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By Liz Quirin

Troy Davis Is Dead; Do You Care?

Troy Davis is dead. Do you know who he is? As I watched the details unfold on, what else, television, I saw yet another time when institutional machinery rolled over a human life. While the state of Illinois isn’t executing people these days, other states continue to wage war against life, one person at a time. Why didn’t the Supreme Court stop the execution? The justices had time; they just chose not to do it. And, even at the very end of his life, Troy Davis spoke of his innocence: “I was not personally responsible,” he is reported to have said just before he was killed.
Davis was convicted of killing a Savannah, Ga., police officer in 1989.

This was the fourth “date” he had with death, and this time nobody could stop it. The execution began building momentum recently because more than half the witnesses against him recanted or changed their stories. Haven’t we all seen enough crime shows to know the term “reasonable doubt?” How is it just to kill someone who has purportedly killed someone else? And what happens if or when it is discovered that the person executed did not, in fact, commit the crime?

So many issues revolve around the death penalty, and during the month of October, a month when we spotlight a need for respect for life, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to talk about life and those who take it away in an orderly, legal way. No matter how you paint it, describe it or try to justify it, it can’t be considered “the right thing to do.” We have to move past the “eye for an eye” mentality, even if that sounds like the fair way to deal with people. We have to arrive at a time and place in our lives when we can say and believe: Life isn’t fair. It never has been and never will be. That’s just not how things work.

The ultimate “life isn’t fair” scenario has to be seen and lived through loss. How does a parent live with the death of a child? Children are supposed to take care of their parents, become the parents, if you will. When a child dies early, the cry goes out throughout the family: It isn’t fair. Of course it’s not fair. When one person steals the life of another, it’s not fair, and that person should have to pay for what he or she has done to the other. That would make it fair, wouldn’t it?

While none of my family members have been murdered or been lost because of someone else’s bad judgment, I don’t believe I would find peace and closure by making someone else suffer in the same way. Justice can’t be served up in that way. Revenge can, but justice can’t. If we are truly seeking justice at all levels of our lives, Troy Davis would not be dead. He might still be in prison, and he might not be released from prison, but he wouldn’t be dead.

Because we are imperfect, and we can’t force life to be fair, the least we can do is stop contributing to injustice and unfairness in our hearts and in our actions. Speak up, speak out when life isn’t fair.