//Wrongly Accused: Troy Davis
In this, one of APKALLDAY’s more sombre posts, we take a look at a man named Troy Davis. Sentenced to die by lethal injection tomorrow at 7pm, Davis was accused, tried and convicted of killing off duty police officer Mark MacPhail in a Savannah, Georgia parking lot. Ordinarily this would be nothing new. After all, states like Georgia just love to demonstrate why killing is wrong by killing people who kill. This time, however, there is a catch. Troy Davis is innocent.
Accused by the person most people and officials involved in this injustice believe to be the actual killer, Davis and his team of councilors have been fighting tooth and nail for the sentenced to be overturned and for Davis to be let free ever since his conviction in 1991. With no physical evidence to link Davis to the crime and a prosecution based entirely on the testimony of nine witnesses (seven of whom have since rescinded their sworn statements in which they single Davis out as the killer) and no murder weapon, one may be inclined to think that this would be a slam dunk for the defense. Not the case.
To add insult to injury, it would seem that even the people funding the prosecution (i.e. the police) knew they hadn’t a leg on which to stand and resorted to ‘pressure’ and ‘harassment’ of the witnesses such that they would point to Davis as the murderer.
This morning, after years of rallies, pleas for mercy and presentations of overwhelming evidence in favour of Davis’ release, the Georgia State Board of Pardons and Paroles denied Troy Davis clemency.
In 1843, a wealthy businessman and mill owner by the name of Amassa Sprague was shot and beaten to death in what is now Cranston, Rhode Island. The widely disrespected, generally disliked and easily blamable minority of that time were the Irish immigrants who had flooded to the American colonies seeking a new start. In the end, three Irish brothers were accused of the murder without a shred of conclusive physical evidence. The prosecuting team based their case solely on the testimony of a few ‘witnesses’ who were threatened by the Sprague family to testify against the brothers. This was not to mention that the jurors of the trial were openly anti-Irish. On February 14th 1845, John Gordon was hung and his brothers sent to prison.
I’d like to think that we as a country have come farther than that in 168 years. That the justice system is refined enough to look at a situation in a new light and then reassess or, at the very least, look at reason. Given what America is bearing witness to concerning the so clearly unjust execution of Troy Davis, I guess we still have a lot to learn.
There are few last ditch effort options including that of Amnesty International in which you can send a letter to the parole board.
NRTIII
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