Tag: Troy Davis

   

As I write this, the Georgia authorities are killing Troy Davis. He was let down by the “justice” system. And the Supreme Court. And by those of us who are horrified when the state kills innocent people. There is nothing more to do or say. He is being killed. Please join me in 24 hours of silence in honor of his memory.

   

The Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles denied Troy Davis’s request for clemency. It appears that Georgia will kill him by lethal injection at 7 pm ET on September 21, 2011. And it appears that execution cannot be stopped.

From Ben Jeanlous at the NAACP an eloquent, moving request that we fast tomorrow evening and mark the time of Troy Davis’s execution:

The Georgia Pardon and Parole Board has DENIED clemency to Troy Davis.  The Atlanta Journal Constitution reports:

The state Board of Pardons and Paroles on Monday has denied clemency for Troy Anthony Davis after hearing pleas for mercy from Davis’ family and calls for his execution by surviving relatives of a murdered Savannah police officer.

Davis’ case has already taken more unexpected turns than just about any death-penalty case in Georgia history and his innocence claims have attracted international attention. Its resolution was postponed once again when the parole board late Monday announced it would not be making an immediate decision as to whether Davis should live or die.

Davis, 42, is scheduled to be put to death by lethal injection on Wednesday at 7 p.m. at the state prison in Jackson.

I doubt there are other legal steps that can stop the state from killing Troy Davis.

My heart goes out to Troy Davis and his family, and also to the McPhail family.  They all deserve better.

On September 21, 2011, the State of Georgia plans to kill Troy Davis by lethal injection.  If it happens, this execution will not be an unusual event.  In Texas this year there have already been ten executions. In the United States this year there have been thirty-three executions.   In fact, there have been some days in 2011 when there were two executions.  But in general most, if not all of these killings have gone unnoticed.  It’s as if someone had pressed the mute button, so we could not hear the anguish or see the tears, so we could not see what was being done in our names.  

There were two executions planned in Texas this week. On September 13, 2011, Texas killed Steven Woods for 2001 a double murder.   And on September 15, 2011, it took the US Supreme Court’s last minute stay to stop the planned killing of Duane Buck.  Buck got some deserved attention because his death sentence included egregious “expert” testimony that Black people are more dangerous than whites.  But in general, state killing goes on largely unnoticed.  And without noticeable scrutiny.  Or opposition.

Troy Davis is an exception to the silence and what appears to be acquiescence to state killing.  Thank goodness.  And that may be because Troy Davis is likely innocent.  The case against him has  disintegrated since his trial.  It has fallen apart as witnesses recanted their testimony and explained the police coercion in interrogations that made them perjured themselves at his trial.  Troy Davis appears to be innocent, a circumstances that Justice Scalia has opined in this very case is of no constitutional significance.  Despite all of this Georgia relentlessly pursues killing him.  So Troy Davis has managed to attract attention, which he completely deserves, and has elicited remarkable and justified eloquence in his defense.  I wish others who have faced execution had received similar support, but I can understand completely why they have not.  And I am pleased that the execution of Troy Davis has evoked such strong opposition.

I have twice before written about Georgia’s desire to kill Troy Davis, on July 7, 2006 and onAugust 9, 2009, and here I am again more than five years later saying the same thing, trying to ask you to ask the State of Georgia to spare the same man, Troy Davis. I won’t repeat all the reasons.  

Troy Davis should be spared.

Alll I can do now is urge you, dear reader, to join the 663,000 people who have already signed a petition to go to spare Troy Davis by signing the NAACP petition and by taking the additional recommended steps to spare Troy Davis.

And also, please, whatever may happen to Troy Davis, please recognize that there are going to be more Troy Davises, recognized or not, as long as the United States has the death penalty.  The only way to prevent that is abolition of state killing.  Let’s spare Troy Davis.  And let’s also stop state killing.

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In the middle of Justice Scalia’s dissent in Troy Davis’s case, a dissent that Clarence Thomas joined in, we have this remarkable, astonishing, shocking sentence:

“This court has never held that the Constitution forbids the execution of a convicted defendant who has had a full and fair trial but is later able to convince a court that he is ‘actually’ innocent.”

I cannot believe that they wrote this in a Supeme Court opinion.  And I’m not alone in thinking I would never, never, never see something like this in a published opinion.