Please take a moment to read this excellent piece on the legal background of the Troy Davis case.

This piece from today in the New Republic situates the Troy Davis execution in the context of the recent history of the movement to end the death penalty. Professors Carol and Jordan Steiker offer a useful overview of this recent history as the reasoning behind their own (cautiously) optimistic position. Along the way, they helpfully outline the major moving pieces of legal and legislative strategy in this struggle.

The piece is prompted by the Troy Davis execution, and accordingly, highlights two potential ways that highly publicized “particular executions” can make an impact, which are in tension with each other: it expresses concern that such publicity can make “the American death penalty appear more entrenched and routine than it truly is, and [obscure] the broader trends and transformations,” at the same time that it has the potential to generate awareness, motivate people to act and “accelerate the movement toward abolition.” This particular article takes up the task of speaking to the first concern– it would seem, in light of the perception that the second is taking care of itself.

I wonder if it is, if we really believe that the public outcry against Troy Davis’ execution was “enough”– or “too much,” balanced against the proposition of some negative effect that could issue from public overestimation of America’s weddedness to the death penalty (?). I wonder if it was because there is already “enough” of a movement that, for example, that no faculty from Harvard attended the student organized vigil the eve of Davis’ death– because of some countervailing interest in helping balance public opinion? Some of the hundred-some students gathered there did notice this absence and may be looking for a way to understand it, give it meaning. But I can guarantee that many, many more people would have noticed if there had been faculty present to share that moment with outraged and grieving students. And I think that the meaning and mobilizing effect this participation would have had on a rising generation of advocates is not to be underestimated. What, again, was the concern that could outweigh this?

Time sums it up:

When Texas Governor Rick Perry said in a recent Republican presidential candidates’ debate that his sleep is untroubled by doubts about the guilt of any of the 235 men and women who have been executed on his watch, he pointed out that his state has “a very thoughtful, a very clear process in place” to review death penalty cases. A cornerstone of that process, in Texas and elsewhere, is the Board of Pardons and Paroles, which is designed to act as a safety valve, removed from the emotion of the crime and the courtroom. It’s a last resort, not to retry a case, but to ensure that a conviction is so ironclad that there is no doubt that it merits the ultimate punishment.

That safety valve failed in Georgia Tuesday, just as it has on a number of occasions in Texas. The Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles denied convicted murderer Troy Davis’ last appeal for clemency, setting him on a seemingly unstoppable course for execution Wednesday evening.

Judges in Butts County, GA, where the prison is located, and the Georgia Supreme Court rejected an appeal filed this morning by Davis’ lawyers challenging the “egregiously false and misleading” evidence presented at his trial. No physical evidence linked Davis to the crime, and seven eyewitnesses have made the extraordinary move of recanting their testimony.

The execution of what many believe is an innocent man is set for less than two hours from now. Davis’ plight reminds us of Justice Stewart’s concurring opinion in Furman v. Georgia, which led to a temporary moratorium on the death penalty nearly forty years ago. Forty years later, the death penalty is still cruel and unusual in its arbitrariness.