(CNN) -- The applause that erupted during last week's NBC/Politico debate among Republican presidential hopefuls at the mention of the executions carried out during Rick Perry's tenure as Texas's governor cut off co-moderator Brian Williams' question in midstream.





Williams: Gov. Perry, a question about Texas. Your state has executed 234 death row inmates, more than any other governor in modern times. Have you . . .





[SUSTAINED APPLAUSE]





. . . Have you struggled to sleep at night with the idea that any one of those might have been innocent?





The response presumably would have been more muted if Williams had been allowed to finish his question. Most people are less enthusiastic about the death penalty's being applied against the innocent.





Following the question's completion, Governor Perry volunteered that he has "never struggled with that at all," explaining that "when someone commits the most heinous of crimes against our citizens, they get a fair hearing ..."





Had the governor an opportunity to rephrase his answer, he likely would have clarified that fair hearings also are available to those who have been charged with but did not actually commit a heinous crime, and that such crimes might occasionally involve noncitizen victims as well. But the point is not to quibble about word choices; Texas governors can be forgiven linguistic mistakes if they allow no capital ones to happen.





Troy Davis, scheduled to be executed next week in Georgia for the murder of off-duty police officer Mark MacPhail, could be a capital error that is about to happen. Davis was convicted and sentenced to death more than 20 years ago by a jury that heard testimony from at least nine witnesses who implicated him in the killing. Since then, seven of the trial witnesses have recanted or revised their testimony so that it no longer points to Davis' guilt. Of the two witnesses who have not revised their condemning trial testimony, one is believed by Davis' supporters to have been the actual murderer.





The last judge to review the case concluded that Davis' conviction and death sentence should not be disturbed, leaving the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles, which has previously declined to take action, as the last apparent barrier to Davis' execution.





With no DNA or comparably reliable scientific evidence available to help confirm or contraindicate Davis' guilt, the cry to achieve a final resolution of the case appears poised to trump the trial's lingering uncertainties.





Davis may or may not be innocent. To acknowledge this much would suggest that he should not be executed. Yet Georgia is ready to move forward. If it is true that justice delayed is justice denied, it must also be true that an injustice not delayed is justice denied. (In another case, yesterday The U.S. Supreme Court delayed the scheduled execution of an inmate on death row in Texas after questions arose about a psychologist who had testified that blacks and Hispanics were more likely to commit future crimes.)





To make these observations about the cheering that greeted Perry's execution record and the angst accompanying Troy Davis' scheduled execution is to dwell on symptoms at the expense of their origins and deeper meaning.





I want to believe, and I do believe, that few of those celebrating at the mention of the Texas executions would not shed their festive enthusiasm and become reflective, sober, perhaps even somber if enlisted as witnesses to the execution of a fellow human being, even one indisputably guilty of committing murder.





I believe that those who cheer are applauding not the ugly reality of death inflicted by lethal injection but rather what it is that the punishment of death symbolizes: the triumph of law over criminal violence, of good over evil, the emphatic denunciation of unspeakably immoral misconduct, the restoration of order and a salve against the fear created in murder's wake.





The reality of the death penalty is that even if it is politically popular (to wit, the Perry applause) it is an ineffective criminal justice policy, rarely employed, unevenly distributed and fraught with the potential for error. Its mistakes, unlike those committed in cases resulting in imprisonment, cannot be corrected. Capital punishment is
Who is condemned to die? What is fraught with potential error? Troy Davis is condemned to what? what question drew cheers? What was the debate question about? what does  Death penalty fraught with?
Troy Davis, death penalty scheduled to be executed Have you struggled to sleep at night with the idea that any one of those might have been innocent? executions carried out during Rick Perry's tenure as Texas's governor potential for error.
question: Who is condemned to die?, answer: Troy Davis, | question: What is fraught with potential error?, answer: death penalty | question: Troy Davis is condemned to what?, answer: scheduled to be executed | question: what question drew cheers?, answer: Have you struggled to sleep at night with the idea that any one of those might have been innocent? | question: What was the debate question about?, answer: executions carried out during Rick Perry's tenure as Texas's governor | question: what does  Death penalty fraught with?, answer: potential for error.