While many in this community hold their breath during Troy Davis' 11th hour bid for life, the local news here in Georgia ran a local new story in which the murdered police officer's mother, Anneliese McPhail, said that 'We just want some peace."
In the context of the story, it was difficult to tell whether she was complaining about the fact that she was being bothered by reporters (The lead-in to the story stated that Ms. McPhail had not traveled to Jackson for the execution, but was staying in Columbus), or whether she was making a statement that the execution itself would bring her peace. While I definitely understand the former, and my heart aches for this mother who lost her son to violence, the latter proposition made me sad.
In reading more, I found a longer quote that clarified her feelings:
""This delay again is very upsetting and I think really unfair to us, because we want this situation closed," the slain officer's mother, Anneliese MacPhail, told CNN's "Anderson Cooper 360." She said the execution would bring her "relief and maybe some peace."
There are many reasons to oppose the death penalty: the possibility of our fallible justice system imposing an irrevocable sentence on an innocent man, a belief in the sanctity of human life, even the lives of criminals. But one of the most powerful arguments against the death penalty is sometimes ignored by the anti-death community--the incredible damage that the death penalty inflicts on the families who's wounds are supposed to be healed by the blood of another.
I don't want to talk about the possible innocence of Troy Davis. I know many people are convinced of his innocence, and his lawyers definitely make a good case. I have also discussed this issue with my uncle, a man who has prosecuted death penalty cases, and he claimed that later reversals of testimony are common and have never convinced him. Frankly, I don't know whether Troy Davis is innocent. Even if he IS guilty, he still never should have been executed, because the death penalty only intensifies and extends the cycle of anger, vengeance, and grief that is created by violence.
Ms. McPhail expects relief if Troy Davis dies. I don't think she'll get it. In the end, what she will get is to see yet another grieving family--they watch another family experience their own pain, as the executed person's siblings and spouse and parents and children watch their loved one taken from them before their very eyes. They see a whole other group of victims of violence created, in their name.
In fact,a recent studyshowed that as the justification for the death penalty has relied more heavily on sympathy for the victim's family--the terrible lie that this kind of catharsis is healing--more families are opposing the death penalty. According to the study:
In the two decades following the rise of retribution and closure for victims as primary justification for the death penalty, there has been a significant increase in opposition to executions from families of victims.
The report stated, “The growing covictim opposition to the execution of the offenders in their individual cases highlights the resistance of victims’ families to accepting the responsibility for the state-sanctioned death of the offenders, specifically, and to the notion that the court can provide closure, more generally.”
If Davis dies tonight, McPhail will still not have her son back, which is what she wants more than anything else. The blood of Troy Davis redeems nothing, resolves nothing, and salves no wounds, whether he is guilty or not.
The only path to healing is forgiveness. Christianity preaches the amazing power of forgiveness, but it is something that this Christian nation forgets all too often.
Our criminal justice system, in pursuing the death penalty, too often steps into the role of spiritual counselor, telling the families of victims that the blood of another will ease their pain, that they will get some kind of relief and satisfaction by seeing the person who robbed them of their joy put to death. And then, after decades of waiting for this to happen, of being promised over and over that there is a solution to their hurts, they come against that hard wall of realization that what is gone is gone, and until they can let go of their anger they cannot move on, whether the perpetrator dies or not.
As I pray for Troy Davis, I also pray for the McPhails, and I hope that, no matter the outcome of this case, they come to understand the healing power of love and forgiveness.