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salgentile:

A brief reflection on the Troy Davis case and the death penalty in America. Last year I wrote about the execution of Utah death row inmate Ronnie Lee Gardner, who was only the third person executed by firing squad in the U.S. since the reinstatement of the death penalty in 1977. I spoke to lawyers involved in the case and jurors who had since come to regret their vote for the death penalty. In an affidavit recanting her sentence, for example, one juror, Pauline Davies, said that she had felt “coerced into voting for death.” That’s probably the most powerful quote I’ve ever personally come across in my short career as a journalist.

The two cases are very different in a number of ways. But they have something simple in common, and I think it’s worth considering as we debate anew the legitimacy of the death penalty: It inflicts a grave personal toll on us, on the jurors, on anyone thrust into the position of having to decide whether a man should die. This is not to diminish in any way the very grave toll on the accused himself. I just think we should also take into account the price we pay as a society that puts people to death, regardless of how you feel about capital punishment.

In the Gardner case, Davies held out for days, locking herself in the bathroom to avoid the immense pressure she had come under from her fellow jurors. “I can’t be responsible for a person’s death,” she told them. Finally, however, Davies relented, acquiescing to the consensus that Gardner should die.

Twenty-five years later, when she wrote her affidavit recanting her vote for the death penalty, I spoke with a fellow juror of hers, Colleen Cline. “My heart really goes out to her, because I know that it’s been a terrible thing,” Cline said of Davies. She, too, had come to regret her decision. A lawyer for Gardner came knocking on her door one day, 25 years after that trial, asking her to sign an affidavit recanting her decision.

Cline recalled what the lawyer told her. “I’ve been trying to put this behind me for 25 years,” he said. Cline responded, “‘Well, we all have.’”

This is totally fascinating.  Reblog if you care about society or just your own humanity.