The trouble with playing God

I AM OF TWO MINDS about the death penalty. It does not deter violent capital crimes let alone prevent them. It therefore serves only to sate the anger of aggrieved families. On the other hand, certain criminals deserve to hang in my view (think serial killers or bin Laden). For the worst, an eye for an eye seems only fair. Or so I tell myself. Yet, I cannot ignore this dubious need for vengeance or the human propensity for bloodlust. One cannot help but wonder if we ― in all of our fallible glory ― are encroaching in a moral province best left to God alone. This of course is the age-old question to which I'll leave to the poets.

Morality aside, meting out capital punishment is open and shut in some cases. But more often than not, juries are forced to wade into murkier waters when deciding the guilt or innocence of the accused. My reading of history leaves me with little faith in humanity's capacity to play God given our vulnerability to emotional compromise stemming from cultural biases. Yes, we do the best we can. But there's no getting around the fact that our legal system is imperfect and frequently subjective. And God help you if you are innocent but uneducated, poor and brown-skinned.

I don't know the details of the Troy Davis case. Convicted of killing a cop, he is scheduled to die at sunset tomorrow after 22 years on Death Row. Per the AP, Georgia's Board of Pardons and Paroles rejected a last-ditch clemency bid. Outraged protesters are out in force in Atlanta, and everyone from Pope Benedict XVI to Desmond Tutu to Al Sharpton and Jimmy Carter are shouting in unison that something is rotten in Denmark. The NAACP, wrong-headedly, is even threatening to drag President Obama into it (like he doesn't have enough problems).

What is troubling is that seven of the nine original eyewitnesses have (apparently) recanted their testimony against Davis. Moreover, no physical evidence (fingerprints, DNA, or the gun used) has ever linked Davis to the crime, according to Time magazine's Nathan Thornburgh.

Davis might be as innocent as those overly iconic T-shirts suggest he is. He could also be a stone-cold cop killer and guilty as hell. I simply don't know. But on the surface at least, there appears to be some room for doubt about his original conviction. And if such doubt exists, then how can Georgia morally justify killing him tomorrow? That said, Davis is probably a dead man. CNN reported that the Georgia parole board "has never changed its mind on any case in the past 33 years." This suggests they err on the side of having a head on the pike. That, perhaps, is the biggest problem with playing God. People too easily become inured to the twin pathologies of omnipotence and infallibility.

Credits: Illustration by LA Progressive.