What have we come to?

Texas is preparing to execute someone who is quite possibly, even probably, innocent. They're getting good at executing innocent people.

What's perhaps more disturbing is Scalia's recent dissent in the Troy Davis case:

This court has never held that the Constitution forbids the execution of a convicted defendant who had a full and fair trial but is later able to convince a habeas court that he is 'actually' innocent.

Read that again. Fundamentally, Scalia is questioning whether once convicted in a fair trial, an innocent person has a Constitutional right to be freed, or even spared execution.

I think he's gone completely round the bend. Read the preamble:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Now read it again. This is the core, defining sentence for the Constitution. This justifies its very existence, and the existence of the government which it authorizes. We create and authorize the government to act on our behalf.

The Constitution is not a weapon against us. It is our best defense against tyranny, against injustice. Can there be a greater injustice than our government killing innocent people when there is an extremely simple alternative?

This is not collateral damage from a missile strike in Baghdad. This is a conscious decision to kill someone rather than commute a sentence when there are clear signs of a failure in the judicial system.

What madness is this?

How many must die?

If the only evidence that convicted him was not physical evidence – it was the evidence of witnesses. Seven of the nine recanted. How can you say that's enough to take a life? –Reverend Al Sharpton

How to recognize when the news is grim? When you find yourself agreeing with Al Sharpton.

I don't know whether Troy Davis is innocent, and neither do any of the others who are speaking out against his execution.

But I do know that executing an innocent man achieves nothing. Next time someone says "I'd rather execute an innocent man than let a guilty one walk free," point out that every time we execute an innocent person the guilty party does walk free! Three crimes are perpetrated: the original crime, the murder of the innocent by the government, and the abdication of the responsibility of finding the real criminal.

How many must die before we recognize the obvious: that the death penalty is flawed, and if we're going to use it, it should only be in the most egregious, glaringly obvious cases. Troy Davis is going to be executed with no physical evidence and shaky eyewitness testimony.

If that doesn't appall you, then ask yourself this: what is preventing you, or someone you love, from being put to death for someone else's crime?