I feel nauseated when I think about the death penalty. It's been that way since I saw “Dead Man Walking” at the Boulevard Theater circa 1994. I’m disturbed and disgusted that Troy Davis was executed last night. Just like I was when Timothy McVeigh was executed many years ago. I went to bed last night when the Supreme Court was still entertaining one final appeal for clemency. By morning it was done.
I have great reverence for the Court, even when I disagree with the Justices, but how can they allow the State to put a man to death for a crime where seven of nine “eye witnesses” recanted and admitted to police coercion? How can they disregard the historical significance of a white southern government putting a black man to death under the auspices of justice when it was really anything but? To me, the death penalty is nothing more than sanitized lynching. The statistics bear this out. The black and the poor die at the hands of the state. SCOTUS would be intellectually sound to ban such a heinous and barbaric practice under the 5th, 8th, or 14th Amendments. Or all of ‘em.
Parallel to Troy Davis’ story in the news, I’ve been thinking about the limits of human memory. Davis was put to death on the testimony of people who swore they saw what they saw. No DNA or biological evidence. People have been talking about memory. Do you remember where you were on Sept 11? Of course. Like it was yesterday. How could I forget?
I emailed my friend Susie on Sept 11 to tell her I miss her. She and I both lived in the DR at this time 10 years ago, and I have vivid memories of being with her during that time. We left our jobs at the UN and went to a plaza across from the Cathedral in Santo Domingo. We ordered cheese sandwiches. We sat in stunned silence.
Except we didn’t. Somehow my brain played a trick on me. Susie was sick that day, at home with food poisoning. I went to the plaza with a couple of other co-workers, but my dear good friend was not there. She was there all the days before and all the days after, so somehow my mind converged those things and I remembered her being with me. It’s an unsettling thing to think how time blurs experiences into soft pastels and oil crayon pictures where you can’t see the details clearly at all.
Combine the oil crayon drawings of eyewitnesses with a little racist police coercion and that’s how the death penalty is administered. And so here I sit listening to “Eve of Destruction” feeling at once angry, sad, and powerless to change something I know is wrong.
