Revealing Quote of the Day: How innocence doesn't matter to the courts

First, a little necessary background: Troy Davis was a young Black man in the South who was convicted of murder and sentenced to death. However, it was soon determined that he was actually innocent of the crime, and the evidence for his innocence was convincing enough to sway even the more conservative of law enforcement officers, prosecutors and judges.

But that wasn't good enough for Clarence Thomas of the Supreme Court, who then sided with Justice Scalia (remember, the bloke from that "new police professionalism" tagline we've all been waiting to see put in effect) in dissenting and throwing Davis on Death Row anyway.

Yet they already had evidence, and plenty of it, that denoted his innocence of the accused crime. So why did they have Davis killed anyway?Their answering statement is one that is extremely revealing – and highly disturbing:

This Court has never held that the Constitution forbids the execution of a convicted defendant who has had a full and fair trial but is later able to convince a habeas court that he is “actually” innocent. Quite to the contrary, we have repeatedly left that question unresolved, while expressing considerable doubt that any claim based on alleged “actual innocence” is constitutionally cognizable.

For those of you not fluent in legalspeak: what this basically says, is that in the end, it simply doesn't matter if you're innocent or not. If you've exhausted all your legal aides and remedies in court, then too bad if evidence comes up later that does prove you to be innocent: you're already indicted and sentenced, and that's that. Too late, game over.

What a wonderful and fair criminal system, no? One where criminals can actually be proven innocent, and still be sentenced to death. Doesn't anyone see the horrible contradiction in that?

(via Dispatches From the Culture Wars)