Sometimes the legal system that we put our trust in fails the most vulnerable members of society. Many times it is for something simple, like a disputed traffic ticket. However, when the death penalty is the sentence, the government needs to be 100% certain that no innocent people are wrongly found guilty, unlike the case of a Texas man who was featured in the New Yorker.

Today members of Amnesty International on campus brought light to a most egregious violation: That of the case of Troy Davis, who was sentenced to death for a 1989 murder of a Savannah, Georgia police officer.

He was convicted merely on the testimony of nine witnesses, many of whom have recanted or presented contradictory information. This presents what appears to be a reasonable suspicion of doubt.

Amnesty International is collecting signatures to present to the Georgia Board of Pardons and Parole, as it seems that all of Davis’ appeals have been exhausted. As Brian Flowers, Co-President of Amnesty International, states, “we need to keep trying to at least get his sentence commuted” to life in prison. On a more macro scale, Flowers hopes this brings attention to the problems with the capital punishment system, saying that it is “unacceptable for a man to be sentenced to death when there are so many questions about his guilt.”