On Sept. 21, 2011, you and I murdered a man.
Perhaps it was unintentional, but when the state of Georgia stuck a needle into the arm of Troy Davis and allowed potassium chloride to be injected into his bloodstream, we all became conspirators in his unjust killing.
Although saddening, it is not the killing of a possibly innocent man that is so appalling to the millions who voiced their objections prior to his execution, for there are vast multitudes of innocent civilians killed every day in countries all over the globe: from North Korea’s political prisons and Syria’s defiant streets to Afghanistan’s rural battlefields and the cluttered cities of Iraq. Instead, it is the fact that this injustice occurred in our own backyard, and that we could have stopped it, that drew protests and disbelief from those who followed the case.
And the case was followed. From the streets of Pennsylvania Avenue to the Place de la Concorde, people gathered in the hundreds of thousands to display opposition to the execution by protesting and voicing their opinions via the international media. However, the day after Davis’s execution not a word was said at Palo Alto High School.
What I found was that you — my friends and peers — were not so much unmoved by the events of the night before as you were unaware: “Who was Troy Davis?” you responded to my questions. And perhaps this was not your fault.
Not one of my teachers spoke or even alluded to the execution of Troy Davis during class the following day. Not one school publication had a story available online relating to the incident. The man who made national headlines could neither overcome the struggle to survive nor win the apparently strenuous battle to make Paly news. This is what truly shocks me.
It is such a sad silence that allows such an injustice to be executed. But even worse than this silence was my own inaction, for which there is no excuse. Whereas one Paly alumnus, Osceola Ward, went to the front lines in Washington D.C. to attempt to save Davis, I simply posted a Facebook status, as if doing so would somehow bring him back and change what has happened. Maybe because I live in the bubble that is Palo Alto, or maybe it’s just coincidental, but it feels as though you and I are encouraged to speak out in theory, but conditioned not to. When teachers and students and editors of publications choose not to spread this news, then that is simply what it becomes: old news.
But the killing of Davis, almost one month ago, is not old news. It is a current reality that remains with us today and that each of us must live with. When so much reasonable doubt can be shown, including the recanting of seven of nine non-police witnesses in his prosecution, a total lack of physical evidence and a lack of genuine motive for murder of an off-duty policeman who Davis was “found” to have murdered, it is not just old news. When all of Georgia’s appellate courts and both the Supreme Court and President Barack Obama failed to intervene and reconcile the issue, despite their constitutionally-mandated rights to do so, it is not old news. When such an injustice is committed and is followed by our silence, our “murder by omission” as a humanities teacher might say, it is not old news.
It cannot be. For as Troy Davis told the family of his alleged victim in the moments prior to being forcibly strapped down to a gurney and put to death: We have an obligation to “dig deeper” and find the true killers.
We all know who the killers are. It was not Georgia, Obama, the Supreme Court or even the Georgia Corrections officer who placed the needle in Davis’s arm. In allowing capital punishment to be administered so wantonly in our own backyard, regardless of your opinion on the death penalty, and then choosing to remain silent about the miscarriage of justice—
On Sept. 21, 2011, you and I murdered a man. His name was Troy Davis.
Troy Davis was executed on Sept. 21, not Sept. 7. The current version of the story reflects that change.