Why the Execution of a White Supremacist Murderer Matters Too

Years from now, I believe the death penalty will be condemned because of what it reflects about us, not the individuals the state has killed in our name. We are a society that locks hundreds of thousands of people into small cages for decades, and then arbitrarily selects a tiny handful to pull out in the middle of the night and kill. That's who we are. And the horror of that is what sickens me, even more than the fact that Troy Davis might have been innocent.

Future generations will look back on the institution of capital punishment as we do the institutions of slavery, lynching, and Jim Crow. We condemn slavery not only because African men and women who had committed no crime were its victims, but because it is morally abhorrent for human beings to buy, sell, and own one another. So it is with the death penalty.

Requests to sign petitions for Troy Davis flooded my inbox over the past several weeks. I'm glad they did, and I signed them. I would have signed one for Lawrence Brewer*, too. But there were none. It worries me that many of the more than 600,000 people around the world who protested Troy Davis' execution did not even know about the impending end of Lawrence Brewer's life. And it worries me that many of those who did know about it did not lose any sleep over it.

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*White supremacist gang member Lawrence Russell Brewer was executed on Sept. 21 for the infamous dragging death slaying of James Byrd Jr., a black man from East Texas.

Source: Ty Alper, The Huffington Post, Sept. 25, 2011

Related article:

SMU Human Rights Activist Rick Halperin: 'No Such Thing As a Better Victim', Rick Halperin, September 25, 2011