The Troy Davis Roller Coaster Continues

After the US Supreme Court rejected Troy Davis' cert petition, the state of Georgia set an execution date of October 27th. Yesterday, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals (federal court) granted another stay. They asked the sides to brief an interesting question that essentially boils down to can we have sufficient confidence in a verdict to uphold a conviction while not feeling confident enough to uphold a death sentence.

While I am happy anytime an execution is stayed, I am a little troubled by an idea that seems fairly prevalent among the public, and I believe also among capital juries. There seems to be an idea that if we're not sure of a defendant's guilt, we should err on the side of convicting, but sentencing to life in prison. Somehow if we have a doubt about the defendant's guilt, the remedy seems to have transformed into a life sentence rather than a new trial or a flat-out acquittal. Because it would be a travesty to kill a guy who is actually innocent. But isn't it also a pretty big travesty to incarcerate a man for the rest of his life if he is actually innocent?

It seems to me if we don't have enough confidence in a defendant's guilt to justify a death sentence, we shouldn't be incarcerating the guy at all. In Troy Davis' case, we really shouldn't just commute the sentence to life and walk away. Nor should we walk away from other defendant's who have compelling cases for innocence or who suffered serious trial flaws just because those defendants were not sentenced to death. A life spent wrongly incarcerated is just as wasted as one prematurely terminated by the state.

One of the reasons many people prefer life in prison to the death penalty is the ability to correct the mistakes. I hope the courts that look at Troy Davis' case and those like his don't decide they've sufficiently corrected mistakes by commuting death sentences to life. If there is so much doubt about a defendant's guilt that a court feels uncomfortable allowing a death sentence to be carried out, how can they feel comfortable allowing the conviction to stand?

Update

The dog is not broken. She is, in fact, suffering no ill effects from her mishap last night. She was subdued, even scared, for the rest of the evening. She curled up on our laps and was not at all a pest as we ate. Around 11, she stood up from my lap and started kissing me on my face. (Yes, I let my dog lick me. On the face. Deal with it.) She was letting me know that all was forgiven, though she still wasn't exactly a happy dog.

This morning, though, she was back to her usual happy self. Don't ever tell me dogs don't smile. Last night, she was most definitely not smiling. One look at her face and you could see she was sad. Today, she is back to smiling.

I like happy, smiling dog much better than sad, scared dog.

Maybe she's not entirely over her fright, though. She hasn't wanted to play with the orange squeaky ball today.

I broke my dog

We were playing with her favorite toy, the orange squeaky ball. As we usually do, we played tug with the ball. I guess I tugged too hard while she was standing up on her hind legs. She flipped backwards and landed hard on her back. Did I mention we were not in the carpeted living room but the tiled front entry?

She did not yelp and got right up, but she is clearly not well. She ran away from me, trembling and looking scared, tail tucked. How heartbreaking to see your dog run away from you, scared. My friend showed up at the front door at the very moment that Maddie ran away from the front room.

We both have checked her out. Clearly she hurts somewhere, but we think it's just a bruised tail bone. She has jumped on and off furniture, but she is most definitely subdued. And she is not eager to be near me. I am sure she will be fine (I am), but I am not entirely sure how long it will be until she forgives me.

I admit I have already tried to bribe her with a cheese biscuit. She has not eaten the biscuit. Not a good sign.

Someone did not learn Prince's lesson

Beyonce has given herself a new name:


Sasha Fierce.


There is no joke I can add to this. That name is all the punchline any comedian could hope for. I do think it is clear that Christian from Project Runway must be her stylist.

TMI

To my male readers: stop reading this post now. It's about women things that you have no interest in or desire to know anything about. Move on to the next post.

Ok, ladies, now that it's just us, there's something I just have to get off my chest. Be forewarned -- I'm about to share lots of personal thoughts on feminine hygiene. My mother has generally been a wonderful mother, raising me well, devoting her time and energy to me, etc. But she failed me in one big way. She raised me to be afraid of tampons.

Mom grew up in an era when tampons were not commonly used. She thought beltless maxi pads were an amazing revolution. Soon after I was born in the early 70s, she had a hysterectomy. So when tampons became a really big thing in the 70s, she had no need for them and thus no first-hand experience with them. But she did hear all about the Toxic Shock scare. I think she even knew someone who had become really sick from TSS.

So Mom thought tampons were really bad. When I started having my period, she bought me maxi pads and only maxi pads. Tampons were verbotten. And being a teenager, I was terrified to try something as scary as the TSS sticks without the help of an experienced user. So I stuck with pads. Thankfully, the ultraslim ones came out when I was still a teenager! But I always hated my period. I hated the smell. I hated the mess. I hated having to be so careful about what clothes I wore. I hated having to be careful about how I sat, what activities I took part in, and how I stood up. I hated that I had to carry a purse or a bag because you couldn't discreetly carry a pad around in your pocket. I never got a good night's sleep because I had to sleep in an unnatural position for me to prevent leakage. And I hated feeling like I was wearing a diaper. I was just always completely miserable for 4 or 5 days.

I finally broke free from the chains of my mother's tampon phobia when I was 25 and getting ready to go to law school. If I was going to be just like Ally McBeal, surely I had to liberate myself from my maxi pad prison. Ally never seemed as abjectly miserable as I did and she wore such fabulous suits that I wouldn't be able to wear if I stuck with pads. So I decided I was a big girl now and could figure out how to use a damn tampon. I made the switch and I have never looked back. Turns out I should never have been forced to be a pad user. I am a tampon girl through and through.

Now I hardly notice my period. I'm aware of it, of course, but the only real impact it has on me anymore is in my sex life. And cramps, but I can live with those. I never feel smelly or messy or gross. I wear whatever I want. I run or lift weights. I go anywhere because those little tampons fit in most any pocket.

I hate to admit it, but I feel a little bit of resentment towards my mother. I didn't have to hate that one week each month. I didn't have to feel awkward and smelly and disgusting. I know she meant well and just didn't want me to be unhealthy, but damn, maybe I would have grown into my self-confidence a little earlier if I had felt really free to find my own feminine hygiene comfort zone instead of being relegated to my mom's.

And, yes, I know if this is the worst thing I can say about my mom, I got pretty lucky in the mom department!

The other day I had to stop for gas before heading home from several hours away. I had already driven 3 hours that day to present at a seminar. I had not really yet eaten anything substantive that day.

At the gas pump, I swiped my credit card and let the gas flow (at $2.27 a gallon! Yay!). Then one of the women in the car on the other side of the pump approached me and asked me for a few dollars to buy gas. Of course she had a story of woe, how her car's gas gauge was broken so she'd had no way of realizing how close to out of gas she was, how she was trying to get home to her babies. I always hate that part of the encounter when they try really hard to sell me on the reality of their need. The truth is I don't really need to be sold; I'm the sort that will try to give someone a few bucks if I can. I didn't really care why she'd run out of gas or had no money or credit card to buy a few dollars worth of gas. I had no reason to doubt her that she really was out of gas. Her friend or sister was in the car, clearly trying to call someone to come help them out.

Here's where my real dilemma came in: I had a 10, a 20, and about 2 bucks in quarters. I also had the credit card I had just used on my own pump still in my pocket. So how much should I give this woman? My first thought was that I wished I still had that 5 dollar bill that I had just used to pay the parking garage. Obviously I didn't want to give her 20. I may be nice and all, but that seemed too much. But the $2 in quarters didn't seem like enough. I think it was actually $2.25, so it was enough to buy her almost exactly one gallon. If they were within about a 25 or 30 mile radius, that would get them home.

This has been bugging me for a few days. Should I have given the 10? Why was I so reluctant to use my credit card to put about 6 or 7 dollars worth of gas in their car? In the end, I gave them the quarters and felt bad as I drove away. They were still there even after I pulled out of the neighboring fast food restaurant where I stopped to get a drink for the ride home. $2.25 doesn't buy as much gas as it used to. So what would you have done? Is it silly that it's still bugging me whether I was too stingy?

Why I Don't Live in Oklahoma

Part 3 in a series. If this series keeps going, I might not be able to live in any state. (But, in all fairness, I could probably come up with at least 3 blog topics under the heading "Why I Don't Live in Kansas" and yet I obviously stay in Kansas.)

The Oklahoma state legislature has passed a new law requiring doctors perform an ultrasound before performing an abortion. The doctor must make the screen visible to the woman (though the law does not go so far as to require the woman to look at the screen), the doctor must provide a running commentary on the ultrasound, and must describe the heartbeat and the presence of internal organs, fingers, and toes. I hope this script, unlike the South Dakota one I blogged about previously, is medically and scientifically correct. Apparently the law also makes medical abortions practically impossible by mandating the drugs and follow-up care be administered in a way that doesn't comport with the standard care protocol. I have no idea how this law would affect Plan B. Would a hospital be required to perform an ultrasound on a rape victim before giving her the drug that will make sure she isn't pregnant by her rapist?

Is there any other area in which legislators feel this free to interfere in the doctor-patient relationship? Dictate specific procedures and dictate the script the doctor must read while performing the procedure? It is micromanagement of a sort we're not supposed to want in a free society. I feel confident in saying that the legislators who passed this particular bill would generally be of the more conservative ilk who would wish for ever smaller government. But of course they will abandon that core principle if the issue is right.

I am all for informed consent, in all medical procedures. But we've already got mechanisms in place to protect patients. They can sue in civil court if they feel they were not fully informed and made the wrong decision based on their lack of information. Medical boards can censure or suspend licenses of doctors who fail to inform their patients before performing procedures, I presume. And there are criminal battery laws, too, if the patient really doesn't consent at all. So why do we need a legislature to step in and dictate the steps a doctor must take to assure a patient is fully informed before consenting to this particular procedure? And why isn't the legislature so concerned about the patients facing open heart surgery or having their wisdom teeth removed?

Because, once again, this law isn't about making sure women have as much information as possible before making their decision. No, this law is about making sure women don't have abortions. The lawmakers who passed it want to make it as practically and emotionally difficult as they possibly can. They hope to make doctors throw up their hands at all the micromanagement and just get out of the business altogether. They hope to shame, harangue, and batter women into making the "right" decision. They can't convince the majority in America that all abortion should be illegal so they're trying to chip away at it bit by bit.

But I'm guessing that the legislature of Oklahoma has other things it could spend its time on. Education, criminal laws, energy policy just for starters. So legislature, why don't you deal with thsoe issues and leave the doctors and patients alone to decide when to choose constitutionally-protected medical procedures?