Later today, all of us will become complicit in state-sanctioned murder, yet again, of someone who may very well be innocent. Ironically for some of us, this murder comes during the Jewish season of repentance, a time at which the possibility of amending the record, of righting one’s wrongs, is a central theme. But of course, there is no amending the record once Troy Davis is dead.
The various hangmen in Georgia have not cited Scripture as justification for killing Troy Davis, who probably did not commit the murder of which he was convicted. But they may as well have. American moral values are largely derived from religious values, and those values come from the Bible. Or do they? Did not Jesus Christ effectively abolish the death penalty by requiring that those who cast stones be innocent themselves? (John 8:7) And did not the rabbis of the Talmud contemporaneously state that a Sanhedrin who puts to death one person every 7 years is to be considered “bloody”? (Mishna Makkot 1:10, BT Mak. 7a)
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