Entries Tagged 'The Death Penalty' ↓

By Ezekiel Edwards
(Original post here)

The state of Georgia plans to execute Troy Davis on October 14, 2007. And he might be innocent.

If you doubt that an innocent man can end up on death row, bear in mind that 15 death row inmates have been exonerated through DNA testing, while another 71 were freed after the discovery of other new evidence of innocence.

Since his conviction sixteen years ago, the evidence against Mr. Davis has crumbled, rendering his claims of innocence increasingly plausible. And yet, last week, he came within 24 hours of his death before the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles stayed his execution for 90 days in order to “evaluate and analyze” evidence that Mr. Davis may not be guilty.

Putting aside, for now, the larger issue of the death penalty, our system of justice should not, under any circumstance, permit an execution amid the serious questions of culpability that exist in Mr.
Davis’s case. Continue reading →

Link to audio here: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=11854264

Execution Slated Despite Recanted Testimonies
by Kathy Lohr

All Things Considered, July 10, 2007 · Troy Davis is scheduled to be executed by the state of Georgia later this month, despite the fact that most of the witnesses have recanted their testimony and implicated another man — new evidence that has never been heard.

Davis is a black man convicted of killing a white police officer. There was no physical evidence in the case.

(Atlanta) — In the run-up to the scheduled execution of Troy Anthony Davis, and as Amnesty International holds a press conference calling for his clemency Tuesday morning, religious leaders, members of Congress, entertainers and civil and human rights leaders have written letters to the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles to ask that its members look at the Davis case with fresh eyes. Nobel-prize winner Rev. Desmond Tutu, singer Harry Belafonte, actor Mike Farrell, Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr. (D-IL), Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX), Sister Helen Prejean, Sam D. Millsap, Jr. (former D.A. of Bexar County, TX), record producer and activist Russell Simmons and Murder Victims Families for Reconciliation are among those who have voiced support for clemency.

“The facts with which the jury was presented nearly 16 years ago have fallen into considerable doubt,” said Irene Khan, London-based secretary general of Amnesty International. “To allow this execution to proceed would be to knowingly countenance an irrevocable injustice.”

In total, thousands of concerned individuals — from across Georgia, the United States and around the world — have sent letters calling for clemency for Davis. Following the Tuesday press conference, Larry Cox, executive director of Amnesty International USA (AIUSA) and the Rev. Dr. Joseph Lowery will deliver to the Parole Board approximately 4,000 letters and postcards that add to the several thousand that have already been sent.

“Certain cases are emblematic of the dysfunctional application of justice in this country; the case of Troy Davis is one of them,” said Cox. “There is ample evidence to show that Davis may not have perpetrated the crimes for which he may lose his life. Georgia’s Parole Board needs to give this serious consideration and decide whether it is worth even the possibility of killing an innocent man.”

Troy Anthony Davis, who is African American, was convicted in 1991 of murdering Mark McPhail, a white police officer. Davis’ conviction was not based on any physical evidence, and the murder weapon was never found. The prosecution based its case on the testimony of purported “witnesses,” many of whom allege police coercion. Seven of the nine non-police witnesses for the prosecution have recanted or contradicted their testimony in sworn affidavits; nine witnesses have implicated another man in the murder.

Despite this, Davis’ habeas corpus petition was denied by the state court on a technicality — evidence of police coercion was “procedurally defaulted,” so the court refused to hear it. Davis is now out of legal appeals. His clemency hearing is scheduled for Monday, July 16; his execution is set for Tuesday, July 17, at 7:00 p.m.

“This case is a reminder that the death penalty system is fraught with error,” said Diann Rust-Tierney, executive director of the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, which has joined AIUSA in a national and international campaign on Davis’ behalf. “Executive clemency exists when courts cannot or will not provide justice. We must not allow an execution to proceed when substantial doubt exists as to guilt or innocence.”

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For more information, visit www.amnestyusa.org/troydavis or www.ncadp.org.

Troy Davis is scheduled to be executed in Georgia at 7pm local time on 17 July. He is the brother of a dear friend. I have had the chance to get to know his family and his case more and more throughout the past few years. He has been on death row for more than 15 years for the murder of a police officer which he maintains he did not commit. Many of the witnesses presented by the prosecution at the trial have since recanted or contradicted their testimony.

On 28 August 1991 Troy Davis was convicted of the murder of 27-year-old Officer Mark Allen McPhail, white, who was shot and killed in the car park of a Burger King fast food restaurant in Savannah, Georgia, in the early hours of 19 August 1989. Troy Davis was also convicted of assaulting Larry Young, a homeless man, who was accosted and struck across the face with a pistol immediately before Officer McPhail was shot. At the trial, Troy Davis admitted that he had been at the scene of the shooting, but claimed that he had neither assaulted Larry Young nor shot Officer McPhail.

There was no physical evidence against Troy Davis and the weapon used in the crime was never found. The case against him consisted entirely of witness testimony. In affidavits signed over the years since the trial, all but three of the state’s non-police witnesses have recanted their testimony. One of the three non-recanting witnesses is a man who has not been located for interview by Davis’ appeal lawyers. Another, while not recanting, has contradicted her trial testimony. The third non-police witness who has not recanted his testimony is Sylvester Coles, who was the principle alternative suspect, according to the defence at the trial, and against whom there is new witness testimony implicating him as the gunman.

Others have recanted their testimony against Troy Davis. In 1989, Kevin McQueen was detained in the same jail as Davis. McQueen told the police that during this time Troy Davis had confessed to shooting Officer McPhail. In a 1996 affidavit, McQueen retracted this statement, saying that he had given it because he wanted to “get even” with Davis following a confrontation he said the two of them had had. Monty Holmes testified against Troy Davis in a pre-trial hearing, but did not testify at the trial because, according to a 2001 affidavit, he did not want to repeat this false testimony. Jeffrey Sapp testified that Troy Davis had told him that he had shot the officer. Recanting his testimony in a 2003 affidavit, he stated that under “a lot of pressure” from police, he had testified against Troy Davis.

At the trial, eyewitness Dorothy Ferrell identified Troy Davis as the person who had shot Officer McPhail. In a 2000 affidavit, she stated that she had not seen who the gunman was, but testified against Davis out of fear that if she did not, because she was on parole at the time, she would be sent back to jail. In a 2002 affidavit, Darrell Collins, 16 years old at the time of the crime, said that the day after the shooting, 15 or 20 police officers came to his house, and “a lot of them had their guns drawn”. They took him in for questioning, and “after a couple of hours of the detectives yelling at me and threatening me, I finally broke down and told them what they wanted to hear. They would tell me things that they said had happened and I would repeat whatever they said…I testified against Troy at his trial… because I was still scared that the police would throw me in jail for being an accessory to murder if I told the truth about what happened…”

Larry Young, the homeless man who was accosted on the night of the murder, implicated Troy Davis as the man who had assaulted him. His affidavit, signed in 2002, offers further evidence of a coercive police investigation into the murder of their fellow officer: “After I was assaulted that night … some police officers grabbed me and threw me down on the hood of the police car and handcuffed me. They treated me like a criminal; like I was the one who killed the officer … They made it clear that we weren’t leaving until I told them what they wanted to hear. They suggested answers and I would give them what they wanted. They put typed papers in my face and told me to sign them. I did sign them without reading them.” In his 2002 affidavit he said that he “couldn’t honestly remember what anyone looked like or what different people were wearing.”

Antoine Williams, a Burger King employee, had just driven into the restaurant’s car park at the time the shooting occurred. At the trial, he identified Troy Davis as the person who had shot Officer McPhail. In 2002 he stated that this was false, and that he had signed a statement for the police which he could not and did not read: “Even today, I know that I could not honestly identify with any certainty who shot the officer that night. I couldn’t then either. After the officers talked to me, they gave me a statement and told me to sign it. I signed it. I did not read it because I cannot read. At Troy Davis’s trial, I identified him as the person who shot the officer. Even when I said that, I was totally unsure whether he was the person who shot the officer. I felt pressured to point at him because he was the one who was sitting in the courtroom. I have no idea what the person who shot the officer looks like.”

Due to the procedural obstacles facing a death row inmate seeking a hearing on post-conviction evidence, Troy Davis has had no such hearing on the current state of the witness testimony. At oral arguments in front of a three-judge panel of the federal 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in September 2005, one of the judges expressed concern that Troy Davis had not been granted a federal hearing to present the post-conviction evidence. She asked, “If these people say, ‘I was coerced by the police,’ how could [the lower federal judge] reject that without a hearing?” She reportedly suggested that without the testimony of the various trial witnesses who had now recanted, the state appeared to have no case. However, in September 2006, the 11th Circuit Court upheld the federal judge’s ruling, and on 25 June 2007 the US Supreme court refused to intervene. For a full report on this case, see USA: ‘Where is the justice for me?’ The case of Troy Davis, facing execution in Georgia, February 2007, http://web.amnesty.org/library/index/engamr510232007.
BACKGROUND INFORMATION
Since the USA resumed executions in 1977, 1,086 prisoners have been put to death, 40 of them in Georgia. Since the US Supreme Court approved new death penalty laws in 1976, more than 100 people have been released from death rows around the country on grounds of innocence, many of them in cases in which witness testimony has been shown to have been unreliable. This rate of error is one factor that has contributed to a waning in public support for the death penalty in the USA, with some opinion polls now registering majority support for a moratorium on executions.

Amnesty International opposes the death penalty regardless of the guilt or innocence of the prisoner. At the same time, it also seeks to ensure that international standards are at least adhered to in those countries which still resort to judicial killing. As the case against Troy Davis now stands, Georgia’s pursuit of the death penalty contravenes international safeguards which prohibit the execution of anyone whose guilt is not based on “clear and convincing evidence leaving no room for an alternative explanation of the facts”.

RECOMMENDED ACTION: Please send appeals to arrive as quickly as possible, in English or your own language, in your own words:
- explaining that you are not seeking to condone the murder of Officer Mark Allen McPhail, or to downplay the seriousness of the crime or the suffering caused;
- noting that many of the witnesses who testimony was used against Troy Davis at his trial have since recanted their trial testimony, and that there is new evidence against an alternative suspect in the case;
- noting the large number of wrongful convictions in capital cases in the USA since 1976, and noting that unreliability of witness testimony has been a contributing factor in many of these cases;
- noting that the power of clemency in capital cases exists as a failsafe against irreversible error that the courts have been unable or unwilling to remedy;
- calling on the Board to commute the death sentence of Troy Davis.

APPEALS TO:
State Board of Pardons and Paroles, 2 Martin Luther King, Jr. Drive, SE, Suite 458, Balcony Level, East Tower, Atlanta, Georgia 30334-4909, USA
Fax: +1 404 651 8502
Email: Webmaster@pap.state.ga.us
Salutation: Dear Board members

COPIES TO: diplomatic representatives of the USA accredited to your country.

PLEASE SEND APPEALS IMMEDIATELY.

As you may or may not know.. this case is very personal to me, as I am dear friends with Troy’s family.

(Washington, D.C.) — Amnesty International is deeply disappointed with today’s Supreme Court ruling that permits the execution of Troy Anthony Davis in Georgia. The organization maintains that evidence in his favor, which has never been heard in a courtroom, is enough to demonstrate that Davis should be granted a new hearing.

“The Supreme Court decision is proof-positive that justice truly is blind — blind to coerced and recanted testimony, blind to the lack of a murder weapon or physical evidence and blind to the extremely dubious circumstances that led to this man’s conviction,” said Larry Cox, executive director of Amnesty International USA (AIUSA). “At times there are cases that are emblematic of the dysfunctional application of justice in this country. By refusing to review serious claims of innocence, the Supreme Court has revealed catastrophic flaws in the U.S. death penalty machine.”

Troy Anthony Davis, who is African American, was convicted in 1991 of murdering Mark McPhail, a white police officer. Davis’ conviction was not based on any physical evidence, and the murder weapon was never found.

The prosecution based its case on the testimony of purported “witnesses,” many of whom allege police coercion. Seven of the nine non-police witnesses for the prosecution have recanted their testimony in sworn affidavits. One witness signed a police statement declaring that Davis was the assailant, then later said, “I did not read it because I cannot read.” In another case a witness stated that the police “were telling me that I was an accessory to murder and that I would … go to jail for a long time and I would be lucky if I ever got out, especially because a police officer got killed … I was only 16 and was so scared of going to jail.”

There are also several witnesses who have implicated another man in the murder. According to one woman, “People on the streets were talking about Sylvester Coles being involved with killing the police officer, so one day I asked him … Sylvester told me that he did shoot the officer.”

Despite this, Davis’ habeas corpus petition was denied by the state court on a technicality — evidence of police coercion was “procedurally defaulted,” that is, not raised earlier, so the court refused to hear it. The Georgia Supreme Court and 11th Circuit Federal Court of Appeals deferred to the state court and rejected Davis’ claims. Today the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear his case and Davis is now left without any legal recourse; he could be executed within weeks. It is shocking that in more than 12 years of appeals, no court has agreed to hear evidence of police coercion or consider the recanted testimony.

“It is appalling that so many judges were able to look away from such a grave breach of justice. Evidence of innocence simply hasn’t mattered,” said Sue Gunawardena-Vaughn, director of AIUSA’s Program to Abolish the Death Penalty. “This should be viewed as a day of great shame for our nation, one in which the green light was given to execute a citizen who may well be innocent.”

(New York) — Larry Cox, executive director of Amnesty International USA, released the following statement today regarding the scheduled execution of Robert Comer in Arizona on Tuesday, May 22:

“Robert Comer has given up his appeals and has ‘volunteered’ to be executed by the state. But a decision by someone under an imminent threat of death can never be truly ‘voluntary’ — and this execution date should never have been set. No matter which way the state would like to spin it, there is no disguising the fact that this is state-sanctioned suicide.”

“It has been well documented that Comer has suffered from a major depressive disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder and SHU (Segregated Housing Unit) syndrome. It is unconscionable that an individual suffering from such severe mental illness is deemed ‘competent’ to give up his appeals. It’s ironic that a state does all it can to prevent inmates from committing suicide while simultaneously carrying out an execution of a ‘volunteer’ — in essence, aiding and abetting an inmate’s death wish.

“Arizona’s move to execute Robert Comer stands against the national trend of questioning the death penalty and moving away from it. This execution is a macabre act that takes Arizona a step backwards.”

For more information on Amnesty International’s work against the death penalty, please visit: www.amnestyusa.org/abolish