Category Archives: Justice

Troy Davis, The Sanctity of Life & The Racism Card

Crime, Criminal Injustice, Justice, libertarianism, Liberty, Political Correctness, Propaganda, Race, Racism

The macabre count down to an execution is always a horrible affair—for all except a few sorts like Ann Coulter. She has never encountered a country she didn’t think the US should level, or an execution not worth carrying out. The commutation of the death sentence of Troy Davis (who has since been executed) seemed eminently reasonable to me (who supports the death penalty) in light of the fact that, according to reports, the Davis sentenced was based on eye-witness testimony, which is always iffy. (Surprisingly, Chris Matthews covered the case well, looking at all angles and evidence.)

The assertions of “racism,” however, are as despicable as Coulter’s prod to kill.

I am so sick of people (many of them in the liberty camp) who think their moral status is elevated by fingering others as racists. Cut that crap already. As one of my readers pointed out, on the very same day that Davis was scheduled to die a white man “was headed to the death chamber … for the infamous dragging death 13 years ago of James Byrd Jr., a black man from Jasper in East Texas.”

Argue on the merits of a case, don’t make amorphous, feel-good charges of racism.

I agree with BARRY SCHECK, who raised a reasonable case for commutation:

…at the Innocence Project, we have over 275 people who were
exonerated with post-conviction DNA evidence. And, remember, DNA evidence
is only present in less than 5 percent of criminal cases. So, what about
all the other ones where there may be eyewitness misidentification, perhaps
as happened in the Troy Davis case or bad forensic evidence that we know
definitely happened in the Troy Davis case?

It’s futile to remind Republicans like Coulter that commutation is not exoneration. Republicans generally confine their appreciation for the sanctity of life to fussing over fetuses; about fully formed human-beings they don’t care as much.

UPDATE I: Commute The Troy Davis Death Sentence

Crime, Criminal Injustice, Justice, Law, Psychology & Pop-Psychology, The Courts

If it hasn’t yet, the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles, reconsidering the death sentence of Troy Davis, ought to consult Dr. Elizabeth F. Loftus. According to Dr. Loftus’ seminal work, eye-witness testimony is terribly unreliable.

A man should not be put to death based solely on the testimony of eye-witnesses most of whom have since recanted.

Troy Anthony Davis (born October 9, 1968) was convicted of the August 19, 1989, murder of Savannah, Georgia police officer Mark MacPhail. MacPhail was working as a security guard at a restaurant when he intervened in an argument between several men in a nearby parking lot. He was shot in the heart and face without having drawn his gun. One of the men, Sylvester “Redd” Coles, went to police and implicated Davis in the killing, and Davis was arrested four days later. During Davis’ 1991 trial, many witnesses testified they had seen Davis shoot MacPhail. Two others testified that Davis had confessed the murder to them. The murder weapon was never found, and no physical evidence linked Davis to the crime. Throughout his trial and subsequent appeals, Davis has maintained his innocence. Davis was convicted and sentenced to death in August 1991.

(I discovered the work of this leading world authority on memory in the late 1990s, when I was writing and raging about the the recovered memory ruse. I also heard Dr. Loftus testify in court thereby securing a man’s liberty. As is obvious from the prominence of characters like Drs. Phil and Drew Pinsky, the profession of psychology is festooned with popularizers, poor thinkers and plain charlatans. Elizabeth F. Loftus has always stood apart.)

On the other hand, Joshua Komisarjevsky needs killing.

He and his accomplice, Steven Hayes (already waiting to die), were arrested at the scene of the crime—the Petit family home in Cheshire, Connecticut. He and Hayes had just killed all three—and raped two—of the women of the Petit family. They then proceeded to burn down the house.

UPDATE I (Sept. 20):Breaking News vial Amnesty International: The Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles denied clemency to Troy Davis on Tuesday. This means that very little is standing in the way of the state executing a potentially innocent man this Wednesday.” Amnesty International is “calling on the Board to reconsider its decision, and on the Chatham County (Savannah) District Attorney Larry Chisolm to do the right thing.”

More from Amnesty International:

Death penalty supporters like Bob Barr, former Texas Governor Mark White, and former FBI Director William Sessions also support clemency in this case, for the same reason. And at least three jurors from Davis’ trial have asked for his execution to be called off. Putting Troy Davis to death would be a grave injustice to those jurors who believe they sentenced Davis to death based on questionable information.

Although I want to see the Troy Davis death sentence commuted, I don’t like the way this cause celebre has the media omitting mention of the name of the victim. “A police officer from Savannah” is how this lot is referring to the late Mark Allen MacPhail. Google throws up not much about this heroic, off-duty officer. You have to dig:

The 27-year-old former Army Ranger was moonlighting on a security detail when he ran to help a homeless man, who had cried out because he was being pistol whipped. MacPhail was shot three times before he could draw his handgun.

Understandably, The victim’s widow, Joan MacPhail-Harris, has expressed the need for closure. She believes, however, that executing Davis will give her a sense of finality. Killing a man who may not have pulled the trigger is not the kind of closure a victim has the right to demand. A commutation of the death sentence would probably still mean life in jail for Davis. That should suffice.

UPDATE II: One more Media Matters con man (A Liberal’s Moral Compass)

Classical Liberalism, Founding Fathers, Ilana Mercer, Journalism, Justice, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Media, Morality, Natural Law, Propaganda, Rights, South-Africa

The following is excerpted from y “One more Media Matters con man,” now on WND.COM:

“Terry Krepel authors a website called ConWebWatch. ‘The focus of ConWebWatch,’ Krepel declares on the site, is ‘the ConWeb—large, well-funded, Internet-based conservative ‘news’ organizations [such as] NewsMax, WorldNetDaily and CNSNews.com.’ (I’ve inserted words in parenthesis so as to alert the reader to the edit. Accurate reporting should enable readers to distinguish editorial from authorial input.)

As a biographical note, Krepel adds that he ‘became employed by Media Matters for America in July 2004.’ At his Huffington-Post perch, Krepel is duly described as a ‘Media Matters senior editor.’ Media Matters for America purports to be a ‘progressive research and information center dedicated to comprehensively monitoring, analyzing, and correcting conservative misinformation in the U.S. media.’

Our ace writer ought to have stated that he has been employed at Media Matters since 2004. ‘I became employed’ thus might be ugly English for, ‘I was once but am no longer employed by Media Matters.’ Conversely, perhaps this is a fellow whose intelligible written English is confined to the words ‘racial discrimination’?

Himself Krepel describes as ‘a veteran of 17 years in professional journalism as a newspaper writer, designer and editor. I know the ins and outs of the business and how it can be used and misused—and I see how the conservative Internet media is misusing journalism.’

His mission Krepel defines as documenting ‘the distortions, excesses and hypocrisy of these conservative media sites.’ Almost daily Krepel will dissect what Joseph Farah, Erik Rush, Aaron Klein, Jerome Corsi and others on WND.com and CNSNews.com have to say.

His method, crows Krepel, is to ‘hoist the conservative media on the petard of hypocrisy, accuracy and objectivity’ by ‘using their own words.’

Untrue; at least in my case.

Krepel has libeled me, but not by ‘using [my] own words'” … Disputes about democracy notwithstanding, there can be no disagreement over Krepel’s crappy journalism.”…

The complete column is “One more Media Matters con man,” now on WND.COM.

My new book, “Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa,” is available from Amazon.

A newly formatted, splendid Kindle copy is also on sale.

UPDATE I (Sep. 2): With the same ease with which Krepel left-off quotations around my original words—so as to seamlessly introduce his interpretations of those words—so too could this purveyor of crappy journalism have suddenly “added” the required quotations, once exposed. In anticipation, I have captured the original (June 12) Krepel item. The omission begins with, “Washington and Westminster,” and ends with “the disaster that is post-apartheid South Africa.” Here it is in the original:

UPDATE II: A LIBERAL’S MORAL COMPASS. Terry Krepel thinks he has hit a home run on the Facebook thread at “One more Media Matters con man.” There, Krepel implies that Eugene Terre’Blanche deserved to die, even though the old man was the non-aggressor at the crime scene, and had served his time in jail for his past transgressions (which I am not here adjudicating).
Heaven’s! I’m speechless. All Krepel has demonstrated is that left-liberals (like himself) are every bit as blood thirsty and bereft of a moral compass as the neoconservatives they often critique.
Every remotely sane individual can see where this kind of sentiment leads. And every libertarian can see why the US is in such terrible moral shape. There is no difference between affiliates of the political factions as far as ethics go. “So long as my guy is killing off the guys I dislike—I’m WINNING”: That’s the pervading mindset. Justice be damned.

What They Do In Dictatorships

Democracy, Environmentalism & Animal Rights, Ethics, Individual Rights, Journalism, Justice, Law, Media, Middle East, Private Property

The courts, stacked as they are with judges who work for the dictator, want to put a brave rebel behind bars for shooting a predator on his property. The rebel shot and killed a wild, extremely dangerous animal that thrives in the dictator’s country. All the tribesman did was to aggressively repel from human habitat a creature that had become brazen, making itself at home near the man’s children as they played. It used to be that these tribesmen instilled fear in encroaching creatures. But thanks to decades of cultural and legal emasculation under the dictator, the queered men folk are no longer licensed to protect home and hearth. If they do, they lose their liberty.

I bet you thought this was Anderson Cooper reporting from Libya, botching the job of journalism, as is his wont.

No, this is about an American, one among many (Jeremy M. Hill, 33), who pleaded not guilty in U.S. District Court to killing a grizzly bear with a rifle on his 20-acre property near Porthill, Idaho, at the Canadian border.

Jeremy Hill has six kids, ranging in age from 14 years old to 10 months old. At least five were home when the grizzly was killed, Mike Hill said. The bears had gone after some pigs in a pen that the kids had been raising, Mike Hill said.

I wonder how many Libyans have been arrested for shooting wild animals that threatened their families.

If given the choice, I’d choose the right to defend my life and property over the vote, any day.