Justice versus justice: Geographies of the Death Penalty and Place-Based Activism in the Troy Davis Case

Abstract

Troy Davis had only one life cut short too soon. And his was but one life among many cut short too soon and unnecessarily in a country where the circumstances of geography lead to decisions over who will live and die. It is a particularly disturbing experience for an anti-racist-activist geographer to come to terms with the implications of the death penalty. Every time I set hands to keyboard to work on this article I am overwhelmed by a Sartrean nausea (Sartre 1965) that impinges upon logical analysis. Deliberate, and deliberated, state killing in the name of justice cuts short the meaning of life and existence, making scholarly meaning at best compromised. The sense of loss over this one life is magnified by the recognition that he was one among many and that the value of his life was diminished by racialization. It is particularly sobering to note that the death penalty has a geography.