Prison bans pastor from visiting Troy Davis before execution

[The Straight Story]

Prison bans pastor from visiting Troy Davis before execution

Troy Davis has been executed in Georgia. He was convicted of murder 22 years ago but always maintained his innocence. He was 42.

The condemned man’s pastor, Rev Raphael Warnock, was not allowed to visit him during his final hours. No explanation was given. Rev Warnock, who is Senior Pastor at the Ebenezer Baptist Church said: “We wanted to do a pastoral visit, to offer comfort and last rights if you will, to pray. It's another insult to this injustice."

Addressing some of his last words to the family of his alleged victim, off-duty police officer Mark MacPhail, Davis insisted that the 1989 killing was not his fault. He said: "I was not responsible for what happened that night. I did not have a gun. I was not the one who took the life of your father, son, brother."

....

The US currently executes more people than any country in the World except China, Iran, North Korea and Yemen. And although just over 60 percent of the public still support capital punishment, that number appears to have been slowly falling since the 1990s.

http://www.indcatholicnews.com/news.php?viewStory=18942

[PufPuf23]

1. This is sick that a human facing a scheduled state-sponsored homocide

was not allowed spiritual counselor or other human support in last hours yet the "last meal" is almost a cultural joke.

I do not believe the death penalty is ever just.

The procedure of appeals and so on in itself is cruel and unusual punishment and not equal for all defendants.

Politicians, and military and corporations directly and indirectly kill innocents and the pattern is to obscure to the People and allies the depravity on the ground in agressive wars for resources, territory, and, often convergent) ideology.

The social investment in the military, miltarization of the police, privatization of prisons and security, military ocupation and other lapse in the sovereignity of other Nation, and high and arbitrary class and race based rate of imprisonment are a national disgraces.