race and the death penalty

I was struck by our timing with this independent study. Just as we finalized our discussions and decision to go forward with the group study, the Troy Davis case entered - with such great force - the progressive public imagination. The progressive public imagination, we should underscore, because in reality the mainstream has had little interest in the case and indeed the problem of executing innocent people. That's plenty troubling.


But I also noted that, at the same time as the Davis case spread across the progressive imagination and all associated media, Lawrence Brewer, one of the men who murdered James Byrd, was also executed - without much, if any, attention.

What caught my attention as I reflected on this terrible coincidence is how race and racism factors into even progressive assessments of the death penalty, and imprisonment in general. In this case, I cannot think of a less sympathetic person than Brewer. He was a white supremacist who, with friends, acted on those ideas in brutally torturing and killing a black man. His death is not at all like Davis' death, in many ways. Davis very well may have been innocent and that is (or ought to be) horrifying to any human with a conscience. Brewer was clearly guilty and a shockingly terrible person. And yet I think cases like Brewer's test our commitment to anti-death penalty feelings and activism. Are we selectively opposed to capital punishment (it might be that not all of us in this group are opposed) or are we opposed in moral principle, no matter the crime or criminal?

I say all of this to ask a very intimate question: who are we, morally, if the character of the executed factors into our assessment of the justice or injustice of capital punishment? Are we discerning because we consider the character of the executed? Or do we fail when we take leave of principle and get lost in the judgement of particulars? (Brewer is a good case study because he's so profoundly despicable as a person.)

I'll be plain here: I think we're all innocent at the point of execution. No guilt or crime dissolves our right to life. But I'll be plain again: I didn't feel outrage when Brewer was executed. I've been reflecting on that and have very conflicted feelings. I expect more out of myself. It's just wrong to kill. Capital punishment is state-sponsored murder. But I also don't sit well with the idea of feeling sadness or outrage about a white supremacist - who'd love to see me and my family suffer and die - suffering this injustice. And yet it is an injustice.