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“Troy Anthony Davis is making a statement about human rights, and people are listening.” This is how Martina Correia, sister of death row inmate Troy Davis, closed a letter of thanks for the international attention and expressions of solidarity Davis and his family have received over the 16 years of their struggle.
On Sept. 23, the United States Supreme Court issued a temporary stay of execution for Davis, which will remain in effect until the court has considered the mountain of evidence pointing to his innocence. As of this moment, the court has yet to make a decision.
According to Amnesty International, Davis’ case “is one in a long line of cases in the USA that should give even ardent supporters of the death penalty pause for thought.”
In 1989, at the age of 22, Davis was sentenced to death for the murder of Savanna, Ga., police officer Mark McPhail. All along, Davis has maintained that he had arrived on the scene of the shooting to help a homeless man who was being beaten behind a Burger King restaurant. Since then, seven of nine witnesses have recanted their testimony, nearly all of them reporting coercion at the hands of the police. In one affidavit, witness Monty Holmes recounts, “I was real young at that time, and here they were questioning me about the murder of a police officer, like I was in trouble or something. I was scared. … It seemed like they wouldn’t stop questioning me until I told them what they wanted to hear. So I did.”
Even at the time of the trial, there was no physical evidence connecting Davis to the murder — no fingerprints or gun powder residue on Davis’ hands. One of the remaining two witnesses, Sylvester Coles, was himself a suspect until his testimony. Three others who were never called to testify claim to have heard Coles bragging about the killing.
No jury has ever heard this evidence, partially because appealing Davis’ case has met with a phalanx of legal obstacles. The Georgia Supreme Court dismissed the appeal. However, its refusal was based on absurd legal precedent and “tough-guy” legislation. The 1993 Supreme Court ruling Herrera v. Collins stated that, even if evidence of innocence is found, if it is proved that the convicted received a fair trial, the evidence is rendered inconsequential. The immediate question jumps to mind: How can one receive a fair trial if all the evidence is not considered?
Further frustrating efforts to free potentially innocent people from death row is the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, which was signed into law by President Clinton and laid the political groundwork for the current president’s Patriot Act. The legislation limits the time in which appeals can be made and new evidence raised, and weakens the ability of the Federal Courts to overturn the decisions of state courts.
The law itself limits the ability of people to seek justice once inside a system that has been proven to be deeply flawed and overtly racist. A 2000 study conducted by Columbia Law School states bluntly, “The answer provided by our study of 5,760 capital sentences and 4,578 appeals is that serious error … has reached epidemic proportions throughout our death penalty system. More than two out of every three capital judgments reviewed by the courts during the 23-year study period were found to be seriously flawed.” Now compound that with the regular discrimination against black Americans who, while only comprising 12 percent of the population, make up nearly half the prison population. Considered together, one begins to appreciate the words of exonerated death row inmate Stanley Howard when he says, “The legal lynching’s going on in concentration camps across this nation.”
The struggle to save Troy Davis continues. The Campaign to End the Death Penalty will be holding its eighth annual conference in Chicago Nov. 8-9. Activists on the front line of the struggle will also be speaking the following weekend in Chicago at the Midwest Socialist Conference. Please spread the word about Davis’ case, visit his website and those of his supporters, learn more about the injustice of the death penalty, and lend a hand where you can.
Ben Ratliffe ([email protected]) is a member of the International Socialist Organization and a UW alumnus.
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Barf! The people who have changed their stories over the past 19 years have only done so over the past few years, after being badgered by defense lawyers and investigators. Individually they have had a guilt trip put on them to change AND a couple have been in almost constant trouble with the law and want to “get even.”
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Please go to www.kavitachhibber.com to see the most comprehensive coverage on the Troy Davis case including interviews with Troy Davis, his sister Martina and mother Virginia
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Mr. Ratliff made numerous errors.
The finding in Herrera
“Justice [Sandra Day] O’Connor’s concurring opinion makes clear that Herrera does not stand for that proposition. Justice O’Connor stated, I cannot disagree with the fundamental legal principal that executing the innocent is inconsistent with the Constitution and the execution of a legally and factually innocent person would be a constitutionally intolerable event. As Justice O’Connor stated, the Court assumed for the sake of argument that a truly persuasive demonstration of actual innocence would render any such execution unconstitutional and that federal habeas relief would be warranted if no state avenue were open to process the claim. Id., at 874. That is the holding in Herrera, and any claim to the contrary is simply not correct.” (Kenneth S. Nunnelley’s Congressional testimony, July 23, 1993)
regarding claims of Herrera’s innocence:
“[T]he proper disposition of this case is neither difficult nor troubling … The record overwhelmingly demonstrates that petitioner [Herrera] deliberately shot and killed Officers Rucker and Carrisalez the night of September 29, 1981; petitioner’s new evidence is bereft of credibility. Indeed, despite its stinging criticism of the Court’s decision, not even the dissent expresses a belief that petitioner might possibly be actually innocent.” Herrera v. Collins, 506 US 390, 421(1993) (O’Connor, J., concurring)
The reality is that innocents are more at risk without the death penalty.
The Columbia Law School study made a sizable error. The error rate in capital cases is not 66%, it’s 34%, Appendix Table 4 , page 16 http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/pdf/cp05.pdf
Regarding alleged racism:
White murderers are twice as likely to be executed in the US as are black murderers and are executed, on average, 12 months more quickly than are black death row inmates. � It is often stated that it is the race of the victim which decides who is prosecuted in death penalty cases.� Although blacks and whites make up about an equal number of murder victims, capital cases are 6 times more likely to involve white victim murders than black victim murders.� This, so the logic goes, is proof that the US only cares about white victims. � Hardly.� Only capital murders, not all murders, are subject to a capital indictment.� Generally, a capital murder is limited to murders plus secondary aggravating factors, such as murders involving burglary, carjacking, rape, and additional murders, such as police murders, serial and multiple murders.� White victims are, overwhelmingly, the victims under those circumstances, in ratios nearly identical to the cases found on death row. � Any other racial combinations of defendants and/or their victims in death penalty cases, is a reflection of the crimes committed and not any racial bias within the system, as confirmed by studies from the Rand Corporation (1991), Smith College (1994), U of Maryland (2002), New Jersey Supreme Court (2003) and by a view of criminal justice statistics, within a framework of the secondary aggravating factors necessary for capital indictments.
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this title is rather tactless given the circumstances…
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“Now compound that with the regular discrimination against black Americans who, while only comprising 12 percent of the population, make up nearly half the prison population.”
But tell me how many of those black Americans were found guilty of crimes against other black Americans.
Should black Americans be allowed to commit crimes against other black Americans without fear of prison? Would that solve the “regular discrimination” problem?
Somehow I don’t think jailing only those black Americans that commit crimes against non-black Americans would improve the situation.
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But what about a guy like this? I say hang him, or put Old Sparky to work.
A convicted killer who pleaded guilty on Wednesday to a second murder and a sex assault in jail will die in prison.
Judge John Merrett sentenced Jonathan Tave to 1050 years in prison.
http://www.firstcoastnews.com/news/mostpopular/news-article.aspx?storyid=120628&provider=top
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hippies all around me…
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This man needs to be freed, it is sad that people do not care who pays for a crime as long as it is someone even if they are innocent.That is a crime in itself!