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ACTION ALERT: Supreme Court rejects Troy Davis’ appeal; urgent action needed to save Troy’s life
UPDATE: Check below for info on the Oct 23 rally in NYC. After granting Troy Anthony Davis a stay of execution on September 23 in order to decide whether or not to consider his case, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected his appeal last Tuesday. Georgia has scheduled Davis’ execution for 7pm on October 27, 2008…
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Update: U.S. Supreme Court stays the execution of Troy Anthony Davis
After scanning the news over and over again all day hoping for good news but fearing it wouldn’t come, late this afternoon I was relieved to read that the U.S. Supreme Court had granted Troy Anthony Davis a stay of execution. The stay came only hours before he was scheduled to be killed by the…
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ACTION ALERT: Amnesty International’s call to support Troy Davis
As I wrote last week, Troy Davis was denied clemency last week by the Georgia Board of Pardons and Parole and is scheduled to be executed on September 23, next Tuesday, despite the tremendous amount of doubt that surrounds his conviction. Besides the Board of Pardons and Parole, the only entity that can stop the…
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Update: Troy Davis denied clemency, faces execution on Sept 23
UPDATE: I am shocked, angered, disgusted and saddened to say that the Georgia Board of Pardons and Parole has denied Troy Davis clemency or commutation of his death sentence. (see here and here for articles). This, despite the fact that there was no physical evidence implicating him and seven of the nine witnesses who testified…
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The execution of Jose Ernesto Medellin: another American middle finger raised at international law
Recently I decided to read the work of Noam Chomsky for the first time, beginning with Hegemony or Survival. I’m a few chapters in now, and one of the points that Chomsky makes is that the United States continues to show blatant disregard and even contempt for international law and institutions such as the United…
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Jersey pride, well-founded.
I may be in Brooklyn now, but I’m not from Brooklyn – I’m from New Jersey and proud of it. Even prouder today, after NJ became the first state since 1976 to ban the death penalty. Of course, New Jersey also hasn’t executed anyone since 1963, so this may not be the most momentous of…
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ACTION ALERT: Call for last-minute clemency for a Georgia man unjustly sentenced to death
Somehow, I managed to miss Troy Davis’ story until this morning, when I was listening to today’s podcast of Democracy Now. I’m a steadfast opponent of the death penalty in any case. But Davis’ story is one of the most enraging and saddening examples of how deeply flawed the judicial system can be. Troy Davis…
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The death penalty – on request?
For years, I’ve been a staunch opponent of the death penalty. To me it seems both barbaric and unjust. In a fallible and inequitable criminal justice system, one can never be sure that the death penalty is applied evenly and without bias. And with the spate of false convictions that have been uncovered in the…
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The Catholic Church: doing something right, for a change.
I’m an ex-Catholic. Catholicism was a big part of my life for a long time. I went to Catholic schools for 12 years. As a kid, I used to love to read the Bible – not for the rules and regs, but for the stories, the imagery. I was obsessed with the Vatican. For a…
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“Deserving” the death penalty
When I was sitting in the airport on Tuesday, waiting for my delayed flight to Atlanta to board, there was a piece on CNN about the delayed execution of Michael Morales, a man in California convicted of the murder of high school student Terri Winchell in 1981. The execution was delayed because of questions over…