US committed to tackling racial discrimination?: The Troy Davis case

The state of Georgia is preparing to murder Troy Davis, an innocent black man. This may not be news to some, given that at least five innocent men who were on Georgia’s death row have been exonerated and released. However, the Troy Davis case raises to a new level the willingness of some in the criminal justice system, who are sworn to uphold the rule of law, to be more than willing to remove lady liberty’s blindfold so that she can see that 'it’s a black man' and therefore determine that his life is expendable. Or as the racist US Supreme Court’s Chief Justice said in the infamous Dred Scott decision, someone who 'has no rights which a white is bound to respect'.

THE TROY DAVIS CASE

The Troy Davis case clearly displays the arbitrariness and absurdity of the death penalty, especially with respect to issues of fairness, claims of innocence and safeguards guaranteeing the protection of the rights of those facing the death penalty. Here are the facts:

- The information used to convict Troy Davis of killing a police officer was solely based on eyewitness testimony. No murder weapon was ever found and no physical evidence was presented that connected Davis to the crime
- Seven of 10 witnesses have recanted or contradicted their testimonies and several have even admitted that their testimony amounts to nothing more than coerced statements they were forced to sign by the Savannah police department
- Several citizens of Savannah have come forth to identify another man as the person responsible for the murder of the off-duty police officer
- Troy Davis has consistently maintained his innocence.

Here is a young man who was found 'guilty' on perjured testimony. The courts however have repeatedly said that since there were no 'procedural' or 'technical' errors in the case Troy Davis should not be granted a new trial or be allowed to exercise his habeas corpus review rights simply because his lawyers did not claim his innocence in a timely fashion at the state level in the manner required. This sick logic confounds commonsense about basic conceptions of justice.

WHAT’S GOING ON?

Some may say the system today cannot be deemed to be racist or viewed as the problem because in Georgia you now have a black state attorney general, a black district attorney for the judicial circuit that has jurisdiction over the case, a black warden who is head of Georgia’s prisons, African-Americans on the Board of Pardons and Paroles, African-Americans on Georgia’s Supreme Court (one of whom is the chief justice), and finally because the US Supreme Court has a black man from Georgia who has the final review of cases from that state. Besides, Georgia has the largest congressional delegation from the South in the US Congress led by civil rights movement icon John Lewis, and certainly they would be crying out if racism were at play in this case.

The truth of the matter is that the legacy of centuries of institutionalised racism continues to manifest itself most clearly in the criminal justice system. Moreover, simplistic reasoning which does not take into account the fact that there have been 2–1 court of appeals decisions, a 3–2 decision by the pardon and parole board or 4–3 decisions by the Georgia Supreme Court or that the black man on the US Supreme Court is Clarence Thomas – whose decisions on racial justice cases suggest that he has taken self-hatred to an unimaginable level and who is one of the most right-wing justices on the court – is flawed and can be confusing.

At the end of the day, the reality is that a system-wide structural bias cannot be overcome by citing the presence of a few highly placed individuals, especially if they perpetuate or gloss over the system’s flaws at the expense of the poor or worse, remain silent in the face of an obvious injustice. At the same time, the recent statements by Congressmen John Lewis of Atlanta and Hank Johnson of Decatur stating that they believe Troy Davis is innocent are encouraging.

RIGHT-WING JUSTICE IN THE NEW SOUTH

The political economy of racial discrimination and its intersection with what today is known as the prison industrial complex has been in operation in Georgia since it moved from being a penal colony to being the state that first introduced the prison contract labour system and later the notorious 'chain gangs'. Slave codes and Jim Crow segregation have now given way to economic marginalisation and social exclusion, but the functions of the criminal justice system continue to operate as designed, that is, in a manner reflecting and reinforcing the racial hierarchy within the society.

Since the 1980s this has intensified as Georgia’s prison population increased by approximately 600 per cent. Today, one in 15 adults in Georgia are currently under the authority of the criminal justice system. This billion-dollar prison system is composed of over 62 per cent African-American inmates. African-American women are almost 60 per cent of all the women behind bars in Georgia. The Georgia Department of Juvenile Justice’s Youth Detention Centers, the prison system for young people in the state of Georgia which just came from under more than a decade of federal monitoring in May, are composed of over 80 per cent African-American youth. Additionally, as a result of the Georgia legislature passing a so-called 'School Safety and Juvenile Justice Act' (SB 440) in 1994, of the youth aged 13–17 tried in adult courts and confined to Georgia’s adult facilities, 90 per cent currently are and have been African-American. African-American and Latino youth are 45 per cent of Georgia's youth population but comprise over 77 per cent of the youth arrested under SB 440. White youth are 84 per cent more likely than African-American youth charged under SB 440 to have their cases transferred back to juvenile court.

THE RACIST DEATH PENALTY IN GEORGIA

In United States, the death penalty has been shown to be a racist and class-based instrument in the repressive arsenal of the state. Those without capital are the only ones facing capital punishment. In fact, there has never been a rich person executed in the state of Georgia.

Georgia’s history of racial discrimination in the administration of the death penalty is a long and despicable one. In 1924, the first person executed in the state’s electric chair was a black man. The oldest person ever executed in Georgia, 72 years old, was black. The youngest person ever executed, 16 years old, was black. The most people executed at one time, six, were all black. The first woman executed was black. Of the first 355 people executed in the state’s electric chair (once state-sanctioned killing replaced the lynch mob), 291 or 82 per cent were black.

In the post-civil rights era, race, class and gender factors have dominated public decision-making regarding who is to be executed and who is to be sentenced to prison. In fact, this affects whites as well. For example, of the 107 persons currently on death row, the overwhelming majority are there for killing whites even though the murder rate of African-American men in Georgia by other African-American men is one of the highest in the nation. Of those currently facing the death penalty, 53 per cent are people of colour. African-Americans alone are 52 per cent of Georgia’s death row population awaiting a lethal injection, the current method of execution.

Georgia has been at the centre of the death penalty debate in the United States for some time. Three of the most celebrated death penalty cases in American jurisprudence history are from Georgia (Furman vs. Georgia, Gregg vs. Georgia, and Mcklesky vs. Kemp).

Evidence of arbitrariness and racial discrimination in the imposition of the death penalty played a key role in the 1972 US Supreme Court’s Furman decision that temporarily outlawed the death penalty in the US. The 1976 US Supreme Court’s Gregg decision was meant to eliminate discrimination in the application of the death penalty. The court's decision in the 1987 Mcklesky case graphically revealed how racial disparities remained the most significant factor in determining who received the death penalty in the state of Georgia, but the statistical data supporting contentions around Mcklesky was nevertheless ignored.

THE WORLD IS WATCHING, THIS TIME

The work of Amnesty International USA and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) has led to protest and calls to stop the execution throughout the country and around the world. Troy Davis should not have to die for us to see what’s wrong with the death penalty in Georgia and the United States; we already know. As Judge Rosemary Barkett of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals said in her dissent, 'the concept of punishing an innocent defendant with the death penalty simply because he did not file his papers as early as he should have … would be an atrocious violation of our constitution.' In the eyes of the world it would also be a gross violation of international human rights standards.

There is also no need for us to wait to see the movie on this one. For all those high-ranking officials and media pundits who argued passionately that the United States did not need to go to Geneva to participate in the Durban Review Conference in order to prove that it is serious about 'fighting racial discrimination of every form in every context', the Troy Davis case is an opportunity to show the world where you really stand.

Whatever happens from this point on, the scrutiny of the international community will be there regarding the US human rights record. If Troy Davis is executed no one should be surprised if the international community sees our pleas for respect for human rights in Cuba or China or Sudan as being nothing more than hypocritical posturing. Others may find our calls for respect for the rule of law in Zimbabwe, Burma or Venezuela to be a shameful, moralising mockery. Still others, friends and enemies, will see us as a nation that constantly fails to practice what it preaches.

* Keith Jennings is a human rights and democracy expert. He is the president of the African-American Human Rights Foundation, a United States-based NGO dedicated to the promotion and protection of international human rights standards.
* Please send comments to [email protected] or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org/.