it is very disappointing to recognize that nowhere is this crisis in values more evident than in our justice system today.

A great example of our judicial system’s crisis in values is the case of Troy Anthony Davis, a black man who has spent the last 16 years on death row in the state of Georgia and was nearly executed this past July without any physical evidence to prove his guilt. Accused of killing a white policeman in 1989, Davis has spent the last 16 years on death row in the state of Georgia without any physical evidence to prove his guilt. Davis is the victim of a dysfunctional justice system that at times only provides incompetent public defense, can be racially biased, and often gives more weight to procedural technicalities than ethical maxims such as “beyond reasonable doubt.” This is evident by the more than 120 men and women whose death sentences have been exonerated since 1973, of which five have been in the state of Georgia, as documented by the Death Penalty Information Center. Robert Warden, Executive Director of the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University, has established that these exonerations represent an error rate in our capital punishment system of more than one in ten.

The mistakes that Georgia’s justice system has made in Troy Davis’s case are so elemental and contrary to the fundamental rights established at the core of our Constitution that all responsible parties deserve to be examined in detail and judged by the American people. Otherwise, we condemn ourselves to fall in its hands and see injustice brought down upon us, or our loved ones. To deprive a young man of his right to a fair trial and, because of the system’s incompetence, force him to waste his youth in a cell as he awaits his death for a crime that he may very well be innocent of is not only unacceptable, but also a waste of the people’s money. It is suggestive of how little appreciation Georgia’s courts have for “life, freedom and the pursuit of happiness” and ethical maxims such as “beyond a reasonable doubt.”

On November 13, 2007 the Georgia Supreme Court will hear oral arguments requesting a new trial for Mr. Davis. The Supreme Court will not decide his guilt or innocence but only whether there is sufficient new evidence to merit a new trial. This is the same court that denied his appeal earlier this year on technical grounds and as a result of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996.

Wrongful convictions are a serious threat to our personal freedom and well-being, just as serious as crime and terrorism are. As Davis’s case shows, a wrongful conviction can happen to anyone, regardless of his or her innocence, just because he or she happened to be in the wrong place, at the wrong time, and “fit” a physical description that matches our system’s bias.

If we want to reclaim America’s values, let’s start with our judicial system. Let’s hold our juries accountable and have judges, at every level, demand greater accuracy in every step of the judicial process. It’s the ethical thing to do. Let’s uphold the right to a fair trial, presumption of innocence and beyond a reasonable doubt as our legal north. Let’s remind ourselves that the real fight for freedom begins at home, not abroad, when we strive to achieve “justice for all” in America.

Paola Pascual-Ferrá