Last Wednesday, at nightfall, hope filled the air. More than two hours had passed since the executioner was scheduled to inject chemicals into the man strapped to a gurney -- poisons that would paralyze his lungs and stop his heart. But Troy Davis was still alive.
Outside the death chamber, the crowd of protesters had swelled and its mood brightened with the news that the Supreme Court was reviewing the case. Georgia prison officials had placed the execution on hold. Surely, the evidence would save him: seven recantations by the eyewitnesses, admissions of guilt by the alternative suspect, unwavering assertions of innocence by Davis and no incriminating physical evidence or a murder weapon.
Yet, in what seemed like the blink of an eye, Davis was gone. "How could this happen in America?" was the question repeated on talk radio and around the water coolers. Now it's time for a postmortem, and the troubling answer is: it happens all the time. In fact, Troy Davis never had a chance.
Despite the evidence of his innocence, despite the support by a former president, an FBI director and the Pope, despite the seemingly endless appeals, Troy Davis was doomed to die. His fate was sealed the moment Mark MacPhail was gunned down on that hot Savannah night in 1989.
From the day he was arrested, Troy Davis had three strikes against him.
Strike one: Davis was black, MacPhail was white. In the past three decades, 255 blacks have been executed for killing whites, while only 17 whites have been put to death for killing blacks, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. During the same period, almost 80 percent of executions involved inmates convicted of murdering whites, even though half the murder victims in society were black. Troy Davis never had a chance.
Strike two: MacPhail was a police officer. Law enforcement, charged with protecting all citizens equally, protects some more equally than others. The murder of a police officer compels prosecutors to pull out all the stops to get a conviction and death sentence. State law makes the murder of an officer a capital offense. If MacPhail had been the mayor of Savannah, his murderer would not have been eligible for the death penalty. Troy Davis never had a chance.
Strike three: The crime happened in the South. Three Southern states (Texas, Virginia and Florida) account for the majority of all executions since 1976, according to a recent report by the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. Georgia ranks seventh in the country in total executions, and its death row is one of the nation's largest. Troy Davis never had a chance.
What if Davis had been convicted of killing the black homeless man in the parking lot that night instead of Officer MacPhail? What if the crime had happened in Chicago instead of Savannah? Davis would have received a long prison term. But if he somehow had been sentenced to death, he would have been pardoned when Illinois Gov. George Ryan cleared death row in 2003, and perhaps freed because of the witness recantations.
Turn back the clock to when Jim Edgar was governor of Illinois, however, and the outcome might have been as deadly as in Georgia. The law-and-order governor refused to stop the 1995 execution of another black man named Davis -- Girvies Davis -- despite compelling evidence of his innocence uncovered by my journalism students and Chicago Tribune columnist Eric Zorn. Davis' crime: an interracial murder.
Like the case of Girvies Davis, the actual evidence in Troy Davis' case took a back seat to the vagaries of race, geography and politics.
We naively believed Troy Davis had a chance last Wednesday night. And maybe that's why his execution still hurts so much.
Barbara Crafton: The Death Penalty Is America's Blind Spot
Stephen Dear: What I Learned at My Arrest at Troy Davis' Execution
Tobias Winright: A Catholic Call To Abolish The Death Penalty
Not to mention the fact that they actually postponed it for 4 more hours, leading everyone down the path of "false hope" even further. It sickens me how cruel it all was.
Take the case of Anthony Porter here in Illinois. He came within 50 hours of execution before getting a stay that allowed my students and others to re-investigate his case. The students went to the park where the double homicide occurred and re-enacted the crime from the vantage point of the State's only eyewitness (based on his testimony.) Turns out the witness, who knew Porter from the neighborhood, could not have seen the shooting. A black fence was in the way. When we confronted the witness with this inconsistency, he recanted, saying the police threatened him unless he identified Porter. Later, Porter was exonerated and freed.
The Porter witness is fairly typical, presenting a combination of reasons why his original testimony was false.
But I hope even supporters of capital punishment would want the right man to pay for the crime. If Troy Davis was not that man -- and there is ample evidence to raise doubts about his guilt -- then how is Officer MacPhail's memory served by last Wednesday's execution? By SOMEONE being put to death? As for the 20 years (22, actually) that Troy Davis had, anyone who's visited death row knows his life was, at best, marginal.
The Chicago Innocence Project takes no position on Mumia's case, and I want you to know that one of the officers of our Board was a close family member of murder victims. Jeanne Bishop's pregnant sister and brother-in-law were murdered in their suburban home. Victims of crimes deserve justice. Real justice.
Recantations are meaningless when they're made from an affidavit, and the actual witnesses aren't subject to cross examination. Not to mention if even one credible witness remains, the jury would have been able to find him guilty. The case was procedurally sound and factually solid.
Oh, and it's a total red herring to interject race into the conversation when Mr. Davis was convicted by 7 blacks and 5 whites. In just two hours, because the evidence was that overwhelming.
In a new trial, the recanters, along with other witnesses, would have been subject to cross-examination.
I absolutely agree that affidavits are not reliable in themselves and that the actual witnesses should have been subjected to cross examination. That's why there should have been a new trial where both sides questioned the witnesses with a judge or jury determining their credibility. Unfortunately, Troy Davis was executed before that happened. Now we'll never know which story the witnesses told -- the initial or the recanted version -- was true.
Were you unaware this happened in the trial -- you know, the one where a jury that HEARD them cross-examined determined that Davis was guilty beyond a reasonable doubt? If you knew this, why would you phrase a question that isn't true?
"That's why there should have been a new trial..." So your argument for a new trial is based on a false claim.
When SCOTUS ordered Judge Moore to determine whether a new trial was necessary, two things happened: first, both the defense and prosecution convinced him that the jury had heard the coerced testimony argument and decided it was not credible, and second, the defense refused to even present the 'somebody else confessed' argument.
So Davis had his shot at proving a new trial was warranted -- and he both lost (on 'coerced testimony'), and refused to even try (on 'somebody else confessed').
Whatever else that is, it's not the way you tell the story.
The headline on your piece says that "Davis never had a chance". But he had two -- his original trial, and before Judge Moore. He lost both times.
Yet you claim that "Davis never had a chance". Is there any reasonable way to conclude that you're not a false witness, yourself?
But the findings also showed that African Americans on death row for killing nonwhites are less likely to be executed than other condemned prisoners. However, your assertion that "In the past three decades 255 blacks have been executed for killing whites, while only 17 whites have been put to death for killing blacks" seems suspect. The numbers are much too low. According to FBI Expanded Data Table 6, in 2009 alone, 455 blacks murdered whites while 209 whites murdered blacks. Multiple that one-tear total by by three decades, and you get 13,650 blacks murdering whites and 6,270 whites murdering blacks. If your execution figures are true, then an awful lot of people are getting away with murder.
http://www2.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2009/offenses/expanded_information/data/shrtable_06.html
It is simply astounding that Protess would or could endorse them in any way.
Protess, review:
The 130 (now 138) death row "innocents" scam
http://homicidesurvivors.com/2009/03/04/fact-checking-issues-on-innocence-and-the-death-penalty.aspx
and
An Open Fraud in the Death Penalty Debate:
A Review of the "Exonerated", the "Innocent" and the "Wrongfully Convicted", as defined by the DPIC and their proxies.
Dudley Sharp
Richard Dieter participates in a lengthly discussion of the "exonerated innocents" removed from death row on the Dallas Morning News Death Penalty Blog.
LINK: http://deathpenaltyblog.dallasnews.com/archives/2010/04/why-exonerated-needs-to-be-use.html
It is a rare look at how well destroyed the EXONERATED list is and how it has been so deceptively used by the anti death penalty movement.
http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/death-row-inmates-state-and-size-death-row-year
But thank you for the comment. I hope this clarifies.
The only differnece between states that execute and those that do not are the culture of the judges.
Some judges will handle capital cases in a responsible, timely manner, some will not.
The huge disparity in executions is because of the judges, not state culture.
As this is well known by people experienced in the debate, it is odd you are not aware of this.
read the court document I posted, above. Davis is clearly guilty of the murder and the anti death penalty decptions meant nothing on appeal, as deceptions merit.
You should have known this already, Mr. Protess. Journalists have a responsibility to tell the whole story.