WTOC-TV: Savannah, Beaufort, SC, News, Weather & Sports Life or Death: Should the death penalty be abolished?

It could be life or death for the death penalty in many states across the United States.

A push is on in at least nine states, including Georgia, where activist group and some state lawmakers want to repeal the death penalty. The Troy Davis case is being used as an example of why it should be abolished.

WTOC sat down with former Chatham County District Attorney, Spencer Lawton, who successfully prosecuted and won a conviction in the Davis case.

Lawton pulled no punches as he told WTOC he was not an advocate of the death penalty, believing it has, in some ways, done more harm than good. As for the Troy Davis case, he admits the legacy of the entire process from start to execution could be damage done to, not only the death penalty, but the entire justice system.

"If someone sets fire to a school bus full of second graders, I don't see how anything less than the death penalty would be appropriate," Lawton told WTOC.

Talk to Lawton about the death penalty and you will get pros and cons.

"The death penalty has become so expensive, so time consuming, so destructive for both the family of the victim and, frankly, the family of the accused," he said.

This statement leads him into his most high-profile case, and the poster child for the latest anti-death penalty advocate blitz, the 1991 conviction of Troy Davis for the 1989 murder of Savannah Police officer Mark MacPhail.

"In the Davis case, his sister gave up the last months of her life campaigning for him. I think she is wrong, but I have to respect her for what she did. She suffered considerably," Lawton said.

Davis's sister and biggest supporter, Martina Correia, passed away late last year, after battling cancer. Davis's mother, Virginia Davis, died the year before.

For 28 years, Spencer Lawton served as Chatham County's District Attorney. 18 of those years, he rarely, if ever, spoke about Troy Davis, at least on television.

"In the case of Troy Davis, do you believe he should have been put to death," I asked Lawton.

"Yes...yeah," Lawton said.

"No hesitations," I said.

"No. Not from me," Lawton said. "It was the cold blooded murder of a police officer."

In 1991, Georgia did not have an option for life in prison without parole. We asked Lawton if it was available, would it have changed the punishment he was seeking for Davis.

"I don't know. It's impossible to know," he said. "I don't know how I would have decided the matter if we did have life without parole. Nor do I know what advice or response I would have gotten from the victim's family."

We've heard the public statements from anti-death penalty groups. "Review the death penalty and abolish completely," one group said.

We have also heard from Georgia state representatives. "Everybody is for the death penalty until it is their child on death row."

As the death penalty debate rages on, Lawton wants to at least see changes. 

"It's a matter of near indifference to me whether we have a death penalty or not," he said. "We ought to make up our mind about the death penalty. Do we want it? We do it. If we don't or are unsure ,get rid of it. If the criminal justice system is going to pronounce death upon a convicted accused then it ought to be carried. It ought not drag on for 20 years."

Sept. 21, 2011, the punishment of death by lethal injection was carried out, and Troy Davis was executed.

"Finally. That was my first reaction. But the other thing is I feel justice had been served, but in an unjust way. It took too long," Lawton said.

With endless appeals and delays, Lawton says the door was opened for groups like Amnesty International  to attack the credibility of the justice system, and as he says, go beyond distorting the truth and possibly help put a few nails in the coffin of the death penalty in the process. 

"They simply did not tell the truth. They lied knowingly. They wanted the system, which they claimed was grotesquely unfair, they wanted the same system to condemn an innocent man, Sylvester Coles, on the basis of no evidence at all. They had trifling evidence, but nothing to show he was guilty," Lawton said.

"If I knew people that cynical and self absorbed, that sanctimonious, that untroubled by fact were going to manage to turn him (Davis) into a martyr, at the expense of the criminal justice system which I believe and committed my career, it would have weighed heavily on my mind."

You can watch the entire Spencer Lawton interview right now on WTOC.com. He goes in-depth into his views on the aftermath of the Troy Davis conviction, the 20 years from sentencing to execution, the role of Amnesty International, and the death penalty.

In Georgia, the bill to repeal the death penalty is still being pushed to be considered by the state legislature before the end of the year, at the latest.

Executions in Georgia are also at risk of being halted after funding was cut from the state resource center to offer legal representation to death row inmates.

Meanwhile,  several state legislators are holding death penalty public meetings in various communities to gauge the public on their views, and in some cases, gather support for their stance on the issue.

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