STOP LEGAL MURDER! TAKE ACTION AGAINST THE EXECUTION OF TROY DAVIS!
Enrique Ferro
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BREAKING: The Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles denies clemency to Troy Davis. |
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Dear Supporter,
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 Keep fighting for Troy 
We will continue to urge the State of Georgia to stop this senseless execution! 
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© 2011 Amnesty International USA | 5 Penn Plaza, New York, NY 10001 | 212.807.8400 | ||||
Clemency for US death row prisoner Troy Davis denied
Several witnesses in the Troy Davis case have recanted or changed their testimony
© Georgia Department of Corrections
20 September 2011
The State Board of Pardons and Paroles in the US state of Georgia must reconsider their decision to deny clemency for a US man facing the death penalty, Amnesty International said today after the ruling cleared the way for his execution on Wednesday.
Troy Davis was sentenced to death in 1991 for the murder of police officer Mark Allen Macphail in Savannah, Georgia.
“This is a huge setback for human rights in the USA, where a man who has been condemned under dubious evidence is to be executed by the state. Even at this late stage, the Board must reconsider its decision,” said Salil Shetty, Amnesty International’s Secretary General.
“The decision by Georgia’s Board of Pardons and Paroles to reject Troy Davis’ appeal for clemency is obviously at odds with their 2007 decision when they counselled against execution if there was “doubt as to the guilt of the accused””, said Salil Shetty.
The case against Troy Davis primarily rested on witness testimony. Since his 1991 trial, seven of key nine witnesses have recanted or changed their testimony, some alleging police coercion.
“Even if members of the Board were convinced that there was no doubt, many other people have not been so persuaded.
“Clearly, the US capital justice system is capable of making mistakes. The persistent doubts that have plagued the Troy Davis case point to a fundamental flaw of the death penalty. It is irrevocable – and in the USA, the death penalty is also marked by arbitrariness, discrimination and error,” Salil Shetty added.
Amnesty International opposes the death penalty in all cases and under all circumstances.
The organization’s activists have campaigned extensively on Troy Davis’ behalf, delivering nearly one million signatures to authorities in Georgia to urge them to commute his death sentence: vigils and events have been held in approximately 300 locations around the world.
Since Troy Davis has been on death row, more than 90 prisoners have been released from death rows around the USA on grounds of innocence. In each case, at trial the defendant had been found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.
In the past four years, three states in the USA – New Jersey, New Mexico and Illinois – have legislated to abolish the death penalty. The inability to exclude errors, and the potential for executing the innocent, were major arguments in these processes, convincing even some previous supporters of the death penalty..
In contrast to the 139 countries worldwide that have abolished the death penalty in law or practice, the USA currently has more than 3,200 people on its death rows, and has executed more than 1,200 prisoners since resuming judicial killing in 1977. Currently Georgia has over 100 people on its death row and three people have been executed in this state in 2011 already.
http://www.amnesty.org/en/news-and-updates/clemency-us-death-row-prisoner-troy-davis-denied-2011-09-20
Troy Davis execution: Georgia pardons board denies plea for clemency
Georgia man who insists he was wrongly convicted of killing a police officer in 1989 set to be executed on Wednesday
- Ed Pilkington
- guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 20 September 2011 14.23 BST
- Article history
One of the most hotly contested death row cases in recent years looks set to go ahead with the execution of Troy Davis in Georgia on Wednesday.
Davis lost his final bid for clemency despite overwhelming evidence indicating that his conviction for murder is unreliable.
He will be put on a gurney at the state prison in Jackson and administered a cocktail of lethal drugs at 7pm local time on Wednesday, barring a last-minute intervention by the US supreme court which few observers expect to take place.
The Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles, which alone has power within the state to commute Davis's death sentence, denied to grant him clemency having heard three hours of testimony on Monday casting deep doubts on his conviction.
Davis, 42, was put on death row 20 years ago for the 1989 murder of a police officer, Mark MacPhail, in Savannah following a fight with a homeless man over a bottle of beer. Since then seven out of the nine key witnesses who implicated him have recanted their evidence, several saying they were cajoled by police into giving false eye-witness statements.
Another 10 have come forward to point the finger at a separate man present at the scene of the murder, Sylvester Coles.
Meanwhile, no forensic or DNA evidence linking Davis to the shooting has ever been found, and nor has the murder weapon.
The denial of clemency by the parole board prompted an outpouring of anger and despair from hundreds of Twitter users and several celebrity supporters of Davis's campaign. The prisoner's lawyer, Brian Kammer, said he was "shocked and disappointed at the failure of our justice system at all levels to correct a miscarriage of justice".
Amnesty International's US branch, that has championed the case, said: "Allowing a man to be sent to death under an enormous cloud of doubt about his guilt is an outrageous affront to justice. The case against Davis unraveled long ago."
The public figures who have leant their names to the "Too much doubt" campaign to have Davis's execution commuted include Archbishop Desmond Tutu, former president Jimmy Carter, the former director of the FBI William Sessions, 51 members of the US Congress and the actor Mia Farrow.
Bianca Jagger, who acts as the Council of Europe's ambassador on the death penalty, said: "to execute Troy Davis in these circumstances would be a travesty. Executing an innocent man is a state-sanctioned murder."
The parole board heard from one of the jurors who originally recommended the death penalty for Davis. Brenda Forrest told the panel she no longer trusted the verdict or sentence: "I feel, emphatically, that Mr Davis cannot be executed under these circumstances," she said, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
The board also heard from Quiana Glover, who testified she had heard Coles confess in June 2009 to having been the killer, at a party where he had been drinking heavily.
But the family of the murdered police officer have consistently expressed their desire to see Davis executed, saying they have no doubts about his guilt. "A future was taken from me. The death penalty is the correct form of justice," Madison MacPhail, the victim's daughter, said before the parole board announced its decision.
Over the past two decades the Davis case has been subject to an exceptional number of appeals and hearings reaching to the top of the US justice system. Numerous court hearings have dismissed the enormous mound of evidence casting doubt on Davis's conviction as inconclusive.
But the exhaustive nature of previous appeals leads observers to doubt that an eleventh-hour reprieve will be forthcoming.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/sep/20/troy-davis-execution-pardon-denied
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“They have succeeded in dominating us more
through ignorance, than through force”.
Simon Bolivar
"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities." Voltaire
"The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed" - Steve Biko