“Troy Anthony Davis is making a statement about human rights, and people are listening.” This is how Martina Correia, sister of death row inmate Troy Davis, closed a letter of thanks for the international attention and expressions of solidarity Davis and his family have received over the 16 years of their struggle.
On Sept. 23, the United States Supreme Court issued a temporary stay of execution for Davis, which will remain in effect until the court has considered the mountain of evidence pointing to his innocence. As of this moment, the court has yet to make a decision.
According to Amnesty International, Davis’ case “is one in a long line of cases in the USA that should give even ardent supporters of the death penalty pause for thought.”
In 1989, at the age of 22, Davis was sentenced to death for the murder of Savanna, Ga., police officer Mark McPhail. All along, Davis has maintained that he had arrived on the scene of the shooting to help a homeless man who was being beaten behind a Burger King restaurant. Since then, seven of nine witnesses have recanted their testimony, nearly all of them reporting coercion at the hands of the police. In one affidavit, witness Monty Holmes recounts, “I was real young at that time, and here they were questioning me about the murder of a police officer, like I was in trouble or something. I was scared. … It seemed like they wouldn’t stop questioning me until I told them what they wanted to hear. So I did.”
Even at the time of the trial, there was no physical evidence connecting Davis to the murder — no fingerprints or gun powder residue on Davis’ hands. One of the remaining two witnesses, Sylvester Coles, was himself a suspect until his testimony. Three others who were never called to testify claim to have heard Coles bragging about the killing.
No jury has ever heard this evidence, partially because appealing Davis’ case has met with a phalanx of legal obstacles. The Georgia Supreme Court dismissed the appeal. However, its refusal was based on absurd legal precedent and “tough-guy” legislation. The 1993 Supreme Court ruling Herrera v. Collins stated that, even if evidence of innocence is found, if it is proved that the convicted received a fair trial, the evidence is rendered inconsequential. The immediate question jumps to mind: How can one receive a fair trial if all the evidence is not considered?
Further frustrating efforts to free potentially innocent people from death row is the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, which was signed into law by President Clinton and laid the political groundwork for the current president’s Patriot Act. The legislation limits the time in which appeals can be made and new evidence raised, and weakens the ability of the Federal Courts to overturn the decisions of state courts.
The law itself limits the ability of people to seek justice once inside a system that has been proven to be deeply flawed and overtly racist. A 2000 study conducted by Columbia Law School states bluntly, “The answer provided by our study of 5,760 capital sentences and 4,578 appeals is that serious error … has reached epidemic proportions throughout our death penalty system. More than two out of every three capital judgments reviewed by the courts during the 23-year study period were found to be seriously flawed.” Now compound that with the regular discrimination against black Americans who, while only comprising 12 percent of the population, make up nearly half the prison population. Considered together, one begins to appreciate the words of exonerated death row inmate Stanley Howard when he says, “The legal lynching’s going on in concentration camps across this nation.”
The struggle to save Troy Davis continues. The Campaign to End the Death Penalty will be holding its eighth annual conference in Chicago Nov. 8-9. Activists on the front line of the struggle will also be speaking the following weekend in Chicago at the Midwest Socialist Conference. Please spread the word about Davis’ case, visit his website and those of his supporters, learn more about the injustice of the death penalty, and lend a hand where you can.
Ben Ratliffe ([email protected]) is a member of the International Socialist Organization and a UW alumnus.
