After two decades, a Death Row inmate finally may get to prove his innocence

[thatcrazycajun]

Yesterday marked the 20th anniversary of the killing of Officer Mark Allen McPhail of Savannah, GA's police department. He was shot in the parking lot of a Burger King restaurant while off duty, intervening in an altercation. For almost that entire time, Troy Anthony Davis has sat on the state of Georgia's Death Row convicted of the crime, several appeals having failed despite evidence that he may in fact not have been McPhail's killer. Davis is black and McPhail was white, a fact that is by no means irrelevant in such cases...especially down here.

Three salient facts persuaded even the conservative U.S. Supreme Court of John Roberts, two days ago, to finally order a new evidentiary hearing in the case:

• There was, and remains, no physical evidence linking Davis to the crime. None. Nada. Zip. Zilch. No murder weapon, no fingerprints, no clothing fragments, no DNA, not so much as a toernail clipping.
• Seven of the nine witnesses on whose testimony the prosecution built its entire case have since recanted or changed said testimony. (And any lawyer in criminal justice practice will tell you eyewitness accounts are the most unreliable evidence.) Some witnesses allege that police coercion and intimidation pressured them to implicate Davis.
• Another man was present at the scene who was pointed to in some testimony as the actual shooter...who was ignored by police detectives and prosecutors in favor of convicting Davis.

Given all this, and that the death penalty as it is enforced in this country is often laid on the wrong person, and disproportionately on one racial/ethnic group—African-American males—and given the ethically questionable nature of the penalty (as the saying goes, why do we kill people who kill people to show that killing people is wrong?), a review of the case would seem to be a no-brainer. It is becoming more and more evident that Davis was railroaded by a police force and DA's office in Chatham County desperate to satisfy public outrage at a young cop's murder with a conviction.

AlterNet has an article outlining the story in greater detail here. Here in the Peach State, the case has understandably been in the news of late; however, the case of Davis has also attracted international attention, to the point that even former US President Jimmy Carter and Pope Benedict XVI have said publicly that Davis should not be executed. And it should be noted that even if a new hearing invalidates his guilt, the sentence may yet stand...as the law says it can only be overturned if the court that rendered it interpreted the law incorrectly or Davis did not receive a fair trial as statutorily defined, neither of which is the case. But at least the system has finally been forced to admit that Davis may be innocent...and if this causes a review of the entire larger issue of American society's use—and misuse—of the ultimate sanction, then there may be some good result to come out of all this...even if Davis finally does have to ride the needle or has his sentence commuted to life in prison without parole.

I would demand that our state's lame-duck governor, George Ervin "Sonny" Perdue II, use his authority to pardon Davis...but the precincts of Hades will likely see ice storms before that happens, no matter how many letters, phone calls or e-mails he gets, him being an older white Republican from the rural red sea surrounding the island of blue that is Atlanta. And I doubt that the President has authority to intervene in a state capital case, even if he could be persuaded. So I am at a loss to know what may be done short of praying...and I stopped believing in God—or the justice system's fairness to people of color—a long time ago.

Comments

[maugorn.livejournal.com]

It is cases like this, (and the number of them is astonishing) and this contingency alone, that was the final straw in my dis-advocation of the death penalty as a penalty.

My question is "What happens when you get it wrong, convicting and then killing an innocent man?"

The State has a compelling interest in meting out sanction as a response to criminal behaviour, and it's common sense that such sanction be proportionate to the crime(s). But, the State (as can be demonstrated time and again) since it is run by fallible people can also be fallible. For that reason alone, a State where a conviction can yield murder of an innocent citizen lies my opposition to a death penalty.

It is understandable, and even forgivable that the State can get it wrong sometimes and mistakenly convict an innocent person.
As long as that person is not a corpse, the State can make an effort at correction and amends where appropriate.

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

Even Sonny Perdue could be railroaded, if you got enough public interest behind it. Write a song, get somebody to make a video, stuff it on YouTube... hey, if a white guy sings "let him go" and it goes viral, Perdue may have to do it... or risk (irony!) a lynching.

[thatcrazycajun.livejournal.com]

Hmm...I feel a chorus already working its way into my head:
"Let him go! Let him go!
If you know he isn't guilty, let him go!
They can prove he didn't do it,
So why put the poor guy through it?
He does not deserve to die, so let him go!"

[osewalrus.livejournal.com]

I have never understood why people so vehemently protest against a refusal to execute someone who may be innocent. What purpose can executing the wrong person serve?