Written by Don Washington   

The world is still outraged over the state-sponsored murder of Troy Davis. I wanted to wait a couple of days to give myself a chance to think a little about what this actually means for us as a society. It is said that you can tell a great deal about a society based on how it treats its most powerless members. For us that would be children, the elderly, the poor, minorities, dissidents and yes, prisoners. All of these classes of people are at the very bottom of everyone’s considerations unless you are one of these groups and then, from time to time, you feel the weight of not being considered or being considered negatively by a society that does not have to take your welfare into consideration.

You may think we care about children but how much do we pay to feed them, educate them, shield them from poverty? We don’t unless they are rich or middle class children. If that insight upsets you then you still have a soul and are not much of an American. Troy Davis had the trouble of starting out a poor child and then being a poor minority on his way to becoming a prisoner. The one thing he will not have to worry about is becoming elderly in a society that seems intent of transmuting everyone in it into a commodity or the outcome of a cost-benefit analysis. As a society we are how we behave.

Here in America our state kills people. We do so haphazardly and randomly and as the Innocence Project has demonstrated at least 10% of them we kill the innocent. The insult to injury… ah homicide being that the actual killer remains at large but since serial murderers are rare perhaps that is just a travesty of justice instead of an on-going invitation to murder. Since we do not have the culprit in custody we can never know. But here in America we are not the only society that believes in haphazard, random and mistaken execution as an expression of our highest values. We rank above Saudi Arabia, North Korea and Yemen but below Iran and China… in terms of prisoners we are willing to ritually murder.

But when you consider what we’ve become, as a society, since 9/11 and a bit before we should be neither alarmed nor surprised at the company we keep on this list. We’ve created a market in human flesh where sell humans into bondage for a profit. We’ve made torture the law of the land for some prisoners and perhaps for all prisoners. Historically we’ve cared little about how prisoners are treated so to find that we will kill them in the face of evidence that says we should do otherwise is keeping with the company we keep. As a society we are how we behave.

When I think about Troy Davis, who by any measure that our society would use, was among the despised and barely protected, his fate was not unpredictable but still remains reprehensible. Let me be clear that Troy was treated no differently than how we treat every prisoner who is a minority or poor. The stakes were just higher and the penalty was more immediate, permanent and severe. You see we, as a society, haven’t got it in use to see to the competency of counsel, or to protect the constitutional rights of defendants or to end discrimination in sentencing on the basis of race of victim or defendant. We as a society do not have what it takes, the empathy, fairness or perspective, to even exercise discretion and foresight in regards to the sentencing of juveniles or the mentally retarded in non-capital cases.

To expect us to do so when blood has been spilled and is being called for is to believe that one can reason with monster filled with bloodlust. And that’s what our society has become to a large extent, an angry monster howling for blood in the moonless night of a Constitutionally challenged reality. Troy Davis’ execution is just one more brick in a road made from bones and souls. As a society we are as we behave.

It is no surprise, as his family buries Troy that killing prisoners will not eliminate racism, poverty and bias from the minds of every prospective juror or the society, ours, which they come from. No one can be shocked that 90 percent of cases, death row inmates are destitute. Their defense is not going to include vast resources for expert witnesses, DNA testing, investigative resources or the best counsel money can buy. New guidelines are not going to cure poverty unless the state is willing to find money for truly epic litigation on both sides of the ledger when it can't even find money for an adequate educational system. At every turn we do not protect the poor or look out for children because as a society we are as we behave.

As Troy’s death slips out of the media of the day you should ponder how when juries are picked for capital cases, people who are against the death penalty are automatically eliminated. The remaining jurors, therefore, are likely to be pro-death penalty and less worried about wrongful conviction. They are in a real way predisposed toward the maximum penalty if guilt can be established and more likely to convict on less evidence. Think about it, people who cheer the idea of a Governor killing over 200 people are being entrusted to decide the fate of someone they do not know and are likely already none too fond of… it is a recipe for murder and Troy Davis is not the only soul to be taken by it. As a society we are as we behave.

Be clear that in a society, our society, wherein it is mainstream conversation to say racist things about the President, the race of the victim is the single most consistent factor in the imposition of the death penalty. In more than 16,000 executions in U.S. history, only 30 cases involved a white person sentenced for killing a black person. Another factor is the race of the accused killer. Prosecutors in this state seek the death penalty in 70 percent of capital crimes involving black defendants and only 19 percent of capital crimes involving white defendants. In our sister societies, China, Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia and Yemen state-sponsored, ritual slaughter falls on their dissidents and minorities too.

Here we are early in the 21st century acting in concert with societies living in the 12th century. Perhaps that is what Troy Davis’ execution tells us… that we treated him exactly as you would expect our society to treat a man who was so many things our society doesn’t value. Which is sad but not shocking; still people of good faith and values have and continue to oppose that sort of society. But all of us need to understand that as a society we are as we behave… and we desperately need to behave better.

Don Washington is an AP-Award winning writer, political expediter and problem-solver, proprietor of the agitational, informational, interactive website and show the Mayoraltutorial.com. You can follow him as drobsidian on Twitter and he is the keeper of two large and mischievous cats