Georgia, the world is watching because fairness matters

You may or may not know but since graduating and moving to Colorado I have become more socially aware…to the point that it sometimes annoys people in my life. I believe that all humans have rights, that people should be involved in their community, and that it’s our job to know what is happening in the world around us. Right now I want to talk about Troy Davis.

Troy Davis has been on death row in Georgia for more than 18 years for the murder of off duty police officer, Mark Allen MacPhail. He has been scheduled to die three times and yet has never had a case based on evidence. Since the initial trial in 1991 Davis has stated time and time again that he is innocent but the plea has fallen on deaf ears. When he was originally convicted and sentenced to death nine people testified against him but there was no physical evidence linking him to the murder and the murder weapon was never found. On August 17, 2009 the US Supreme Court ordered an evidence hearing in the Federal Districts Court to review evidence of Davis’s innocence. The Supreme court did this due to the fact that seven of the original nine non-police witnesses have recanted their original statements and have declared they were pressured by police to lie during the original trial. Furthermore one of the two people who have never wavered from his original testimony, Sylvester "Red" Coles , is the principal alternative suspect. There has never been an evidence hearing in the federal appeals court to examine the new witness testimonies..... until this past week. The witnesses came forward and finally told the truth about what happened that night and consequently the days after in Savannah, Georgia. This is the first time in the subsequent 18 year since Davis was sentenced to death row that the witnesses have been in front of a judge since they recanted their original testimony:

"Antoine Williams, who said he could not read the statement he allegedly made to the police because he can’t read, talked about being haunted with nightmares about it. Kevin McQueen testified that he implicated Troy because he was mad at him. When asked what he hoped to gain by his testimony today, he stated simply, “peace of mind.” When pressed about his earlier – now recanted – testimony, McQueen said adamantly, “The man did not tell me he shot anyone. Period.”

"Anthony Hargrove told the full courtroom that he wrote to Troy in 2000 of his own volition to tell him he had heard Sylvester Coles confess to killing Officer Mark MacPhail. He sounded regretful when he said that because of warrants out on him and concern for his own “self-preservation” he hadn’t come forward. Benjamin Gordon stunned the courtroom with an eyewitness account of the murder of Officer MacPhail by Sylvester Coles and told how he tried to convince Coles to “straighten it up,” because someone was sitting on death row for the crime."

The evidentiary case has now concluded, the judge ordered both sides to submit legal briefs by July 7th. Right now Troy Davis is presumed guilty and has to clearly establish his innocence. Since nobody can foresee the outcome of the hearing, Amenisty International is preparing for everything and anything….

I know the death penalty is a hot button issue…but when people like Troy Davis are sentenced to death…one has to question the system. Below are some facts from Amnesty International-

· The death penalty is racially biased. Since 1977, the overwhelming majority of death row defendants (79%) have been executed for killing white victims, even though African-Americans make up about half of all homicide victims.
· The death penalty claims innocent lives. Since 1973, 138 people have been released from death rows throughout the country due to evidence of their wrongful conviction. In this same time period, more than 1,000 people have been executed.
· The death penalty is not a deterrent. FBI data shows that all 14 states without capital punishment in 2008 had homicide rates at or below the national rate.
· The death penalty costs more and diverts resources from genuine crime control. The greatest costs associated with the death penalty occur prior to and during trial, not in post-conviction proceedings. Even if all post-conviction proceedings (appeals) were abolished, the death penalty would still be more expensive than alternative sentences.
· The death penalty disregards mental illness. The execution of those with mental illness or “the in-sane” is clearly prohibited by international law. In the USA, Constitutional protections for those with other forms of mental illness are minimal, however, and dozens of prisoners have been executed despite suffering from serious mental illness.
· The death penalty is arbitrary and unfair. Almost all death row inmates could not afford their own attorney at trial. Local politics, the location of the crime, plea bargaining, and pure chance affect the process and make it a lottery of who lives and dies. Since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976, 80% of all executions have taken place in the South (37% in Texas alone).

More information on each of these issues is available at www.amnestyusa.org/abolish/