On Monday, death row inmate Troy Davis and his NAACP team gained a big win, when the Supreme Court ruled to grant Davis, who has been incarcerated for almost 20 years, a final hearing to prove his innocence and escape execution for allegedly killing off-duty police officer Mark McPhail. NAACP President and CEO Benjamin Jealous explains why Davis' evidentiary hearing is historic and how you can make an impact in the justice system.
How long has the NAACP been involved with the Troy Davis case?
Benjamin Jealous: In Georgia, we've been involved for four years. Nationally, we got involved about four months ago, so that's been the history.
According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the Supreme Court's "order [is] unlike any it has issued in almost half a century." Were you surprised by the ruling?
Jealous: Oh, very much so. I mean, the lawyers said we had a 1 percent chance at best, and those were the lawyers who were on our side. So we were very surprised. Their decision was correct; it was absolutely what the spirit and the letter of the Constitution compelled the court to do. Our nation never intended for the courts to put people to death based on procedure -- in contradiction to the facts. So what people should be disturbed about is that this is the first time this happened in the past 50 years.
Which brings me to my next question, what are your thoughts about Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia's stance?
Jealous: It's specious and deeply disturbing, saying that we should execute people based on procedure in contravention of the facts or in a refusal to consider the facts. That logic is evil. There's no other way to describe it. It's a very base logic that contradicts everything that this country is supposed to be about.
How do you feel about the state of the penal system and the large black population affected by it?
Jealous:ffected by it?
We have one black man in the White House, and we have a million in prison. Our country is 5 percent of the global population and 25 percent of the global penal population. You can't even begin to solve the social ills that plague this country, the challenges, and the school system and the job market unless you engage the criminal justice crisis in this country. It bankrupts our schools, it depletes our communities of working men, it robs mothers from their children, it forces children into foster care. It's the crisis by which we will all be judged. For every century in this country, there has been a crisis that disproportionately affects black people by which we always judge the people who live in that time. If you lived in the 20th century, the question is what did you do to end Jim Crow? If you lived in the 19th century, the question is what did you do to end slavery? If you lived in the 18th century, the question is what did you do to end the slave trade? And for people living in the next century looking back at this one, they will ask, what did you do to confront, to transform, the reality that this country was the biggest incarcerator and that black people and the black community are being destroyed by that plague?
If Troy Davis were to go free, how would it affect both the wrongly incarcerated and the justice system?
Jealous: The only thing that is more encouraging to somebody on death row is seeing someone else walk off death row and seeing yourself walk off death row. This case, unfortunately for hundreds, if not thousands, of people in this country serving time is that they're serving time for crimes they didn't commit. And that's just what the mathematics add up to, what the odds add up to. This is a sign of hope. For all of the folks [who are wrongly incarcerated], what this says is that the justice system can work and justice can be done. Even when the lawyers on your side say there's a 1 percent chance, there's still a chance, and you got to push for it.
Stephen Bright, of the Southern Center for Human Rights in Atlanta, said that the shifting of the burden of proof on to Davis is a much more difficult proposition for him to withstand. Do you agree?
Jealous: Well, it's much better than going to the execution chamber. You've got to remember where he starts from. He didn't just start from a presumption of guilt; he really started with being on pace to being executed within two months. And it is a tough place and it is a tough court. I think that we have to celebrate this moment and then we get to focus on the next. Going in to a district court in Georgia is going to a court in Georgia. And going in there with the presumption that you're guilty and you have to prove that you're innocent is a high bar. But at the same time, seven of the nine witnesses have recanted, and six more supporting their side of the story have come forward. So we have great hope that the court will hear and act on the truth. So Stephen's right, but again, the lawyers said we had a 1 percent chance, but now the chance is much better than it was.
Do you think that the justice system will improve with President Barack Obama in office and Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor's appointment?
Jealous: We have a president who knows the South Side of Chicago. We have a justice that knows the South Bronx, and that matters. When President Barack Obama spoke at our convention, he talked about the fact that our country was the biggest incarcerator, and he talked about how even with that status and even if we imprisonment of all the races of people in this country, more than any other country on this planet, we still incarcerate black people five times more than we do whites. So the fact that it's on his mind, and that he's willing to talk about it publicly matters, because that encourages other people to actually pick up the baton and run the race.
How can the public become empowered enough to affect how law is being practiced?
Jealous: People can't stand by. The justice system tends to make people feel powerless. And the reality is there is a connection between the court of public opinion and the court of law. So when people say, "What can I do? I'm not a lawyer, and even if I am, that's not my client," the answer is speak out, encourage someone else speak out, let the court know, the D.A. know, let the Supreme Court know that you are concerned. That this is not what you signed up for as an American.
If you look back three or four months ago, I said to my national staff, "We are going to take everything that we have and put it on this case." The people were outraged in Norway, the people were outraged in Germany, they were outraged California, they were outraged in New York, but we sat down with the D.A. and they said, "We haven't heard from anyone in this community." So we got together with the activists at Amnesty International, and together we put down 12,000 signatures from the local community on his desk, in addition to 55,000 from around the country. And in the process, we sat down with the publisher from the local newspaper, whose reporters have been covering this as a cop killer case for the last 20 years. We walked him through why this case was different, and his newspaper coverage turned 180 degrees. And then, there they are, front-page photographs of petitions being handed to the D.A. staff, and ultimately that message gets to the Supreme Court clerks, and they see us on Bill Maher's show talking about it, and they hear us on Tom Joyner talking about it, and that has an impact. The death row process is a numbing process for everyone involved. The Supreme Court clerks process dozens and dozens of these sorts of appeals every year, and they always say no. And that's what activists have to understand: You can actually influence the Supreme Court. You can get them to pay attention to something that they normally would probably just process away.
Go to the I Am Troy web site to learn how you can help save the lives of those unjustly incarcerated.
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