Troy Davis: Execution, Incarceration For Life, Or Innocent?
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Is Troy Davis Innocent?
Davis was convicted of the 1989, murder of a Savannah, Georgia, police officer. Will the Georgia’s Board of Pardons and Paroles stay the execution on Monday?
Today, in Georgia, more than 2,000 activists chanting rallied to oppose the execution of Georgia death row inmate, Troy Davis, convicted of the 1989 murder of a Savannah police officer. Georgia’s Board of Pardons and Paroles will meet Monday to consider whether to stay Davis’ execution.
Davis, 38, a former coach in the Savannah Police Athletic League, turned himself in. He had hoped to join the Marine Corps, but was convicted in the 1989 murder of Mark Allen MacPhail, a Savannah police officer. The officer was off-duty when he was shot in a parking lot while responding to an assault.
Sylvester Coles came to the police station with his lawyer and claimed he saw Davis with a gun. Coles was earlier identified as the alleged perpetrator who created the disturbance that drew MacPhail’s attention. Coles acknowledged owning a .38 calibergun—which was never recovered.
A juror in the original trial stated, If I knew then what I know now, Troy Davis would not be on death row. The verdict would be ‘not guilty.’
Solana Plaines, who participated in the rally, said, I pray that this rally will have an impact on Pardons and Paroles. I hope they will do the right thing. Ellen Kubican traveled from her home in Germany to attend the event, stating, You just can’t give up hope. She held a banner reading Too much doubt to execute.
Davis’ supporters marched from downtown Atlanta to Ebenezer Baptist Church on Auburn Avenue for a rally. In attendance was Martin Luther King III, son of Martin Luther King Jr. His father and grandfather were pastors at the church. Ben Jealous from the NAACP and the Rev. Al Sharpton also attended.
Sharpton said: The only thing left to decide is whether you have the courage to do the right thing. It is blatantly clear that there is no reason for this man to be sitting on death row.
Troy Davis at 1991 hearing
Davis’ supporters delivered what can be described as an amicus petition signed by 600,000 people across the glove to the Georgia Parole Board. The Board will meet Monday to determine Davis’ fate.
Former FBI Director, William Sessions, called for Davis’ sentence to be commuted to life in prison. In the Atlanta Journal Constitution, he stated the case was permeated in doubt. Pope Benedict XVI, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, also support the stay on Davis’ execution.
Davis appealed to the courts for two decades. Chuck Canterbury, president of the National Fraternal Order of Police, said the facts have not changed. His case has been reviewed by every level of the justice system, and frankly none has determined anything but that he is guilty of murdering a police officer. He’s had his day in court.
Spencer Lawton, prosecuting district attorney opposes the stay, sating Davis had a fair trial. He claimed the seven witnesses testimony not believable. Lawton added that all of them were cross-examined by defense attorneys during Davis’ trial. He denied they were coerced by police.
Mark MacPhail’s wife, Joan, WSAV, an NBC news affiliate, that although they’ve waited for closure, it will never bring her husband back to their family. If she has children, if my son has children, he will not be able to revel in all that because he’s not here. So, those things are still kind of like a black eye for us MacPhail predicts that her family will have to defend themselves against those who support Davis.
I think it’ll be a three-ring circus, to be honest with you. It always has been, and there will be a lot of chaos and protesting and people who don’t understand the whole case. We’ll be almost the people on trial for that matter
The victim’s mother, Anneliese MacPhail, said I’d like to get it over with. For 22 years we’ve been going back and forth and forth and back. I don’t believe it until it’s done, but I sure would like to have some peace..
A Forbes article provided further information on Davis:
Since the original trial in 1991, seven of nine prosecution witnesses that linked Davis to the shooting have either recanted or materially altered the stories they told the jury, but Davis’ attempts to secure a retrial have been persistently rebuffed by state and federal courts.
In an extraordinary hearing in June 2010 ordered by the U.S. Supreme Court, Davis’ attorneys were finally allowed to present evidence of his innocence to a federal judge. In statement after statement, witnesses from the original trial avowed that they had been coerced by police to implicate Davis in the shooting or had lied in order to secure lenience for their own troubles with the law.
According to Forbes contributor, E.D. Kain:
Suffice to say, people are lousy witnesses most of the time, but it gets much worse at night, in a chaotic situation, or when bad incentives like leniency toward criminals are introduced into the mix. The state’s case against Davis is flimsy. It fell apart years ago. As Bob Barr rightly phrased it, “imposing an irreversible sentence of death on the skimpiest of evidence will not serve the interest of justice.”
Are there flaws in the U.S. Justice System?
Some feel the Davis case reveals injustices against minorities, which they claim are rife throughout the U.S. legal system. America’s prison population is the largest in the world. More African-American men are incarcerated than attend college. Since 1973, 138 death-row prisoners have been exonerated. Most of them were convicted based on faulty eyewitness testimony. Newly discovered DNA evidence has proven their innocence.
Mad Mike’s America thanks Reuters, Forbes, The Atlanta State News, Democracy NOW!,, Workers.org, and WSAV.
Is Davis guilty or innocent? Do you think Troy Davis’ execution should be stayed in light of the new evidence?
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I am amazed and stunned about all the sympathy for a killer of an innocent police officer..but very little for the victim or his family. 34 witnesses,evidence found..which was tried and proven over and over and over..where were all these people the 20 odd years he was locked up? Why did people just suddenly decide to gather to stop his death at the 11th hour? If true justice had been served for his victim, he would have paid his penalty many years ago. I commend the court for their decision..even if it was extremely late in coming. I’ve lost most of my respect for brainless leaders in this country, who leave the path of justice in order to please the crowd. The truth is no longer popular.
I have signed numerous petitions in this case because it is so obvious that putting this man to death is WRONG. Look at him, does he look like he would kill a policeman, especially considering his career goals? Recanted testimony from witnesses, thousands of people in countries all over the world, how can the board possibly continue with this execution? If they are morons they might…and with sadness in my heart I have to say there are far to many morons in charge than there are intelligent and compassionate human beings. If they execute this man then it is time for us to get drastic….If they murder Mr. Davis they should pay!
I’m an atheist but I’m doing my own version of praying that this turns out right.
I don’t think he’s innocent and I can guarantee you that what he looks like today is not what he looked like in 1989 when he murdered a police officer. Secondly, what a person looks like has no bearing on what they’re capable of doing.
I don’t, however, believe he should be executed. He was convicted by a jury of his peers and should be locked up for the rest of his life. As to the “recanted” testimony, it is not unusual for eye witnesses, notoriously unreliable to begin with, to forget details over a period of 21 years. The fact is they remembered clearly when they testified, and there were a lot of them, some still with memories intact.
As I said in a companion to this post if Davis wasn’t black no one would be making a fuss. If he were a white man he would go to the death chamber and no one would even know his name.
Excellent point about witness ID, Mike. They are indeed notoriously unreliable even right after a crime takes place. Witness testimony can be unintentionally false, based on what a person thinks they see.
Whether that’s the case with Davis, I don’t know. Whether witnesses at Davis’ trial were initially right in their testimony now or previously doesn’t matter.
That said, I agree with Mike 100%. His execution should be stayed: the death penalty cannot be meted out equally for all people. There is just too much prejudice in this world to ensure equal consideration for all.
Whether one believes Davis is innocent is beside the point. I have signed petitions on his behalf because if he is innocent, he can be released from prison. If he is executed, he may die an innocent man.
I am against the death penalty because I can think of no worse punishment than leaving vicious felons in jail for the rest of their miserable lives knowing they will never escape. Some may even become repentant about their crimes.
Many people have been both released from their sentences or proven criminals based on previously unavailable DNA evidence. I am including a link to the Innocence Project, which provides better facts and statistics then I can. The site also corroborates Mike’s assertion about the unreliability of eyewitnesses.
There have been 273 post-conviction DNA exonerations in the United States… Eyewitness Misidentification Testimony was a factor in 75 percent of post-conviction DNA exoneration cases in the U.S., making it the leading cause of these wrongful convictions. At least 40 percent of these eyewitness identifications involved a cross racial identification (race data is currently only available on the victim, not for non-victim eyewitnesses).
http://www.innocenceproject.org/Content/Facts_on_PostConviction_DNA_Exonerations.php
Personally, I find it interesting that some people have said the newly freed West Memphis Three would never have attracted such a faithful following of supporters if they HAD been BLACK. Although I myself am one of those supporters, I have always had an uneasy suspicion that this is indeed the case.
Good review of the whole sordid affair Dorothy, should be an interesting week in Georgia.
Thanks and backatcha, Mr. Ender.
Yes, Collin. After following the West Memphis 3 case and now Troy Davis, I am now staunchly anti-death penalty. The possibility of executing an innocent person is too great: the people who get executed are more often than not minorities.
From a pragmatic standpoint, I am anti-death penalty because there is no greater punishment to me than to be imprisoned with no possibility of parole, especially in solitary confinement. Either the inmate is forced to reflect on her/his crimes: even if s/he is unrepentant, the prospect of dying in jail is punishment enough.
Further, it is far less expensive to keep an inmate housed in the prison system than to have numerous appeals over almost 20 years, as was the case with the West Memphis 3 and Troy Davis. In both situations, there was too much evidence indicating their possible innocence.
Ultimately we have to decide as a society, are we going to err on the side of giving victims and their families satisfaction in the form of so-called “closure” by execution, or should we err on the side of not putting innocent people to death. Seems like a no-brainer to me.
The death penalty should be scrapped once and for all.