(PHOTO: Troy Davis with family during a prison visit.)
Troy Davis Execution Date Expected
Anytime
--An interview with Laura Moye of Amnesty International
By Angola 3 News
Laura Moye is director of the Amnesty International USA Death Penalty Abolition
Campaign. In this interview, Moye talks about 42-year-old Troy Davis, an
African American who has been on death row in Georgia for over 19 years--having
already faced three execution dates. The continued railroading of Davis has
sparked outrage around the world, and public pressure during the last few years
of Davis' appeals has been essential to his survival today.
However, on March 28, 2011, the US Supreme Court's rejected his appeal against
a federal district court's ruling that Davis did not prove his innocence in an
evidentiary hearing held last year. This week Amnesty International released an
email action alert, emphasizing that now, more than a month after the Supreme
Court ruling, Davis' execution date can literally be scheduled any day. The
situation is dire, and public support is currently needed now more than ever
before.
To take action and learn more, visit Amnesty
International's page focusing on Troy Davis, as well as the Color of Change
petition, www.justicefortroy.org
and www.troyanthonydavis.org.
Angola 3 News: Why does Amnesty International consider Troy Davis'
case to be so important?
Laura Moye: Troy Davis' case is emblematic of a broken and unjust death
penalty system. His story speaks volumes about a criminal justice system that
is riddled with bias and error and is fixated on procedure more than it is on
fairness.
It is often difficult to get people to understand or to be interested in
systematic and large-scale injustice, but Troy Davis' story has gotten through
to a lot of people and has made the abolition cause more tangible and real for
a lot of people.
A3N: What do you think are the most compelling facts about this case?
LM: The case against Davis has unraveled, yet he still faces execution.
The conviction rests primarily on nine key witnesses, but six have recanted and
one contradicted her trial statement. The police recovered shell casings at the
crime scene, which were naturally present given that there was a shooting.
However, they never found a murder weapon or any other physical evidence
linking the shell casings to Troy Davis.
Almost all of the witnesses were vulnerable for one reason or another. One
witness was illiterate, others were minors that were questioned without their
parents or supportive adults, some had criminal histories, and most were
African American.
The murder of the white police officer enraged local law enforcement, and
indeed it was a terrible crime. Officer Mark MacPhail was rushing to the aid of
a homeless man who was beaten unconscious in a Burger King parking lot on the
other side of a Greyhound bus station in a poor end of town. When he came
running to the scene, he was shot, and he fell to the ground without even
having drawn his weapon. He left behind a wife and two very small children.
Outrage was appropriate in the wake of his death. However, reports about how
the investigation was conducted call into question how fair and proper things
went. Many speak to the intense pressure on the African American community to
find the perpetrator. Most of the witnesses allege coercion by the police in
obtaining statements.
Strangely, one of the two witnesses who did not recant his testimony has been
implicated in at least nine affidavits and by a new eyewitness account as being
the actual perpetrator. This very same man was the one who first reported to
the police that Davis was the shooter. He was never treated as a suspect
himself. He was not put in line-ups and he was present at the crime scene with
other witnesses for a reenactment of the events.
Davis had a heck of a time trying to seek relief once his case moved from the
trial level to the post-conviction habeas process. The Georgia Resource Center
was hit with a two-thirds budget cut, which reduced the number of staff attorneys
to two, representing about eighty prisoners. Triage was not even possible with
the remaining resources. Yet this was the time for Davis to assemble evidence
and an argument about his innocence claim.
Also, in the mid-1990s, the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act
(AEDPA), was passed on the heels of the Oklahoma City Bombing. It limited
access by death row prisoners of the federal appeals process, placing time
limits on introduction of new evidence for example. Davis' case was negatively
impacted along with others.
Troy Davis has been confronted with a system that would rather hold onto a
decision a jury made twenty years ago than admit that some fundamentally wrong
things have happened. It is a system bent on preserving itself more than on being
absolutely sure that injustice and inaccuracy are filtered out.
A3N: Please tell us more about the racism in Davis'case.
LM: Davis is African American. MacPhail, the murder victim, was White.
The perpetrator was indisputably African American. The crime happened on a poor
end of town, near housing projects and behind a Greyhound bus station. The
racial dynamics in the community were inflamed by the murder and the ensuing
investigation. Many African Americans have talked about the fear they felt in
the midst of a very intense manhunt.
A3N: Do you think the injustices in his case are symptomatic of the
overall criminal justice system in the US?
LM: Many death penalty cases have issues of unfairness. Davis' is less
common in that there is a serious innocence claim.
However, how people are treated by the criminal justice system because of their
background, particularly race and class, is illustrated by this case. The lack
of resources for people's defense and appeals work is very common. And the
difficulty in accessing the appeals process for meaningful relief is also very
difficult.
A3N: Why have the appeals courts been so opposed to granting a new
trial?
LM: The county superior court in Savannah, Georgia would not grant
Davis' "extraordinary motion for a new trial." He appealed this all the way up
to the U.S. Supreme Court and was denied. Interestingly, the Georgia Supreme
Court denied his appeal by one vote.
The courts are very hesitant to re-open death penalty cases. Witness
recantations are considered suspect and testimony by the many people who
implicate the other suspect are dismissed as "hearsay." And yet we know that
most of the 138 exonerees from death row did not have DNA at their disposal,
just like Davis, who had no other kind of physical evidence.
At trial, the state has the burden to prove the defendant is "guilty beyond a
reasonable doubt." After a conviction, that standard disappears. The prisoner
then has an uphill battle to prove that the conviction was wrong or faulty.
A3N: When do you expect that an execution date will be set?
LM: As soon as Georgia announces that it has a protocol for carrying out
executions again, we expect an execution warrant to be signed against Davis.
From that point, an execution date could be two weeks away.
A couple months ago, the DEA seized Georgia's supply of lethal injection drugs
after a complaint was filed about how they accessed their supply of Sodium
Thiopental. Davis would already have received a date if this issue was not at
play. So time is very much of the essence.
A3N: What can our readers do to support Troy Davis right now?
LM: We know many people have signed the petition, but this is a hugely
important thing we need. If you have not signed the petition this year, please
sign it again -- by going to www.justicefortroy.org
and if you have signed it, please share it with ten friends and ask them to do
the same. You can print out the petition and circulate it. That's downloadable
from the website too.
If you know clergy or legal professionals, ask them to please sign the sign-on
letters for Troy. And when a date is set, join us for an international day of
solidarity, where we will have demos around the world in advance of Davis'
clemency hearing to show the parole board that the world is watching and
demands a stop to the execution!
--Angola 3 News is a project of the International Coalition to Free the
Angola 3. Our website is http://www.angola3news.com where we provide the latest news
about the Angola 3. We are also creating our own media projects, which
spotlight the issues central to the story of the Angola 3, like racism,
repression, prisons, human rights, solitary confinement as torture, and more.
Amnesty International has issued a
statement of support for Herman Wallace and Albert Woodfox, the two members
of the Angola 3 who remain in prison today, after more than 39 years of
solitary confinement.