Thursday, September 22, 2011

Troy Davis: 10 reasons why he should not be executed



In 2007 the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles, the body which has the final say in the state on whether executions should go ahead, made a solemn promise. Troy Davis, the prisoner who is scheduled to die by lethal injection at 7pm local time on Wednesday, would never be put to death unless there was "no doubt" about his guilt.
Here are 10 reasons why the board – which decided on Tuesday to allow the execution to go ahead – has failed to deliver on its promise and why a man who is very possibly innocent will be killed in the name of American justice.
1. Of the nine witnesses who appeared at Davis's 1991 trial who said they had seen Davis beating up a homeless man in a dispute over a bottle of beer and then shooting to death a police officer, Mark MacPhail, who was acting as a good samaritan, seven have since recanted their evidence.
2. One of those who recanted, Antoine Williams, subsequently revealed they had no idea who shot the officer and that they were illiterate – meaning they could not read the police statements that they had signed at the time of the murder in 1989. Others said they had falsely testified that they had overheard Davis confess to the murder.
3. Many of those who retracted their evidence said that they had been cajoled by police into testifying against Davis. Some said they had been threatened with being put on trial themselves if they did not co-operate.
4. Of the two of the nine key witnesses who have not changed their story publicly, one has kept silent for the past 20 years and refuses to talk, and the other is Sylvester Coles. Coles was the man who first came forward to police and implicated Davis as the killer. But over the past 20 years evidence has grown that Coles himself may be the gunman and that he was fingering Davis to save his own skin.
5. In total, nine people have come forward with evidence that implicates Coles. Most recently, on Monday the George Board of Pardons and Paroles heard from Quiana Glover who told the panel that in June 2009 she had heard Coles, who had been drinking heavily, confess to the murder of MacPhail.
6. Apart from the witness evidence, most of which has since been cast into doubt, there was no forensic evidence gathered that links Davis to the killing.
7. In particular, there is no DNA evidence of any sort. The human rightsgroup the Constitution Project points out that three-quarters of those prisoners who have been exonerated and declared innocent in the US were convicted at least in part on the basis of faulty eyewitness testimony.
8. No gun was ever found connected to the murder. Coles later admitted that he owned the same type of .38-calibre gun that had delivered the fatal bullets, but that he had given it away to another man earlier on the night of the shooting.
9. Higher courts in the US have repeatedly refused to grant Davis a retrial on the grounds that he had failed to "prove his innocence". His supporters counter that where the ultimate penalty is at stake, it should be for the courts to be beyond any reasonable doubt of his guilt.
10. Even if you set aside the issue of Davis's innocence or guilt, the manner of his execution tonight is cruel and unnatural. If the execution goes ahead as expected, it would be the fourth scheduled execution date for this prisoner. In 2008 he was given a stay just 90 minutes before he was set to die. Experts in death row say such multiple experiences with imminent death is tantamount to torture.
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Troy Davis execution delayed while US supreme court considers stay


The execution of Troy Davis was delayed temporarily by the US supreme court on Wednesday night in a dramatic intervention just as he was due to be put to death by lethal injection.
The last-minute decision caused confusion outside the prison in Jackson,Georgia, where family, supporters and civil rights campaigners broke into celebration as they believed the court had granted Davis a stay of execution.
But it quickly emerged that the delay was only temporary, while the justices considered whether to issue a stay.
Until that moment it seemed almost certain that Davis would be executed, as the Georgia supreme court had rejected a last-ditch appeal by Davis's lawyers over the 1989 murder of off-duty policeman Mark MacPhail, for which Davis had been sentenced to death despite overwhelming evidence that the conviction is unreliable.
A Butts County superior court judge had also declined to stop the execution.
Davis's attorneys had filed an appeal challenging ballistics evidence linking Davis to the crime, and eyewitness testimony identifying Davis as the killer.
The White House declined to comment on the case, saying "it is not appropriate for the president of the United States to weigh in on specific cases".
At the maximum security prison in Jackson where the execution is scheduled to take place, busloads of Troy Davis supporters from his home town of Savannah came in to register their anger and despair at what they all agree is the planned judicial killing of an innocent man.
Edward Dubose, a leader of the Georgia branch of the NAACP, said it was not an execution, but a "murder".
The protest heard from Martina Correia, Davis's eldest sister, who delivered a statement from about 20 family members gathered around her. She was heavily critical of what she described as the defiance of the state of Georgia and its inability to admit that it had made a mistake.
She pointed out that the state's parole board had vowed in 2007 that no execution would take place if there was any doubt. "Every year there is more and more doubt yet still the state pushes for an execution," she said.
Correia, who has cancer, struggled to her feet in honour of her brother, just a few hours from his probable death. But she exhorted people not to give up.
"if you can get millions of people to stand up against this you can end the death penalty. We shouldn't have to live in a state that executes people when there's doubt."
Dubose gave an account of a 30-minute conversation he had with Davis on death row on Tuesday night. "Troy wanted me to let you know – keep the faith. The fight is bigger than him."
Dubose said that whether the execution went ahead or not, the fight would continue. He said Davis wants his case to set an example "that the death penalty in this country needs to end. They call it execution; we call it murder."
Hundreds of people gathered outside the prison many wearing t-shirts that said: "I am Troy Davis". The activist Al Sharpton said: "What is facing execution tonight is not just the body of Troy Davis, but the spirit of due justice in the state of Georgia."
Larry Coz, the executive director of Amnesty in the US, that has led the international campaign for clemency, said demonstrations were happening outside US embassies in France, Mali, Hong Kong, Peru, Germany and the UK.
"We will not stop fighting until we live in a world where no state thinks it can kill innocent people."
After winning three delays since 2007, Davis lost his most realistic chance at last-minute clemency this week when the Georgia pardons board denied his request despite serious doubts about his guilt.
Some witnesses who testified against Davis at trial later recanted, and others who did not testify came forward to say another man did it. But a federal judge dismissed those accounts as "largely smoke and mirrors" after a hearing Davis was granted last year to argue for a new trial, which he did not win.
Davis refused a last meal. He planned to spend his final hours meeting with friends, family and supporters.
Davis has received support from hundreds of thousands of people, including a former FBI director, former president Jimmy Carter and Pope Benedict XVI.
In Europe, where the planned execution has drawn widespread criticism, politicians and activists were making a last-minute appeal to the state of Georgia to refrain from executing Davis. Amnesty International and other groups planned a protest outside the US embassy in Paris later on Wednesday and Amnesty also called a vigil outside the embassy in London.
Parliamentarians and government ministers from the Council of Europe, the EU's human rights watchdog, called for Davis's sentence to be commuted. Renate Wohlwend of the council's parliamentary assembly said that "to carry out this irrevocable act now would be a terrible mistake which could lead to a tragic injustice".
The US supreme court gave him an unusual opportunity to prove his innocence last year, but his attorneys failed to convince a judge he didn't do it.
State and federal courts have repeatedly upheld his conviction.
Prosecutors have no doubt they charged the right person, and MacPhail's family lobbied the pardons board Monday to reject Davis's clemency appeal.
The board refused to stop the execution a day later.
"He has had ample time to prove his innocence," said MacPhail's widow, Joan MacPhail-Harris. "And he is not innocent."
Spencer Lawton, the district attorney who secured Davis's conviction in 1991, said he was embarrassed for the judicial system that the execution has taken so long.
"What we have had is a manufactured appearance of doubt which has taken on the quality of legitimate doubt itself. And all of it is exquisitely unfair," said Lawton, who retired as Chatham County's head prosecutor in 2008.
"The good news is we live in a civilized society where questions like this are decided based on fact in open and transparent courts of law, and not on street corners."
Davis supporters said they will push the pardons board to reconsider his case.
They also asked Savannah prosecutors to block the execution, although Chatham County district attorney Larry Chisolm said in a statement he was powerless to withdraw an execution order for Davis issued by a state superior court judge.
"We appreciate the outpouring of interest in this case; however, this matter is beyond our control," Chisolm said.
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Troy Davis And Lawrence Brewer, A Tale Of Two Executions


Two men sitting on Death Row are scheduled to die tonight, both by lethal injection, and both in two of the most racially charged cases in recent memory.

One is Troy Davis, a black man who was convicted of killing a white off-duty police officer in Savannah, Georgia, in 1989. The other is Lawrence Brewer, a white man who in 1998 participated in the grizzly murder of James Byrd Jr., a black man whom Brewer and two other men attacked. They slit his throat, chained him to the back of a pickup truck and dragged him down an old country road in Jasper, Texas, until his head and limbs were torn from his body.
The two men are scheduled to die at the same time, Brewer at 6 p.m. Central Time and Davis at 7 p.m. Eastern Time.
The similarities in the two cases end there.
While an ex-president, former federal officials, the pope and millions of supporters worldwide have called for clemency in the Davis case, few have suggested that Brewer should be spared.
Davis has maintained his innocence. No weapon or physical evidence was ever found linking Davis to the killing of officer Mark MacPhail in a Burger King parking lot. Seven of nine witnesses who initially fingered him have since recanted, some saying that they were forced by police to identify Davis as the shooter.
Brewer, on the other hand, has reveled in his crime. His rap sheet included stints in prison for drug possession and burglary. He joined a white supremacist gang while locked up. In jailhouse letters written after Brewer was arrested for the Byrd murder, he boasted about the killing and the thrill of it.
"Well, I did it," Brewer wrote in a letter introduced during court proceedings, according to published reports. "And no longer am I a virgin. It was a rush, and I'm still licking my lips for more."
He also wrote to one of his co-defendants that they had become bigger stars than O.J. Simpson and that he welcomed the death penalty. Lethal injection, he wrote, would be "a little old sleeping medicine."
To this day, Brewer remains unrepentant. "As far as any regrets, no, I have no regrets," Brewer told KHOU 11 News in Houston on Tuesday. "No, I'd do it all over again, to tell you the truth."
James Byrd's family has asked that Brewer's life be spared.
"You can't fight murder with murder," Ross Byrd, 32, the victim's son told Reuters on Tuesday. "Life in prison would have been fine. I know he can't hurt my daddy anymore. I wish the state would take in mind that this isn't what we want."
"Life goes on," he said. "I've got responsibilities that I have every day. It's not on the front page of my mind. I'm looking for happy times."
The Byrd family held a vigil in Jasper on Tuesday, the eve of Brewer's execution.
"He has no remorse and I feel sorry for him, but forgiveness brings about healing. We had begun to heal a long time ago," Betty Boatner, Byrd's sister, told television station KPRC in Houston. "We're praying for his family as well as our family, and for the citizens of Jasper. We already made peace with it a long time ago."
More than 700 miles away in Jackson, Georgia, the MacPhail family have been long awaiting Troy Davis' execution.
"That's what we wanted, and that's what we got," Anneliese MacPhail, the mother of murdered officer Mark MacPhail, told the Associated Press. "We wanted to get it over with, and for him to get his punishment."
"Justice was finally served for my father," said Mark MacPhail Jr., the officer's son.
Yesterday morning Troy Davis' family got the news that their last chance of saving Davis had faded, as the pardon board refused to grant him clemency. The family visited him for a few hours, and later a group of supporters joined Davis in a prison visiting room reserved for death row inmates. They gathered around him, prayed and listened as he told them to go out and keep fighting for men like him, who he said had been falsely convicted, according to Edward DuBose, president of Gerogia's branch of the N.A.A.C.P, who was among the visitors.
Indeed, last-minute appeals were being made to the local district attorney and to the state's board of parole and pardons. Others have suggested asking President Barack Obama to intervene, though he has no jurisdiction in the case.
Others have taken to petitions and even Twitter to pressure authorities.
The hashtags #troydavis and #toomuchdoubt have shown up in the Twitter feeds of thousands of supporters.
With only hours before Davis' scheduled execution, the flooding of websites, signatures and phone calls to officials and politicians might not be enough to sway the hands of Georgia justice.
If all goes as planned in Texas and Georgia tonight, two men will die, both by lethal injection. But the circumstances surrounding these two men could not be more different.
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Thursday, September 08, 2011


Things to like about Rick Perry for a criminal justice reformer

Since Dave Jennings didn't like my commentary on Rick Perry and the death penalty, let me identify some of the issues covered on this blog where Rick Perry got it right over the years:

2001: Signed bill requiring local law enforcement to gather racial profiling data, including information on stops and searches. Authority was later given to a state agency to gather them all and publish them online.

2001: Signed the Tulia legislation requiring corroboration for informants in undercover drug stings.

2001: Signed legislation creating Chapter 64 of the Code of Criminal Procedure that facilitated post-conviction DNA testing.

2001: Signed the Texas Fair Defense Act improving county indigent defense systems, establishing minimum qualifications for attorneys.

2001: Became the first governor to sign the DREAM Act allowing children of illegal immigrants to attend college at in-state rates.

2003: Signed legislation mandating probation on the first offense for drug offenders caught with less than a gram of cocaine, heroin or other hard drugs - diverted 3,000 or more offenders from state jails annually.

2003: Issued pardons to 35 people convicted in the notorious "Tulia drug stings" and others from the Dallas fake drug scandal, contributing to a high water mark of 73 grants of clemency from Gov. Perry in 2003..

2005: Signed legislation to bring Tulia-style drug task forces under Department of Public Safety rules.

2005: Signed legislation establishing the Forensic Science Commission, requiring accreditation of state and local crime labs.

2006: De-funded almost all Texas drug task forces, shifting federal block grant funds mostly to border security and diversion programming. Of the latter, a special emphasis was placed on drug courts and other specialty courts which grew in number from 7 to more than 70 statewide under Rick Perry, mostly launched with grant money from the governor's Criminal Justice Division.

2007: Signed widely praised, bipartisan probation reform legislation credited with abating the need for 17,000 new prison beds.

2009: Signed the nation's most generous compensation package for exonerees: $80,000 per year incarcerated in a lump sum and a like amount distributed via a lifetime annuity.

2009: Signed into law a requirement for corroboration of jailhouse informants, presaging California's much-more publicized decisionto do so this year.

2010: Issued a posthumous pardon for Timothy Cole, who died in prison of an asthma attack after a false conviction later disproven by DNA.

2011: Signed legislation to require local police departments to develop policies on eyewitness identification.

2011: Signed legislation limiting objections prosecutors could make to post-conviction DNA testing under Chapter 64.

2011: Signed a budget closing an adult prison unit for the first time in the state's history, as well as three youth prisons in a consolidation of state juvenile justice systems (probation, prison and parole) into a single new department, and effort growing out of bipartisan reform efforts.

That said, there are many counterexamples, notably on Fourth Amendment topics. Until his endorsement this summer of a bill to limit TSA groping and his veto of a texting-while-driving ban in June, Governor Perry had been notably hostile toward legislation to limit unnecessary searches and seizures - especially at traffic stops. In 2001, just months after Perry's ascension to Governor, the US Supreme Court ruled in Atwater v. Lago Vista that Texas law-enforcement officers could arrest people alleged to have committed only Class C misdemeanors, which are fine-only offenses for which jail time is not even a possible punishment. In response, that spring the Legislature approved legislation banning arrests for most Class C misdemeanors, but Gov. Perry vetoed it. The following session in 2003, a more moderate bill passed requiring police departments to have written policies on when their officers could arrest for Class C misdemeanors. Gov. Perry vetoed that bill, too. (Texas jails would be a lot less overcrowded today if he'd kept his pen in his pocket.)

Then in 2005, stinging from the Atwater vetoes, the legislature approved a bill to disallow consent searches at traffic stops without probable cause or written consent from the driver except under specified circumstances, a bill which the Governor also promptly vetoed. The following session, Perry's renewed veto threat kept a similar bill from even getting a hearing, though several dozen departments statewide enacted policies of their own accord.

There are plenty of other areas where I differ with the Governor: He vetoed an earlier round of probation reform in 2005 before supporting similar legislation in 2007. I consider most of his so-called "border security" pork to have been a big waste. And Perry's clemency record borders on pitiful. (Naturally, President Obama's isn't any better.)

And of course, Perry's appointment of John Bradley to chair the Forensic Science Commission was its own sordid, bizarre episode, and I do personally believe the Governor's intent was to stall and/or kill off the Todd Willingham arson investigation. (Otherwise, it should be mentioned, Perry's other appointments to the FSC have been exemplary.)

So I don't agree with Perry on every subject, by a longshot, and he's probably used the threat of the veto to scuttle as much good legislation as actually passed during his time in office. But Perry's actual record on criminal justice is more complex than his fire breathing pronouncements on the death penalty might lead one to expect. If you're reading this from another state, there's a good chance your Governor can't match Perry's record on criminal-justice reform.
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Promise Kept rulings on the The Obameter

Extend child tax credits and marriage-penalty fixes



Will extend aspects of the Bush tax cuts such as child credit expansions and changes to marriage bonuses and penalties.

Create an Advanced Manufacturing Fund to invest in peer-reviewed manufacturing processes



"Will create an Advanced Manufacturing Fund to identify and invest in the most compelling advanced manufacturing strategies. The Fund will have a peer-review selection and award process based on the Michigan 21st Century Jobs Fund, a state-level initiative that has awarded over $125 million to Michigan businesses with the most innovative proposals to create new products and new jobs in the state."

Increase minority access to capital



"Strengthen Small Business Administration programs that provide capital to minority-owned businesses, support outreach programs that help minority business owners apply for loans, and work to encourage the growth and capacity of minority firms."

Require economic justification for tax changes



Adopt the economic substance doctrine, a policy that states that tax changes must have significant economic justification, as a federal law.

Implement "Women Owned Business" contracting program



"Will implement the Women Owned Business contracting program that was signed into law by President Bill Clinton, but has yet to be implemented by the Bush Administration." The program seeks to get more women-owned businesses to compete for federal contracts.

Change standards for determining broadband access



Will direct the Federal Communications Commission to "provide an accurate map of broadband availability using a true definition of broadband instead of the current 200 kbs standard and an assessment of obstacles to fuller broadband penetration."

Establish a credit card bill of rights



The credit card bill of rights would "ban unilateral changes ... apply interest rate increases only to future debt ... prohibit interest on fees ... prohibit 'universal defaults' (whereby a credit card raises its rates because the consumer was late paying a different creditor ... require prompt and fair crediting of cardholder payments."

Expand loan programs for small businesses



Expand "the Small Business Administration's loan and micro-loan programs which provide start-up and long-term financing that small firms cannot receive through normal channels."

Extend the Bush tax cuts for lower incomes



Extend the Bush tax cuts for those making less than $250,000 (couples) or $200,000 (single)

Extend and index the 2007 Alternative Minimum Tax patch



Extend and index the temporary fix to the Alternative Minimum Tax that was passed in 2007

Close the "doughnut hole" in Medicare prescription drug plan



"Barack Obama wants to close the 'doughnut hole' in the Medicare Part D Prescription Drug Program that limits benefits for seniors with more than $2,250 but less than $5,100 in annual drug costs. Approximately 4 million seniors hit the doughnut hole in 2006, paying full price for drugs while also paying drug plan premiums."

Expand the Senior Corps volunteer program



Expand "the Senior Corps program, which connects individuals over the age of 55 to local volunteer opportunities, and work to provide additional security, including assistance with retirement and family-related costs, to seniors who participate in public service."

Require insurance companies to cover pre-existing conditions



Require insurance companies "to cover pre-existing conditions so all Americans, regardless of their health status or history, can get comprehensive benefits at fair and stable premiums."

Give tax credits to those who need help to pay health premiums



"Income-based sliding scale tax credits will be provided for people and families who need it."

Require large employers to contribute to a national health plan



"Large employers that do not offer meaningful coverage or make a meaningful contribution to the cost of quality health coverage for their employees will be required to contribute a percentage of payroll toward the costs of the national plan. Small businesses will be exempt from this requirement."

Require children to have health insurance coverage



"Require that all children have health care coverage. Barack Obama and Joe Biden will expand the number of options for young adults to get coverage by allowing young people up to age 25 to continue coverage through their parents' plans."

Expand eligibility for Medicaid



"Expand eligibility for the Medicaid and SCHIP programs and ensure that these programs continue to serve their critical safety net function."

Expand eligibility for State Children's Health Insurance Fund (SCHIP)



"Expand eligibility for the Medicaid and SCHIP programs and ensure that these programs continue to serve their critical safety net function."

Require health plans to disclose how much of the premium goes to patient care



"Require health plans to disclose the percentage of premiums that actually goes to paying for patient care as opposed to administrative costs."

Establish an independent health institute to provide accurate and objective information



"Establish an independent institute to guide reviews and research on comparative effectiveness to provide accurate and objective information."

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