“The Troy Davis case involves Troy Anthony Davis, an American sports coach, who was convicted and sentenced to death for the 1989 murder of a Savannah, Georgia police officer, Mark Allen MacPhail, solely on the basis of eyewitness testimony.[1] Seven of nine witnesses later recanted their testimony, but he has been unable to get a new trial. Amnesty International, Pope Benedict XVI and others have appealed against his sentence, contributing twice to the sentence being stayed temporarily. However, in October 2008, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear Davis’ last appeal. Davis’ execution date had been set for October 27, 2008, but was stayed on October 24 by a three-judge panel from the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals.[2]”
[source…]
This is a complicated case because one man has been killed, and another is going to be killed. A family is bereaved and another is going to be bereaved. The logic is all wrong in feeling rage for the loss of a loved one and intending to make someone else feel rage for the loss of their loved one.
I am against killing people for whatever reason. There are a number of things capital punishment does not do, and one of them is bring back the dead person. Another one is satisfy the family of the dead person. Another is curb violent crime. And yet another is be safeguarded against errors liable to execute innocent people.
Troy Davis must be allowed to present his case, especially if there is new evidence. The witnesses who have recanted must be grilled, and those who haven’t recanted must be grilled as well, because a cloud of doubt hangs over whether this man is guilty or not. Is he guilty? I don’t know, and I’m willing to bet very few people know. That’s not enough to kill a man for.
My poem does not attempt to say that Troy is innocent. It tries to say he has not been proven guilty. Too many black people have been killed because someone had to pay, and they were there, black and disposable. That is why Troy must not be killed unless he’s proven guilty. And that is why I have written The Message.
THE MESSAGE
(for Troy Davis)
Over the outer walls
a sun is rising, lighting
the same things suns light
whether or not another war
has been sparked, or
a market dried up to die,
the same sun that sometimes
appears to linger above
land on which his mother
grows beans, collards, in soil
smeared with blood, cleared with toil.
It’ll be so heavy one might
mistake it for a low moon
on white picket fence
at this unusual hour,
the morning of his last day;
but a cock crows to tell the boy,
who has grown into a man,
it’s time to go. Elsewhere
in the country, a post-woman
slides letters into mailboxes
whose arms, too, hang loosely
at the sides. A dog scampers after
her jeep to the end of the street,
slinks back home dragging its tail.
It’s a day nobody is waiting for
nor thinks should shine. A day
Jehovah won’t forget easily.
A last day for a man who was a boy,
and through whose skin, silly
with melanocytes, past whose
layers of vein wall, and into
whose lumen, a needle will
go in and leave its message.
© Rethabile Masilo
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