US execution puts death penalty on trial - Troy Davis case

Today Georgia will decide whether or not Troy Davis will be executed on Wednesday.

http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/features/2011/09/2011917143731110559.html

US execution puts death penalty on trial
Troy Davis is set to die in under a week but advocates say there is 'too much doubt' to condemn him to death.



Troy Davis is waiting in his jail cell, hoping his advocates outside can convince the US State of Georgia not to execute him according to its schedule on Wednesday, September 21.

Davis, now 42, was convicted in 1991 of the 1989 killing of Mark MacPhail, an off-duty police officer who was working an overnight job as a bus station security guard when he was shot dead while intervening in an argument.

The 1991 trial put Davis, who has always maintained his innocence, on death row based on the testimony of nine witnesses and no physical evidence.

Since the trial, seven of the nine witnesses have changed their stories, saying they cannot identify Davis as the killer.

In court testimony last year, Jeffrey Sapp told a court that he had implicated Davis in the murder because police had told him to do so, and he feared retribution if he were to say otherwise.

Darrel Collins told the court that police threatened with an 'accessory to murder' charge if he didn’t testify against Davis.

Benjamin Gordon, a new witness called by Davis’ legal team at the 2010 trial said without any doubt that he saw another man, Sylvester Coles, shoot and kill the police officer.

"A lot of them had criminal records back then, and that's why they were easily manipulated," said Davis' sister Marina Correia at the time.

September 21 will be the fourth time Davis has been scheduled to die. Each previous time, a 'stay' was issued, pausing matters that would end his life – sometimes within a few hours of ending it.

This is Davis' last chance – either he will be put to death or have his sentence changed to life imprisonment by Georgia's Board of Pardons and Paroles.

Davis' case has garnered the attention of hundreds of thousands through joint campaigns to save Davis' life by organisations including Amnesty International and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

Advocates for Davis not only argue that there is "too much doubt" to allow his execution, but they also say his case exemplifies a fundamental problem with the United States' use of capital punishment.

Because he has been convicted, Davis is no longer considered innocent until proven guilty, but guilty until proven otherwise.

The much higher legal threshold requires Davis to "clearly establish" his innocence.

Lily Hughes, a national board member of the Campaign to End the Death Penalty told Al Jazeera, "His legal appeals have been exhausted, so this is really the final chance for Troy."

Petitioning for life

The controversial nature of the case, and it being Davis' last chance for life, is why a myriad of organisations coordinated a 'Global Day of Solidarity for Troy Davis' last Thursday, with over 300 events around the world and a main action in Atlanta, Georgia. The organisations have also gathered over 650,000 signatures to petition both the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles and the Chatham County District Attorney (DA) for clemency.


Demonstrators in Belgium rally in the Global Day of Solidarity for Troy Davis on 15 September [EPA]

While the parole board is the only decision-making body in this case, Davis' advocates say the DA has power to either ask the superior court to drop Davis' death warrant or sway opinions on the Board.

A spokesperson for the DA's office refused to comment until "the case is officially over in whatever form that is".

Hughes said she was hopeful for the positive effects of petitioning the parole board: "We have seen executions be stopped before when you have this kind of outpouring of public pressure."

Hilary Shelton, the NAACP's national campaign and advocacy coordinator, told Al Jazeera that his organisation has "been making sure that there are avenues for Americans to get their voices to be heard by that probation and parole board to stop this execution and take a closer look at this case."

He also said the NAACP is going a step further, arguing for a new trial because of the level of doubt in Davis' case as well as a historical track record of executions disproportionately affecting African-Americans.

"What we're seeing in the Troy Davis case again is the circumstance and situation in which an African-American was identified as the perpetrator in a murder of a young white police officer," he said. "[But] looking at the evidence, clearly, there's a reason to pause."

Bigger picture

As the Republican race to the White House heats up, conservatives have latched on to Texan Governor Rick Perry's campaign, putting him in the lead to potentially vie with Obama as head of state in the 2012 election.

Republicans have specifically latched onto Perry's capital punishment record – higher than any governor in the country.

"[National] support for the death penalty… has been on a steady decline since the height of support in the 1980s," Hughes told Al Jazeera. "The bucking of that trend is definitely here in Texas."

As Hughes describes, Texas "out-executes" the rest of the country. "Put all the other states together in a year and Texas still executes more than all the other executing states combined."

At a recent Republican campaign debate, NBC host Brian Williams began to ask Perry about his execution record and was interrupted with thunderous applause from the California TEA Party audience. In response, Perry said: "I think Americans understand justice."

Emails to Perry's campaign went unanswered.

While most would say that deciding on someone's fate is a heavy weight, Texas-based death penalty advocate Dudley Sharp explained the applause. "Possibly, people were saying: 'We're glad that there's someone that will stand up for justice in these cases when it is so thwarted constantly in California'."

California has put 13 people to death since 1992. It was reported Thursday that prosecutors will no longer seek execution for a California man convicted of killing an off-duty police officer. Instead, Leslie Gene Parker will likely serve life in prison without the possibility of parole. This is the 'thwarted justice' referred to by Sharp.

In Texas, late on Thursday night, a temporary stay of execution was ordered by the US Supreme Court for Duane Buck because of testimony in his original trial that has been described by John Cornyn, a former Texas attorney general and current US senator, as an "improper injection of race in the sentencing hearing". Buck's attorneys do not argue that he is not guilty of a double homicide, but that he should not be put to death for it.

Buck is one of four men who were scheduled to die by lethal injection in Texas within an eight-day period. Steven Woods was executed earlier in the week even though a friend of his confessed in his double homicide case. As of this writing Cleve Foster and Lawrence Brewer are scheduled to die within the Texan week.

Calling for help

After facing decisions by numerous state and federal legal bodies that have deemed Troy Davis guilty, his life can only be prolonged by a board decision to commute his sentence. Otherwise, he will be given a series of injections to end his life on Wednesday, September 21.

Death penalty supporters say the US appeals system has worked correctly in Davis' case: "He's facing execution without the case being overturned on appeal, because he should," said Sharp.

Troy Davis' latest published writing calls for help: "…they took all of my mail, my address book and the only property I have is my eyeglasses. I'm writing with the filter of a pen because I'm not allowed the entire pen…"

For his advocates, whatever occurs in the coming days will serve as an example of the United States justice system, far beyond Davis' own case.

Laura Moye of Amnesty International told Al Jazeera that Davis' case "stands out because it speaks volumes about the problems we've seen and documented with the United States death penalty system.

"The issues in his case underscore, for us, why it is that the United States ought to turn it's back on the death penalty."

Source:
Al Jazeera

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/17/us/supporters-rally-to-save-troy-davis-from-execution-in-georgia.html?_r=2

Digital Age Drives Rally to Keep a Georgia Inmate From Execution



ATLANTA — As Troy Davis faces his fourth execution date, the effort to save him has come to rival the most celebrated death row campaigns in recent history.

On Monday, the Georgia State Board of Pardons and Paroles will give Mr. Davis what is by all accounts his last chance to avoid death by lethal injection, scheduled for Wednesday.

Whether history will ultimately judge Mr. Davis guilty or innocent, cultural and legal observers will be left to examine why Mr. Davis, convicted of killing a Savannah police officer, Mark MacPhail, 22 years ago, has been catapulted to the forefront of the national conversation when most of the 3,251 other people on death row in the United States have not.

The answer, experts say, can be found in an amalgam of changing death penalty politics, concerns about cracks in the judicial system, the swift power of digital political organizing and, simply, a story with a strong narrative that caught the public’s attention.

“Compelling cases that make us second-guess our justice system have always struck a chord with the American public,” said Benjamin T. Jealous, president of the N.A.A.C.P. “Some are simply more compelling in that they seem to tap deeply into the psyche of this country. A case like this suggests that our justice system is flawed.”

Like others involved in the case, he credits Mr. Davis’s sister, Martina Correia, a media-friendly former soldier who has long argued that the police simply got the wrong man, with keeping the story alive.

And the story has been compelling. A parade of witnesses have recanted since the original trial, and new testimony suggests the prosecution’s main witness might be the killer.

There are racial undertones — Mr. Davis is black and the victim was white — and legal cliffhangers, including a stay in 2008 that came with less than 90 minutes to spare and a Hail Mary pass in 2009 that resulted in a rare Supreme Court decision.

Altogether, it had the makings of a story that has grabbed many armchair lawyers and even the most casual opponent of the death penalty.

The list of people asking that the Georgia parole board offer clemency has grown from the predictable (Jimmy Carter, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the Indigo Girls) to the surprising, including 51 members of Congress, entertainment heavyweights like Cee Lo Green and death penalty supporters including William S. Sessions, a former F.B.I. director, and Bob Barr, a former member of Congress, and some leaders in the Southern Baptist church. (Unlike some other states, in Georgia the governor cannot commute a death sentence; only the parole board can.)

Propelled by a recent flood of digital media including Twitter traffic and online petition requests, the case has become fodder for discussion in fashionable Atlanta bistros, Harlem street corners and anywhere living room sleuths gather in their search for another Casey Anthony trial to dissect.

On Friday, about 1,000 people marched to Ebenezer Baptist Church here for a prayer vigil, one of hundreds of rallies being organized by Amnesty International around the world.

The facts of the case itself captured the attention of Nancie McDermott, a North Carolina cookbook author who usually spends her time in the kitchen but who took up the cause with a passion once she started reading about it on liberal Web sites.

“I think if my brother or son or dear friend from college were about to be put to death, and there was no physical evidence, and seven of nine witnesses had recanted and testified to coercion in that original testimony, would I shrug and say, ‘The jury made its decision?’ ” she wrote in an e-mail. “I just want people, particularly all the churchgoing people like me, to look me in the eye and tell me, just once, that this is justice.”

There are some larger political themes weaving through the case.

As executions becomes less common and sentences for executions decline — dropping to about 100 a year from three times that in the 1990s — the focus on execution as a means of punishment and a marker of the nation’s cultural and political divide becomes sharper, legal analysts said.

That divide results in a culture that in the same week can generate hundreds of thousands of letters of support for Troy Davis and, conversely, bring a cheering round of applause from the audience at a Republican presidential debate when Gov. Rick Perry of Texas was asked about the 234 executions in his state during his term of office.

“We’ve gotten to a critical point in the death penalty in this country,” said Ferrel Guillory, a professor of journalism and mass communication at the University of North Carolina. “These cases are being phased out but at the same time they don’t make the front page anymore, so when one comes along with a strong narrative and a good advocate, it gets our attention.”

Matthew Poncelet, a Louisiana convict, had Sister Helen Prejean, whose story of her work with him in the final phase of his life brought “dead man walking” into popular lexicon after Hollywood released a film version of the case in 1995.

Mumia Abu-Jamal, the former journalist and Black Panther who was convicted of shooting a white Philadelphia police officer in 1981, rode the power of his own charisma. His case became so popular globally that a road in a Parisian suburb bears his name.

Mr. Davis’s case not only offers a good narrative with strong characters people can relate to — his father was a law enforcement officer, his mother was a churchgoer, his sister is fighting both cancer and for her brother’s innocence — but has also benefited from an explosion in social media.

“Back in 2007, nobody outside of Savannah knew who Troy Davis was,” said Laura Moye, director of Amnesty International U.S.A.’s Death Penalty Abolition Campaign. “Now it’s safe to say over a million people do.”

For proof, she offers the 633,000 petitions she and others delivered to the parole board in an elaborate media event on Friday. About 200,000 of them were electronic signatures gathered by Change.org in less than a week.

“It’s a new era of activism,” she said.

Online organizing drew Anderia Bishop, 37, of Atlanta, to the case last week. She learned about Mr. Davis through an e-mail from ColorOfChange.org, a black political organization.

The fact that there was very little physical evidence and no DNA and a case built largely on witnesses who changed their story got her attention.

“I thought, literally, it could be me, and that’s something a lot of people who are casually watching this case think,” she said. “There are just too many questions.”

But public pressure and intense media attention can cut both ways, said Stephen Bright, president of the Southern Center for Human Rights and a longtime capital defense lawyer.

“It certainly heightens the attention a case gets, but there also can be some defensiveness,” he said. “There has historically been that worry that people from out of state will come in and not understand what really happened.”

The difference, he said, is that in today’s information-rich age, people around the world actually do know most of the facts in the case.

“It tells the State of Georgia that the whole world is watching,” he said.

 

someday we WILL see the death penalty as barbarism.

just sucks that in the meantime there will be victims of the system.

troy davis denied clemency