UPDATE: The US Supreme Court has granted Troy a stay of execution. Thanks to ALL OF YOU who sent faxes and emails and kept the topic going. Now we need to support him in getting a new trial. Let's keep this issue (and Troy) alive, by spreading the word and supporting his legal team at Amnesty, as well as other organizations like the Innocence Project.
Davis' situation affects us all.
Go here now, send an email, call the number, send a fax to Georgia's Board of Pardons & Paroles.
Contact Georgia's Governor Perdue here.
Troy Anthony Davis is scheduled to be executed by lethal injection this coming Tuesday, September 23rd at 7pm for a crime he may not have committed.
Troy Davis was sentenced to death for the murder of Police Officer Mark Allen MacPhail at a Burger King in Savannah, Georgia; a murder he maintains he did not commit. There was no physical evidence against him and the weapon used in the crime was never found. The case against him consisted entirely of witness testimony which contained inconsistencies even at the time of the trial. Since then, all but two of the state’s non-police witnesses from the trial have recanted or contradicted their testimony. Many of these witnesses have stated in sworn affidavits that they were pressured or coerced by police into testifying or signing statements against Troy Davis.
One of the two witnesses who has not recanted his testimony is Sylvester “Red” Coles – the principle alternative suspect, according to the defense, against whom there is new evidence implicating him as the gunman. Nine individuals have signed affidavits implicating Sylvester Coles.
Georgia’s supreme court, in a 4-3 decision, denied Davis a new trial, despite concerns about his innocence.
The Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles denied clemency for Davis shortly before on September 12th. They did so despite overwhelming doubts of Davis’ guilt - and after stating last year that they would “not allow an execution to proceed in this State unless and until its members are convinced that there is no doubt as to the guilt of the accused.” The Board has the power to step in at any point up until the scheduled execution.
The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to decide whether to hear a last-ditch appeal by Davis' lawyers on September 29th, or six days after Georgia plans to kill him.
This is a disgusting and dire example of one of the many injustices evident in the U.S.’s criminal “justice” system. No one should be executed for a crime if no physical evidence inculpates them. Davis deserves a new trial that would allow introduction of the new evidence obtained.
Please, please, please take action. This is what YOU can do: send an email to the Georgia Board of Pardons and forward the email to your friends, send a fax to 404-651-8502. There is more info here. We need to do everything we can to stop this, and we only have two days!
Listen to Davis tell his story here.
UPDATE:
From the NY Times, here is some additional background information on the witnesses who initially testified against Davis at trial, most of whom have recanted their stories, or had significant discrepancies:
Nine witnesses testified against Mr. Davis at his trial in 1991, but seven of the nine have since changed their stories. One of the recanting witnesses, Dorothy Ferrell, said she was on parole when she testified and was afraid that she’d be sent back to prison if she didn’t agree to finger Mr. Davis.
She said in an affidavit: “I told the detective that Troy Davis was the shooter, even though the truth was that I didn’t know who shot the officer.”
Another witness, Darrell Collins, a teenager at the time of the murder, said the police had “scared” him into falsely testifying by threatening to charge him as an accessory to the crime. He said they told him that he might never get out of prison.
“I didn’t want to go to jail because I didn’t do nothing wrong,” he said.
At least three witnesses who testified against Mr. Davis (and a number of others who were not part of the trial) have since said that a man named Sylvester “Redd” Coles admitted that he was the one who had killed the officer.
Mr. Coles, who was at the scene, and who, according to authorities, later ditched a gun of the same caliber as the murder weapon, is one of the two witnesses who have not recanted.
The other is a man who initially told investigators that he could not identify the killer. Nearly two years later, at the trial, he testified that the killer was Mr. Davis
Thanks to burrow owl, who posted the link to the Georgia Supreme Court decision, denying Davis a new trial. If the only evidence supporting his conviction was witness evidence, then under the court's reasoning (i.e. there must be affirmative evidence of innocence), the only way that a new trial would likely have been granted would have been if there were new physical evidence that would exculpate him.
UPDATE:
The Georgia Supreme Court has just denied Davis' stay of execution.