It has been almost a year since the State of Georgia put Troy Davis to death against the back drop of three words that have scarred the conscience of the USA: Too Much Doubt.
But the authorities went ahead and amidst the protests, desperate last minute appeals and thousands of individuals taking to the streets around the world, they strapped him to a table and killed him.
And now, in a matter of months, the whole grotesque spectacle may be played out once again; this time in the state of Missouri. The man facing the long walk to the execution chamber is Reggie Clemons, accused of being an accomplice in the murder of two young women, who were pushed off a disused bridge in 1991. Yet like Troy Davis, enormous questions remain over whether he actually has blood on his hands at all.
For one thing, there is not a shred of physical evidence linking Reggie to the crime. Then there is the horrendous litany of discrepancies on which Reggie’s conviction was based. Proven incitement of the jury, a strong possibility of police brutality, improper dismissal of black jurors and contradictory witness statements, to name just a few aspects of this case, paint a picture of at best a vehemently unsound verdict and at worst a lynching contrived amongst the racial tensions of 1990s Missouri. That is certainly the view of the juror who said that had she known the what she knew now, she would not have voted for the death penalty.
Yet in spite of the well documented failings of the legal system, Reggie has spent almost two decades on death row, coming within days of execution before being granted a temporary reprieve. Now his fate is about to be sealed: on 17 September a Special Master appointed by the Supreme Court of Missouri will spend one week reviewing the case for a final time. The Special Master can free Reggie, commute his sentence to life in prison or uphold the death sentence.
If it is the latter there will be no more chances: a date will be set, an execution chamber will be prepared and a man will be killed. A man over’s whose guilt there is simply too much doubt….again.
Jesus wanted social justice for the world. I have discovered a new book that shows how His message was covered up by His Gentile followers. The church has blinkered its past. It's no secret that Jesus strove to bring in the kingdom of justice here on earth and his followers implemented it in the communal society we read about in Acts 2:44-47. The church’s dirty secret is that the Jewish followers of Jesus continued to hold his vision dear, later influencing such sects as the Bogomils and even, according to their own oral traditions, the Doukhobors. After exterminating the Jewish followers of Jesus, the church’s historians buried this history of justice-seeking but an author by the name of Lawrence Goudge has exhumed their story and presented it in 'Cover-Up: How the Church Silenced Jesus's True Heirs.' This book does the world a great service by illuminating for the first time this vital part of the history of social justice. I found it at http://tinyurl.com/69cazll
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