At Troy Davis’ funeral today, activist Dick Gregory asked those in attendance to say a prayer or meditation every day at noon that capital punishment will cease.
“You can’t pick and choose when you’re dealing with God’s children,” Gregory said.
Gregory demonstrated that conviction on Sept. 21, when rather than protest outside of the Georgia prison where Davis was executed, he was in Texas, holding an anti-execution vigil outside of the prison where Lawrence Russell Brewer was put to death.
Davis, convicted in the murder of Mark MacPhail, an off-duty police officer, was executed by the State of Georgia for a murder in which there was no physical evidence tying him to the 1989 crime and in which seven of nine witnesses recanted all or portions of their testimonies.
Brewer was one of three white supremacists convicted in the gruesome 1998 lynching of James Byrd. Brewer also was executed Sept. 21.
I have spent the past week trying to decide whether I could have stood beside Gregory in Texas. I’m not sure.
What I am sure of is that no one should be executed in cases like Davis’ in which there remains lots of “reasonable doubt.”
My father, who spent a good part of his career covering court proceedings in Harlem, supported the death penalty. He was convinced it was a deterrent.
“Capital punishment for ruthless murderers should stand until something better supplants it . . . . I think somewhere in Genesis we read: Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed,” Ebenezer Ray wrote in a column in 1934.
Whether my father changed his views later in life, I have no clue. But even he might agree that Troy Davis’ guilt had not been proved and therefore capital punishment was not appropriate in that case.
Based on his writings about Southern lynchings and the railroading of the Scottsboro Boys, I can assume Ebenezer would have been pleased to know that Brewer and his ilk were headed for the death chamber. But then again, it is likely that when my father was writing in the 1930s and 40s, no one would have even been arrested for Byrd’s heinous murder. No doubt, he would have had a lot to say about that.
I would like to think I am one of those who believe that all life is sacred and that as a civilized society we shouldn’t put anyone to death. But I wasn’t unhappy when Navy Seals blew Osama bin Laden’s brains out. But maybe the rules are different in times of war.
Back in September of 1934, my dad engaged in a fierce war of words over the death penalty with a reader, George Streator, who accused Ebenezer of being a “muddled reactionary.” I have to admit, Streator’s description was on point, and his views on the death penalty were more in line with mine.
“Capital punishment will not check murder in America, any more than lynching as a means of keeping Negroes in their places is effective except against the individual. Both the instances cited are instruments of the herd. In the matter of capital punishment, the herd is sanctioned by the law. In the matter of lynching, the herd invokes its own law. Both are sadistic outbursts,” Streator wrote.
Check out the debate between George Streator and Ebenezer Ray.
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