Letter to the Editor
Daily Camera
Editor
Boulder, Colorado 80302
Dear Editor:
Last night I listened to a death penalty debate at the University of Colorado School of Law, moderated by Professor Patrick Furman. Sharlene Reynolds, state public defender, and Michael Radelet, professor of sociology at CU, articulately presented the case for abolishing the death penalty. Robert Grant, district attorney, talked about the Gary Davis case, the kidnaping, sexual assault, and murder of Virginia May in 1986. He described witnessing Mr. Davis' execution on October 13, 1997, while sitting with Virginia May's family members. Mr. Grant used the Gary Davis case as his most powerful argument to maintain the death penalty in this state and nation.
I also watched that execution, the only one there to support Gary Davis as the State of Colorado put him to death. And last night, I felt offended and saddened because, as one of Gary's lawyers, I had promised him that his execution, the first in Colorado in 30 years, would not be for naught. Coloradans Against the Death Penalty was formed and flourishes with this promise in mind.
But as I listened to Mr. Grant, I realized that Gary's death was being used for the wrong purpose. While almost everything Mr. Grant said was true, it was only half the story. What Mr. Davis did to Virginia May was terrible. Without question, he was guilty. No racism angle here – both perpetrator and victim were white. In these respects, his case is a simpler, less complicated lens through which to view the death penalty.
But while the state and federal courts held that Gary Davis had been afforded the effective assistance of counsel at the original trial, as a matter of fairness and justice, was his lawyer effective when he did not adequately explain how a decent young person could become capable of acting monstrously? When he did not properly present evidence of Gary's dysfunctional family, severe alcoholism, passive personality, and the role in the crime played by his wife whom experts said was the more culpable? Was a lawyer effective who, in closing argument, said, "I hate Gary Davis, not just for what he did to Ginny May, but what he did to me?"
Gary Davis was correctly convicted, but should he have been executed? Was death a punishment? Yes, but many believe that life imprisonment without possibility of parole is harsher. And Gary faced death with a mixture of relief and sorrow, fear and dignity.
Did his execution deter others? How many murders have occurred in Colorado since October 1997? Did his death at the hands of the state specifically deter Gary Davis from committing other crimes? In the years of his imprisonment from crime to execution, he was a model prisoner, overcoming alcoholism to sobriety, turning self-pity and shame into terrible remorse and the attempt to make amends in the only ways he could, given the awful reality that nothing he could do could bring Virginia May back to life.
What about rehabilitation? When Gary Davis was executed, he was no longer the same person who could take a woman's body and life – he had become a sober man trying to forgive himself, as he believed his Maker did.
What of retribution? Does retribution bring the dead back to life? Some members of victims' families say no to the death penalty, "Not in my loved one's name." They forgive, not for the defendant's sake, but for their own, to feel grief without the taint of bitterness. What of the additional victims the death penalty creates – Gary's family, the people employed to carry out the will of the people?
What does the death penalty say about the United States – that we choose to execute a defendant, rather than striking a better balance between punishment and redemption? What does it tell us about our capacity to forgive ourselves and others for our small mistakes and wrongdoings, that pale in comparison with Gary's crime?
I urge us to think of the execution of Gary Davis, not as a reason to justify the death penalty, but to abolish it, strike it from the laws of this state and country. I have a promise to keep.
Vicki Mandell-King
September 26, 2002
