RIP: TROY ANTHONY DAVIS

Troy Anthony Davis was executed in the early hours of Thursday 22nd at a prison in Butts County, Georgia (No, not an appropriate time to look for a cheap laugh about ‘Butts County’).  This was despite more than  a million people (including the Pope, former US Pres. Jimmy Carter, former FBI Director William Sessions and Archbishop Desmond Tutu) signing a petition against the state-sanctioned murder.

On 18th August 1989 two people were shot in Savannah, Georgia – one of whom (police officer Mark MacPhail) died. Several ‘witnesses’ identified Davis as the shooter and, on 23rd August, he handed himself in.

Despite no forensic evidence, no murder weapon and one of the witnesses admitting under cross-examination that he only identified Davis because of police threats made to him, Davis was found guilty and sentenced to death in August 1991.

Davis continued to maintained his innocence; 7 of the 9 witnesses who testified against him changed their story or recanted, and jurors who found Davis guilty publicly said they now think he was innocent. Over the past 20 years numerous appeals were denied, mostly in attempts to save face: in the state of Georgia it is easier to execute a potentially innocent man than open a Pandora’s box of police coercion, inadequate defence funding and a biased judiciary.

On the day of Troy Davis’s death, the prosecutor in his case said of the situation, “all of it is exquisitely unfair” – unfortunately he was referring to the media attention on his work, not the legal stitch up that robbed Davis of his life.

Troy himself was more magnanimous; to the last he maintained his innocence, imploring MacPhail’s family to “look deeper into this case so that you really can finally see the truth.” His final words were he saved for his executioners asking“may God bless your souls.” Amen.