Guilty or (likely) not, Troy Davis must die
Posted by Thomas Nephew on September 11th, 2008
No physical evidence. No murder weapon. Another man implicated.
No matter. The state of Georgia says Troy Davis must die on September 23 for his alleged murder of a Savannah policeman 15 years ago — even though there’s no physical evidence and no murder weapon. And even though all but 3 witnesses (one of whom, Sylvester Coles, is a prime suspect) of an original 15 have recanted their testimony, citing police pressure to finger Davis once Coles implicated him.
With the case against him in tatters, Davis could not be convicted of the crime were a fair retrial held today. But the state of Georgia, United States law, and the United States Supreme Court agree: so what. As Amnesty International USA (AIUSA) wrote in June:
... 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.
I’ll simply quote Amnesty International USA again regarding the significance of the case:
Amnesty International does not know if Troy Davis is guilty or innocent of the crime for which he is facing execution. As an abolitionist organization, it opposes his death sentence either way. It nevertheless believes that this is one in a long line of cases in the USA that should give even ardent supporters of the death penalty pause for thought. For it provides further evidence of the danger, inherent in the death penalty, of irrevocable error. [...]
The case of Troy Davis is a reminder of the legal hurdles that death row inmates must overcome in the USA in order to obtain remedies in the appeal courts. In this regard, Amnesty International fears that Troy Davis’ avenues for judicial relief have been all but closed off. In particular, he is caught in a trap set by US Congress a decade ago when it withdrew funding from post-conviction defender organizations in 1995 and passed the Anti-terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act in 1996.
That 1996 law — signed, to his discredit, by President Clinton in the wake of the Oklahoma City bombing — was “expressly intended by Congress to sharply curtail the right of state prison inmates, under federal habeas, to challenge their state convictions and sentences. A key section of AEDPA bars a federal court from granting any habeas writ on an issue that was raised in state court, unless the state court decision ‘was contrary to, or involved an unreasonable application, of clearly established federal law, as determined by the Supreme Court of the United States.’” (Lyle Denniston, SCOTUSBlog, 5/5/05)
The effect on Troy Davis is that procedural roadblocks to reconsidering new evidence (or the collapse of old evidence) will kill him, unless public outcry prompts a commutation of the death sentence by the Georgia State Board of Pardons and Paroles. For what Georgians and non-Georgians can do, visit the AIUSA web site or Troy Davis’s own web site. A clemency hearing has been scheduled for September 12; faxes and emails to the numbers provided below (again, AIUSA) will at least let the parole board know the whole world is watching.
RECOMMENDED ACTION: Please send appeals to arrive as quickly as possible:
- explaining that you are not seeking to condone the murder of Officer Mark Allen MacPhail, or to downplay the seriousness of the crime or the suffering caused;
- noting that most of the witnesses whose testimony was used against Troy Davis at his trial have since recanted or contradicted their testimony, and that there is new evidence against another suspect in the case;
- noting that three members of the Georgia Supreme Court, including the Chief Justice, dissented against the court’s refusal earlier this year to order a hearing on the post-conviction evidence of innocence;
- 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
Fax: 1 404 651 8502
Email: Webmaster@pap.state.ga.
But prepare to be deeply ashamed of this country on September 23. In the long run, there’s only one sure way to prevent executing innocent people — and that’s to abolish the death penalty.
(Via Alternet)
=====
UPDATE, 6/15: Via comments by Mick and Nell, Ga. pardons board denies Davis clemency (Bluestein, AP). Via Nell, the AIUSA points out that needn’t be the pardon board’s final word, so keep those e-mails, faxes, and follow-up letters going. Also see Mick Arran’s several posts on the Troy Davis case, esp. including his July 16, 2007 post.
EDIT, 6/15: “Only one sure way” link added.
Category: Post. Tags: death penalty, georgia, troy davis.
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September 14th, 2008 at 9:46 pm
As you probably know by now, the Georgia Board of Paroles and Pardons turned down Davis’ clemency petition. The news reports were sketchy but it seems that the primary witnesses (to hear the local news outlets tell it) were the ex-police chief who was in office when MacPhail was shot and members of MacPhail’s family. If the Board heard from the ACLU or AI, it wasn’t reported locally.
September 14th, 2008 at 10:46 pm
Oh, no.
The Amnesty page linked in your post (’AIUSA web site’, near the end) says that the clemency board, despite their refusal to act on Friday, can step in at any time before the 23rd. So it’s more important than ever to get letters to them.
The Macon article also refers to the possibility that the U.S. Supreme Court will hear the case. If so, it’s just unbearable to think that the state is determined to rush ahead.
September 15th, 2008 at 11:05 am
Thanks for the update, Mick and Nell. Maybe some new point can be raised by Davis’s lawyers in their return visit to the Supreme Court — or maybe the state board will reverse itself.
(PS: didn’t see Mick’s comment in queue until this morning.)
September 25th, 2008 at 3:04 pm
Finally, an update that is a ray of hope: U.S. Supreme Court issued a last-minute stay. All too last-minute, and the linked story introduces us to the McPhail family, who have long since converted their grief into blind vengeance.
September 25th, 2008 at 3:08 pm
Another story, AFP, with more on the legal side (also not sure how long-lasting AJC links are).
September 25th, 2008 at 3:16 pm
Thanks for these, Nell. See also my “7p.m.” post on Tuesday for various other links about the story. In an update there, I read between the lines of a NYT article and a 1993 Supreme Court case, Herrera v. Collins. As ever, I am not a lawyer, but there *may* be enough there for the Supremes to hear the case, since the witness recantations directly erode the case against Davis.
September 26th, 2008 at 11:31 pm
Thanks, Thomas; I don’t know how I missed seeing the new posts.
September 27th, 2008 at 7:55 pm
Many more thanks for checking back. My posting pattern is pretty unpredictable and sporadic, I’m not surprised you overlooked a new one. Even if you use RSS to scan for new titles, “7p.m.” is a pretty cryptic one.
I see you have a bunch of new posts up about the bailout, here’s a link to one of them for other readers of this thread: “Letter to the editor - bailout.”
September 28th, 2008 at 7:23 pm
I think the main reason I missed it is that there’s not a list of ‘recent posts’, only recent comments — and the video embedding glitch that creates such long empty spaces in the posts makes it that much less likely that I’ll see a post that’s no longer at the top of the front page.
Lesson learned: I’ll scroll to the bottom when I see a new post, in case there are other, only slightly less new posts below.
September 28th, 2008 at 7:33 pm
I’ve now installed a “Recent Posts” in the left sidebar, just below “Blogroll” and above “Tag Cloud”. It’s now the 10 most recent posts; I think I can change that number.
September 29th, 2008 at 8:44 pm
Thanks, Thomas!