Help Prevent A Monumental Injustice

From Amnesty International

Today, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear Troy Anthony Davis’ appeal. His fate is back in the hands of Georgia authorities who may seek a new execution date at any time.

The Supreme Court’s decision to deny Troy Davis’ petition means that no court of law will ever hold a hearing on the witnesses who have recanted their trial testimony in sworn affidavits.

Doubts about his guilt raised by these multiple witness recantations will never be resolved. An execution under such a cloud of doubt would undermine public confidence in the state’s criminal justice system and would be a grave miscarriage of justice.

The state of Georgia can still do the responsible thing and prevent the execution of Troy Davis:

* Write a letter to the editor calling on Georgia to stop the execution of Troy Davis!
* Call on the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles to reconsider its previous decision and grant clemency to Troy Davis.
* Urge your friends and family to go to amnestyusa.org/troydavis or text TROY to 90999 to add their voices to the over 200,000 that have already taken action on this case.

Join the fight for justice.

Take Action Now!

Sincerely,

Larry Cox
Executive Director
Amnesty International USA

Supreme Court Clears the Way for the Legal Lynching of Troy Davis

Despite the overwhelming amount of evidence that points towards innocence, the top court of the land has rejected Troy Davis’ appeal. Now, the racist scum that have been put in place as executioners in Georgia will proceed with the killing of an innocent man, which they’ve been waiting to do all along.

This latest court decision is shameful and appalling. An american court has said, once again, that innocence does not matter and that the life of a black person is worth nothing.

To execute Troy Davis is an affront to justice and to humanity.

Justices Clear Way for Ga. Execution

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

ATLANTA (AP) — The Supreme Court has cleared the way for a Georgia man to be put to death for killing a police officer two weeks after it halted his execution to consider his appeal.

Troy Davis asked the high court to intervene in his case and order a new trial because seven of the nine witnesses against him have recanted their testimony. Former President Jimmy Carter and South Africa Archbishop Desmond Tutu are among prominent supporters who have called for a new trial.

The justices granted Davis a reprieve on Sept. 23, less than two hours before his scheduled execution. But they declined Tuesday to give his appeal a full-blown hearing. It was not immediately clear when his execution will be scheduled.

Davis’ supporters, who erupted in joy when his execution was halted last month, said they were heartbroken when they received word of the decision.

“Oh, God. I think it’s disgusting, terrible. I’m extremely disappointed,” said Martina Correia, Davis’ sister. “Well, we still have to fight. We can’t stop.”

Davis was convicted of the murder of 27-year-old officer Mark MacPhail, who was working off-duty as a security guard at a bus station. MacPhail’s family said they were relieved.

“I was hoping that would be the decision,” said MacPhail’s mother, Anneliese MacPhail. “I’m hoping that soon we will have some peace, that this will all be over.”

A divided Georgia Supreme Court has twice rejected Davis’ request for a new trial, and had rejected his appeal to delay the execution on Monday afternoon. The Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles also turned down his bid for clemency.

MacPhail had rushed to help a homeless man who had been pistol-whipped at a nearby parking lot, and was shot twice when he approached Davis and two other men.

Witnesses identified Davis as the shooter, and at the 1991 trial, prosecutors said he wore a “smirk on his face” as he fired the gun.

But Davis’ lawyers say new evidence proves their client was a victim of mistaken identity. Besides those who have recanted their testimony, three others who did not testify have said Sylvester “Red” Coles — who testified against Davis at his trial — confessed to the killing.

Coles refused to talk about the case when contacted by The Associated Press during a 2007 court appearance and has no listed phone number.

Prosecutors have said the case is closed. They also say some of the witness affidavits simply repeat what a trial jury has already heard, while others are irrelevant because they come from witnesses who never testified.

Troy Davis death warrant expired; no news yet from Supreme Court

The Georgia death warrant expired on September 30th and the Supreme Court has still not issued a ruling on whether they will hear Troy’s appeal. There might be some news on that front on Monday.

In the meantime, Let’s continue the fight to save Troy’s life!

From Georgians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty:

Click here to take action in support of Troy Davis

wsav.com

Troy Davis Latest
Friday, Oct 03, 2008 – 12:01 AM

The U.S. Supreme court still has not announced its decision whether to hear or deny Troy Davis’ appeal for a new trial. Davis is on death row for the 1989 murder of Savannah Police Officer Mark Macphail. Reaction was mixed nine days ago when the high court issued a stay of execution.

Family members on both sides share thoughts as they wait for word.

“We wait very patiently that the courts in Georgia have upheld the law and have done everything right by Troy and that they won’t find anything wrong with the case itself and so they’ll just say okay we can go go back and set an execution date. ” says MacPhail’s Widow Joan.

“He has a strong family base. One thing about Troy is that he is very prayerful hopeful and he’s standing on faith that something positive will happen from this, Troy’s sister Matina Correia.

Troy Davis will turn 40 next Thursday. An answer from the U.S. Supreme Court on whether to take up Troy Davis’ case could come any day now.

A letter from Troy Davis

To all,

I want to thank all of you for your efforts and dedication to Human Rights and Human Kindness, in the past year I have experienced such emotion, joy, sadness and never ending faith.

It is because of all of you that I am alive today, as I look at my sister Martina I am marveled by the love she has for me and of course I worry about her and her health, but as she tells me she is the eldest and she will not back down from this fight to save my life and prove to the world that I am innocent of this terrible crime.

As I look at my mail from across the globe, from places I have never ever dreamed I would know about and people speaking languages and expressing cultures and religions I could only hope to one day see first hand. I am humbled by the emotion that fills my heart with overwhelming, overflowing Joy.

I can’t even explain the insurgence of emotion I feel when I try to express the strength I draw from you all, it compounds my faith and it shows me yet again that this is not a case about the death penalty, this is not a case about Troy Davis, this is a case about Justice and the Human Spirit to see Justice prevail.

I cannot answer all of your letters but I do read them all, I cannot see you all but I can imagine your faces, I cannot hear you speak but your letters take me to the far reaches of the world, I cannot touch you physically but I feel your warmth everyday I exist.

So Thank you and remember I am in a place where execution can only destroy your physical form but because of my faith in God, my family and all of you I have been spiritually free for some time and no matter what happens in the days, weeks to come, this Movement to end the death penalty, to seek true justice, to expose a system that fails to protect the innocent must be accelerated.

There are so many more Troy Davis’. This fight to end the death penalty is not won or lost through me but through our strength to move forward and save every innocent person in captivity around the globe. We need to dismantle this Unjust system city by city, state by state and country by country.

I can’t wait to Stand with you, no matter if that is in physical or spiritual form, I will one day be announcing, “I AM TROY DAVIS, and I AM FREE!”

Never Stop Fighting for Justice and We will Win!

– Troy Davis

Stop the execution of Troy Davis!

Troy Davis Update

The stay of execution granted is of course important but the struggle to save Troy Davis’ life goes on.

The stay was granted only until September 29. On this day the Supreme Court will hear Troy’s appeal for new evidence of his innocence to be considered. If the court decides to hear this appeal, the stay will be extended but if they reject it, the stay will be lifted and the execution will be carried out.

All actions of support and solidarity for Troy must continue. The pressure needs to be kept on.

An innocent man’s life hangs in the balance.

To find out more about Troy’s case and how you can get involved please visit the Troy Anthony Davis Web site.

Click on the link below

Troy Anthony Davis Website

TROY DAVIS GRANTED LAST MINUTE STAY OF EXECUTION!

cnn.com

By Rusty Dornin

JACKSON, Georgia (CNN) — The U.S. Supreme Court granted a last-minute reprieve to a Georgia man fewer than two hours before he was to be executed for the 1989 slaying of an off-duty police officer.
Troy Anthony Davis, 39, has his execution stayed by the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday.

Troy Anthony Davis learned that his execution had been stayed when he saw it on television, he told CNN via telephone in his first interview after the stay was announced.

He said he was “thankful to God” for the news that came during an emergency session the U.S. Supreme Court convened.

Davis said “everyone should pray” for the slain officer’s family.

The 39-year-old also said that he is “very grateful for everything that everyone is doing” for him and that he would “accept” whatever decision the Supreme Court rendered in the coming days about his case.

At the Diagnostic and Classification Prison in Jackson, a crowd of Davis’ supporters, led by the Rev. Al Sharpton, erupted in cheers when Sharpton announced the stay. Some shouted “Hallelujah!”

Davis has long said he didn’t kill Mark MacPhail, a Savannah, Georgia, police officer, and the U.S. Supreme Court was the last option for Davis to have his execution postponed. It was scheduled to move forward at 7 p.m. ET.

Seven of the nine witnesses who initially testified that Davis was the killer have recanted. There was no physical evidence presented at his trial, and no weapon was found. But Davis’ petitions for a new trial have been denied. Learn more about capital punishment in the United States »

The MacPhail family said they were angry about the stay.

“I am angry as can be. I’m disgusted. It should have been over by now,” MacPhail’s mother, Anneliese MacPhail, told CNN. “Nobody thinks about what the victims’ family has gone through again and again.

“I was hoping it would be over today,” she said.

Earlier, she said, “There is no possibility he’s innocent, not according to what’s been said in court.”

MacPhail’s sister Anneli Reaves was outside the prison. She said that if witnesses now say that they lied when they testified that Davis was the killer, they should be charged with perjury.

“It should have happened today,” she said of the execution.

Davis, 39, was convicted in 1991 of killing the officer as he responded to an altercation in a Burger King parking lot.

Earlier Tuesday, Davis refused his last meal, according to the Georgia Department of Corrections, which will still provide him with macaroni and cheese, pinto beans, green beans, lettuce and tomato salad, corn bread, fruit cobbler and tea.

Prison officials said that he was offered ativan, a mild sedative. But Davis refused to take the drug, he said.

Many had asked Georgia to grant Davis a new trial: celebrities like Susan Sarandon, Harry Belafonte and the Indigo Girls; world leaders such as former President Carter, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Pope Benedict XVI; and former and current U.S. lawmakers like Bob Barr, Carolyn Moseley Braun and John Lewis.

Amnesty International has issued a 39-page report questioning his conviction, and protesters have been gathering at the Georgia Capitol in Atlanta this week. .

Davis’ sister, Martina Correia, said she was sleepless Monday night and was spending Tuesday at his side. She said she planned to stay until prison officials told her to leave at 3 p.m.

Before the stay was announced, she said, “We still hope the U.S. Supreme Court will look into my brother’s case and give some relief. We will have a lot of family time with him and recall old times and pray together.”

The Georgia Supreme Court turned down the plea for a stay in Davis’ execution Monday, saying the U.S. Supreme Court “properly has jurisdiction over Davis’ pending petition.”

Troy Davis Case – What’s the Rush?

nytimes.com

What’s the Rush?
By BOB HERBERT

Troy Davis, who was convicted of shooting a police officer to death in the parking lot of a Burger King in Savannah, Ga., is scheduled to be executed on Tuesday.

There is some question as to his guilt (even the pope has weighed in on this case), but the odds of Mr. Davis escaping the death penalty are very slim. Putting someone to death whose guilt is uncertain is always perverted, but there*s an extra dose of perversion in this case.

The United States Supreme Court is scheduled to make a decision on whether to hear a last-ditch appeal by Mr. Davis on Sept. 29. That’s six days after the state of Georgia plans to kill him.

Mr. Davis’s lawyers have tried desperately to have the execution postponed for those few days, but so far to no avail. Georgia is among the most cold-blooded of states when it comes to dispatching prisoners into eternity.

So the lawyers are now trying to get the Supreme Court to issue a stay, or decide before Tuesday on whether it will consider the appeal.

No one anywhere would benefit from killing Mr. Davis on Tuesday, as opposed to waiting a week to see how the Supreme Court rules. So why the rush? The murder happened in 1989, and Mr. Davis has been on death row for 17 years. Six or seven more days will hardly matter.

Most of the time, the court declines to hear such cases.

If that’s the decision this time, Georgia can get on with the dirty business of taking a human life. If the court agrees to hear the appeal, it would have an opportunity to get a little closer to the truth of what actually happened on the terrible night of Aug. 19, 1989, when Officer Mark Allen MacPhail was murdered.

He was shot as he went to the aid of a homeless man who was being pistol-whipped in the parking lot.

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.

So we have here a mess that is difficult, perhaps impossible, to sort through in a way that will yield reliable answers. (The jury also convicted Mr. Davis of a nonfatal shooting earlier that same evening on testimony that was even more dubious.)

There was no physical evidence against Mr. Davis, and the murder weapon was never found. As for the witnesses, their testimony was obviously shaky in the extreme, not the sort of evidence you want to rely upon when putting someone to death.

In March, the State Supreme Court in Georgia, in a 4-to-3 decision, denied Mr. Davis’s request for a new trial. The chief justice, Leah Ward Sears, writing for the minority, said: “In this case, nearly every witness who identified Davis as the shooter at trial has now disclaimed his or her ability to do so reliably.”

Amnesty International conducted an extensive examination of the case, documenting the many recantations, inconsistencies, contradictions and unanswered questions. Its report on the case drew widespread attention, both in the U.S. and overseas.

William Sessions, a former director of the F.B.I., has said that a closer look at the case is warranted. And Pope Benedict XVI has urged authorities in Georgia to re-sentence Mr. Davis to life in prison.

Rushing to execute Mr. Davis on Tuesday makes no sense at all.

Finality Over Fairness – Troy Davis’ Case

Another case of legal lynching is about to take place.

Troy Davis’ case epitomizes everything that is wrong with the american criminal justice system and the death penalty. This case is further proof of how racism is a determining factor in how the death penalty is administered in this country.

Some undisputed facts in this case:

- Troy’s fingerprints didn’t match those found at the crime scene

- There was no gun residue on Troy’s fingers and no physical evidence at all that connects Troy to the crime

- Seven out of nine witnesses said they were pressured into their statement

From Amnesty International

Troy Davis is an African American man on who has been on Georgia’s death row for the past 18 years, convicted of killing a white police officer named Mark McPhail. Now, after the Georgia Parole Board denied Troy clemency, he faces execution on September 23rd.

On Monday, March 17, 2008, the Georgia Supreme Court decided 4-3 to deny a new trial for Troy Anthony Davis, despite significant concerns regarding his innocence. This stunning decision by the Georgia Supreme Court to let Mr. Davis’ death sentence stand means that the state of Georgia might soon execute a man who may well be innocent.

The Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles denied clemency for Troy Anthony Davis shortly before 5 p.m. on Friday, September 12. 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, so your continued action is needed today!

Background
Restrictions on Federal appeals have prevented Troy Anthony Davis from having a hearing in federal court on the reliability of the witness testimony used against him, despite the fact that most of the witnesses have since recanted, many alleging they were pressured or coerced by police. Troy Davis remains on Georgia death row, and may be scheduled for execution in the near future.

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.

Take Action! Send a letter to the Georgia Board of Pardons and Parole

Click here for more information on Troy Davis’ Case

Rage Against The Machine at the Republican convention

The band was prevented from taking the stage by the police at a festival that took place on Tuesday. Rage carried on with a megaphone and did a set of music, acapella, inspiring thousands of protesters to march toward the site of the Republican convention.

Journalist Amy Goodman arrested at the Republican convention

I won’t be holding my breath waiting for a reaction, even less, a response from any Democrat to the disturbing arrest and civil rights violation of this award winning journalist.

This is the american police state at its finest. They really do perform their best work every four years at each corporate party’s convention.