Troy Davis' Path to Glory

Tuesday night I watched Stanley Kubrick's 1957 film of Keith Loh's, 'Paths to Glory.' Turner Classics played it, and God bless, by the way, Ted Turner! Can you imagine a serious anti-war film, featuring A-list stars, as Kirk Douglas was at the time, made today.

 

Douglas was so taken with Loh's book, we viewers were informed before the picture, that he not only agreed to star, but bank-rolled it. God bless Kirk Douglas, too!

The story is set at the French front, in the middle of the First World War. Douglas is an officer, and former lawyer, who must offer up three sacrificial lambs to a Court Martial, ordinary soldiers made to pay with their lives for a disastrously planned and executed assault on a key enemy position.

 

The Germans are of course assumed to be the enemy, but as things unfold we discover the real enemy, the ones the high command really fear and hate are not the German soldiers on the other side of no-man's land, but the regulars they command to; first, live in the trenches; then, to throw their lives away for nothing more than the ambitions of their superiors.

Wednesday night, I watched an American murdered in slo-mo; a black man killed by a state who feared and hated him not for his crime, for everyone knew him to be as innocent as Loh's three French soldiers, but because showing clemency would mean admitting "mistakes" were made, are always made, and must continue to be made.

 

But this passion play, much like the famed revolution to come, was not televised, at least not in the regular sense.

 

Though millions around the world followed Troy Davis' progress to the gallows, signing petitions and sending money for his, ultimately futile, attempt to stay the hand of a judiciary determined to remain unmoved, the network news was notably absent the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification prison grounds, where hundreds of supporters stood vigil.

I watched, with tens of thousands of others, on-line at Democracy Now! I heard Troy Davis' family tell his story: locked up on death row for the 1989 murder of policeman, Mark MacPhail, shot dead outside the convenience store where he moonlighted as a security guard.

 

The family related how seven of nine witnesses recanted the eye-witness testimony that helped convict Davis, saying they had been, by turn: intimidated; coached; and blackmailed to finger Davis. I watched his sister, too ill to stand, but determined to rise from her wheelchair for a moment to demonstrate her refusal to be bowed by the State, who had seen her brother taken to death's door three times already, only to relent at the last moment.

Indeed, on this night there was hope in the crowd.

 

Cheers went up, heard despite the roaring winds of the circling police helicopters, when the appointed hour came and went without word of Troy's dispatch. Then news there was a temporary stay while Supreme Court Justice, Clarence Thomas reviewed finally if there indeed be too much doubt to send a man to his doom.

 

And, though Thomas in the end didn't doubt, The Pope in Rome begged clemency; though Thomas was certain, former FBI director, William Sessions was not convinced; though Thomas closed the book on Troy Davis' life, former President Jimmy Carter, and Archbishop Emeritus, Desmond Tutu, and Jesse Jackson, and Amnesty International, and a host of people celebrated and otherwise sent to be opened more than 630,000 petitions without effect.

Following four hours of false hopes, at 11:08pm edt, Wednesday September 21st, 2011 Troy Davis left this world.

 

His faith remained strong through the end, we're told, his last words maintaining his innocence, and expressing condolences for the MacPhail family's loss and sorrow, and then prayers God would bless his executioners.

God bless you, Troy Davis, and God bless all you innocent Troy Davis' who are made to pay for the crimes your betters cannot bear.