Note To NY Times: Don’t Do Us Any Favors

Wankery overload from The Old Gray Lady in the Troy Davis case (here)…

The list of people asking that the Georgia parole board offer clemency has grown from the predictable (Jimmy Carter, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the Indigo Girls) to the surprising…

Oh yes, how dare those individuals actually stand up as voices of conscience for those who may be falsely accused and/or convicted. How “predictable”.

But wait, there’s more…

As executions becomes less common and sentences for executions decline — dropping to about 100 a year from three times that in the 1990s — the focus on execution as a means of punishment and a marker of the nation’s cultural and political divide becomes sharper, legal analysts said.

That divide results in a culture that in the same week can generate hundreds of thousands of letters of support for Troy Davis and, conversely, bring a cheering round of applause from the audience at a Republican presidential debate when Gov. Rick Perry of Texas was asked about the 234 executions in his state during his term of office.

I have a question – is this an editorial? Silly me, I thought this was supposed to be an actually news column.

I don’t know what the Troy Davis case says about “a culture” such as ours. And I see zero correlation between the Davis case – where witnesses claim that they were coerced to the point where six of nine of those who testified against Davis recanted, and the seventh contradicted that person’s own testimony…oh, and the eighth of the nine witnesses may, in fact, be the person who actually shot Officer Mark MacPhail – and that rabid horde the other night who craved more violence porn in the guise of a Republican presidential candidates debate.

And finally, I give you a comparison that, I suppose, was inevitable…

Mumia Abu-Jamal, the former journalist and Black Panther who was convicted of shooting a white Philadelphia police officer in 1981, rode the power of his own charisma. His case became so popular globally that a road in a Parisian suburb bears his name.

Outside of the fact that Davis is on death row also, his case has nothing in common with that of Mumia Abu-Jamal.

Jamal was shot by Officer Daniel Faulkner, who somehow survived a gunshot to the back and wounded Jamal at the scene (Jamal subsequently fired four shots into Office Faulkner, including one between Faulkner’s eyes that entered his brain, according to the U.S. Court of Appeals). Philadelphia’s death row “cause célèbre” has had ample opportunity to prove his innocence and has been steadfastly unable to do so. As nearly as I’ve been able to determine, the “argument” from Jamal’s supporters is that the jury that convicted him was disproportionately composed of whites, which, to me, alters none of the facts upon which the verdict was rendered. Davis, on the other hand, is requesting a stay of his execution to prepare his own defense against a judgment based on evidence that has completely fallen apart (to say nothing of requesting a hearing concerning evidence that might actually set him free).

Your “liberal media” at work…