The recent cases of Amanda Knox and Troy Davis represent two grave miscarraiges of justice. In the Amanda Knox case the injustice by the Government of Italy was finally corrected after she served four years in prison, but the grave injustice in the Troy Davis case can no longer be corrected because of his wrongful execution by the State of Georgia.
There are many parallels between these two abuses of the police and judicial power of two different governments. Both were murder cases, both were based on flimsy and mishandled evidence against those wrongfully convicted, both had admissions of guilt by other parties (in the Knox case, the owner of a bar where she and the victim both worked; in the Davis case, one of the so-called "witnesses" who recanted his testimony.) And, in both cases, the so-called judicial process served the needs of those governments rather than the needs of justice and the rights of the accused.
For Amanda Knox, the long ordeal is finally over, as the combination of world-wide outrage and defects in her original prosecution led to a new trial and her freedom. For Troy Davis, the much-longer ordeal is also finally over, due to his execution which was carried out in the face of world-wide outrage and the preponderance of the evidence of his innocence.
Troy Davis is far from the first very-likely-innocent person to be executed in the United States based on trumped-up so-called evidence which was later recanted by those who were coerced by police authorities to give false testimony. Indeed, hundreds of death-row inmates around the nation have been exonerated, often by DNA evidence proving that someone else did the crime for which they were wrongfully convicted. Yes, Troy Davis is far from the first such person wrongfully executed in this barbaric ritual -- but, may he be the last!
