This may be the edgiest piece I have ever written.
As we celebrate – yes celebrate - the execution of Troy Davis I started to think of a neat little movie to write.
What – you don’t think we are celebrating his death in this society. I am sorry, but was that cheers I heard when it was noted how many people were “put down” in Texas over the last few years? Or do I have a hearing impediment when I heard “Let him die” at the big GOP debate?
This is the people we have become. We love violence – we put crosshairs on our leaders and wonder we are so coarse.
Out institutions are so screwed up that punishment of those with ties never quite matches the crimes. Look at the Lackawanna judges who put kid after kid away for their own profit. Look at the prosecutor of the Duke Lacrosse case. Since we are running a for-profit prison system in this country; I wonder how many innocents they placed in jail as they have created their own reasonable doubt? (BTW, isn’t that for-profit prison business being paid for by taxpayers anyway?)
But I was thinking about writing a movie that picks up today – about Troy Davis. My movie would open with a fictional Troy Davis being put down. The facts and the doubts would be roughly the same. In my fictional version the executed would have a son. The news people would be all over kid are part of today’s news. The Nancy Grace-like smarmyness would infect the kid.
The real killer of the cop would be found and would confess of his own volition – to the kid and the authorities who do nothing. The kid grows up with revenge on his mind. He learns the trade of death by reading mysteries and takes criminal justice courses in college.
He has his targets lined up: the prosecutor who withheld the evidence, the judge who stopped the testimony that would have exonerated the father, the parole board, the governor, the media maven who tried and convicted for fun and profit on TV (she wrote a book after the execution detailing what she knew and did not reveal at the time). Even AFTER it was obvious that each of these folks lied for their own reasons – they still each had an untaken chance to undo the execution of the innocent man – each let the man die.
The kid hunts each of his targets. Some show remorse and are grateful for the chance to make it up to the kid. The revenge here is to assist the kid in the next target.
Some are already dead with a letter of an apology.
For some – the sight of the kid induces suicide.
Some show remorse but are useless to his cause. They are put down the same way the father was, by another target.
He lets the senile go.
Some are so callous and unfeeling they tell the kid they would do it again even WITH the conflicting information. The kid knows killing this person will do nothing so he kills her family in front of her.
When the kid has meted out his justice he turns himself in. He is brought before a jury. He admits his guilt. He also stands defiant as he lays out the fact no one sought justice for HIS father.
He gets off.
