Davis, a black man convicted in 1991 of killing an off-duty white police officer, has steadfastly maintained his innocence and is now demanding that a polygraph be administered before his execution. Three times before he’s come within hours of being led to the death chamber, but after Georgia’s parole board nixed his clemency bid on Monday his legal options are apparently exhausted. Even though there’s a mountain of doubt over whether he actually committed the crime, it looks like this will be his last day on Earth.

In a way, it’s fitting that the execution of a possibly innocent man is making headlines now, given the sudden prominence of capital punishment in the national political conversation — the result of a recent Republican presidential debate, when the audience erupted in cheers at the mention of the 234 executions that Rick Perry had overseen as Texas’ governor. Even some death penalty supporters said they were disturbed by that reaction, but it was also a powerful reminder of just how many Americans — Republican or not — see capital punishment as a simple matter of justice.

Gallup has found that support for the death penalty has remained consistent for the past decade, with Americans favoring it by a more than two-to-one margin. As of last November, 64 percent support it and just 29 percent oppose it. That number, however, is down from the late 1980s and early 1990s, when support for capital punishment peaked at 80 percent. It’s also up from the mid-1960s, when death penalty support bottomed out at an all-time low of 42 percent. Back then, more Americans opposed it than favored it.

Why have the numbers changed over the years? The best way to look at death penalty may be to compare it to the country’s violent crime rate, which not coincidentally took off in the mid-’60s, exploded in the ’70s and ’80s, then peaked in the early ’90s and dropped substantially. The rate is considerably higher today than it was in the 1960s, but it’s also nothing like it was two or three decades ago.

We can see the effects of this in our politics. Think back to the 1988 presidential election, when Republicans skewered Michael Dukakis over the matter of Willie Horton, a convicted murderer who had escaped while on a weekend furlough from a Massachusetts prison and fled to Maryland, where he committed armed robbery and raped a woman. The anecdote itself was damning, but one of the reasons the GOP attacks had such resonance was the soaring violent crime rate, which contributed to an atmosphere of fear and panic. Suburbanites fretted that all of the urban scariness that dominated the average local newscast would soon reach their bedroom communities and demanded to know from politicians: What are you going to do about it? The death penalty was a popular answer and became something of a toughness litmus test for would-be leaders, a test Dukakis famously flubbed in a debate.

It may have been the Dukakis example that Bill Clinton had in mind four years later, when he left the presidential campaign trail to oversee an execution in Arkansas. Human rights groups were enraged that Ricky Ray Rector, who was functionally retarded, could be put to death, but Clinton suggested he was setting an example for his fellow Democrats — that they “should no longer feel guilty about protecting the innocent.” Clinton’s support for capital punishment featured prominently in his 1992 campaign, a way of reassuring Americans that he was tough on crime.

That, of course, seems like a long time ago now. Violent crime began dropping on Clinton’s watch, and the issue faded from the national debate. Meanwhile, the late ’90s and early 2000s saw a surge in coverage of the ultimate risk that comes with having a death penalty. New DNA techniques allowed old cases to be reopened, revealing tragic miscarriages of justice. When one particular death row inmate was exonerated in Illinois in 1999, that state’s governor, Republican George Ryan, reacted with horror and emptied out death row. By 2004, Democrats felt OK nominating for president John Kerry, who had largely opposed the death penalty during his career, and in the last decade, several states have either outlawed capital punishment completely or rendered it functionally extinct.

Against this backdrop, it’s tempting to wonder if the Troy Davis story — which has received considerable press attention (and which will receive a lot more if tonight’s execution goes ahead) — might serve as a public opinion tipping point. But that potential is balanced against another reality: For all of the systemic flaws that have been revealed in the past decade or so — for all of the innocent people who have been freed after years of incarceration — the basic eye-for-an-eye nature of the death penalty remains compelling for most Americans, a sentiment reinforced by the occasional horrific crime. Take the state of Connecticut, where the gruesome murder of a suburban family in 2007 (which is still in the news, as the trial of one of the killers proceeds) apparently increased support for capital punishment in the state — enough to convince the last governor to veto a plan to outlaw it.

The reality is that we have seen other cases like Troy Davis’ before — Perry may have presided over one of them just a few years ago in Texas — and it will probably take a lot more of them before Americans ever give up on the death penalty for good.

The decision appeared to leave Davis with little chance of avoiding the execution date. Defense attorney Jason Ewart has said that the pardons board was likely Davis’ last option.

Davis’ lawyers have long argued Davis was a victim of mistaken identity. But prosecutors say they have no doubt that they charged the right person with the crime.

MacPhail’s relatives said they were relieved by the decision. “That’s what we wanted, and that’s what we got,” said Anneliese MacPhail, the victim’s mother. “We wanted to get it over with, and for him to get his punishment.”

“Justice was finally served for my father,” said Mark MacPhail Jr., who was an infant when his father was gunned down. “The truth was finally heard.”

Kim Davis, the inmate’s sister, declined immediate comment on the decision.

Amnesty International USA director Larry Cox said in a statement that the decision was “unconscionable.”

“Should Troy Davis be executed, Georgia may well have executed an innocent man and in so doing discredited the justice system,” Cox said.

The nation’s highest court, without extensive comment, said it would review an appeal related to that testimony. The decision meant Perry did not have to act on a request from Buck’s lawyers that the governor use his authority to issue a one-time 30-day reprieve.

Buck’s case is one of six that then-Texas Attorney General John Cornyn — a political ally of Perry who is now a Republican U.S. senator — reviewed in 2000 and said needed to be reopened because of racially charged statements made during the sentencing phase. In the other five cases, new punishment hearings were held and each convict again was sentenced to die.

State attorneys contend Buck’s case was different from the others and that the racial reference was a small part of larger testimony about prison populations. Jurors in Texas must decide on the future danger of an offender when they are considering a death sentence.

Perry is a capital punishment supporter and as frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination his actions now are coming under closer scrutiny. During his 11 years in office, 235 convicted killers in Texas have been put to death. His office said he has chosen to halt just four executions, including one for a woman who later was executed.

Buck’s lawyers called to tell Buck of the reprieve and the inmate was praying in his cell when Texas Department of Criminal Justice spokesman Jason Clark approached.

“Praise the Lord!” Buck told Clark. “God is worthy to be praised. God’s mercy triumphs over judgment.

“I feel good.”

In its one-paragraph decision, the court said it stopped the punishment so it could further look at Buck’s request, known as a writ of certiori. If the court decided against the writ, the justices said the reprieve would be lifted, meaning Buck could receive a new execution date.

“No one should be put to death based on the color of his or her skin. We are confident that the court will agree that our client is entitled to a fair sentencing hearing that is untainted by considerations of his race,” Kate Black, one of Buck’s attorneys, said.

Buck was convicted of gunning down ex-girlfriend Debra Gardner, 32, and Kenneth Butler, 33, outside Houston on July, 30, 1995, a week after Buck and Gardner broke up. A third person, Buck’s stepsister, Phyllis Taylor, also was wounded, though she has since forgiven Buck and sought for his death sentence to be commuted to life in prison.

Buck’s attorneys went to the Supreme Court after losing appeals in lower courts. A clemency request to the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles, all of whom are Perry appointees, also failed.

Assistant Attorney General Edward Marshall had told the high court that Buck’s appeals were attempts to relitigate claims that every court, including the Supreme Court, already rejected.

Perry was not in the state Thursday, meaning any final order to delay would have come from Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst. However, Perry’s office frequently points out that he remains the governor and in contact with Austin while traveling.

Two more Texas prisoners are set to die next week.

This episode is creepy and disgusting, though as both Ta-Nehisi Coates and Dahlia Lithwick point out, it’s hardly surprising for a country which long considered public hangings a form of entertainment and in which support for the death penalty is mandated orthodoxy for national politicians in both parties.  Still, even for those who believe in the death penalty, it should be a very somber and sober affair for the state, with regimented premeditation, to end the life of a human being no matter the crimes committed.  Wildly cheering the execution of human beings as though one’s favorite football team just scored a touchdown is primitive, twisted and base.   

All of that would be true even if the death penalty were perfectly applied and only clearly guilty people were killed.  But in the U.S., the exact opposite is true; see here to read about (and act to stop) a horrific though typical example of a very likely innocent person about to be executed by the State of Georgia.  That Perry in particular likely enabled the execution of an innocent man — as well as numerous other highly disturbing killings, of the young and mentally infirm — makes the cheering all the more repellent.  That the death penalty in America has long been plagued by a serious racial bias makes it worse still.  That this death-cheering comes from a party that relentlessly touts itself as ”pro-life” and derides the other as The Party of Death — and loves to condemn Islam (in contrast to its war-loving self) as a death-glorifying cult — only adds a layer of dark irony.

This happened at a GOP debate, involving the current GOP front-runner, and progressives are thus rushing forth to condemn it (condemnations with which I largely agree). The Philadelphia Daily News‘ Will Bunch called it ”utterly sickening” and “a pathetic new low in American politics.”  Bunch added: ”What you heard echoing in the Reagan Library last night was not reason. It was bloodlust, pure and simple, and it was repulsive.”  That’s because “the cheering of executions is the hallmark of a sick society — one that’s incapable of tackling its real demons and looking for vengeance on whomever happens to be available.”

I agree with all of that, and that’s why this morning’s orgy of progressive condemnation made me think of very similar death-celebrations that erupted at the news that the U.S. military had pumped bullets into Osama bin Laden’s skull and then dumped his corpse into the ocean.  Those of us back then who expressed serious reservations about the boisterous public chanting and celebratory cheering of executions were accused by Good Democrats of all manner of deficiencies.

Yes, the 9/11 attack was an atrocious act of slaughter; so were many of the violent, horrendous crimes which executed convicts unquestionably (sometimes by their own confession) committed.  In all cases, performing giddy dances over state-produced corpses is odious and wrong.

Now that this issue has been vested with a partisan angle, and many Good Progressives are marching forward to condemn the act of ecstatically cheering for executions, perhaps the reservations many of us had over the joyous, chest-beating street celebrations over bin Laden’s corpse can be better understood.  Like drenching a citizenry with fear and keeping them in a state of Endless War for more than a decade, training them to publicly rejoice when the Government puts bullets into people’s heads or injects poison into their veins — even if that act is justifiable — inevitably degrades the citizenry and the character of their nation.

UPDATE: Does anyone doubt that many of the same Democrats expressing disgust this morning at the Republican cheerleading for Rick Perry’s executions (of people convicted of crimes after at least a pretense of due process) will be the first in line raucously celebrating the Democratic President when he finally succeeds in assassinating U.S. citizen Anwar al-Awlaki with no due process at all?

Here’s the problem:

Prosecutors firmly established Buck’s guilt, but to secure a capital punishment conviction in Texas they needed to prove “future dangerousness”—that is, provide compelling evidence that Buck posed a serious threat to society if he were ever to walk free. They did so in part with the testimony of a psychologist, Dr. Walter Quijano, who testified that Buck’s race (he’s African-American) made him more likely to commit crimes in the future. (Quijano answered in the affirmative to the question of whether “the race factor, [being] black, increases the future dangerousness for various complicated reasons.”)

So Buck is being executed because he’s black. This is a bit problematic, constitutionally.

MoJo writes that this psychologist gave race-based testimony in six other death penalty cases, leading John Cornyn — then the Texas attorney general — to ask for each case to be retried. And all the cases were retried, with this one exception. And this exception is due to be executed in two weeks.

As we have seen, killing lots and lots of people is one of the things about Rick Perry that Republican voters love, so I can’t imagine he’ll grant clemency or even delay the sentence.

Oh there’s also another probably innocent person that Texas is set to kill soon. Larry Swearingen was convicted of killing Melissa Trotter based solely on circumstantial evidence. He was jailed weeks before Trotter’s body was found. According to multiple pathologists and doctors who’ve reexamined the evidence, Trotter was killed while Swearingen was in jail. (One court of appeals judge rejected the science-based testimony of medical examiners because it doesn’t explain what the victim was doing for those weeks she was missing. That’s not where I thought the burden of proof was supposed to lay, but what do I know.) This execution has been stayed, for now.