I wrote my letter to the Georgia State Board of Pardons and Paroles today, asking them to grant clemency and commute the death sentence of Troy Davis. Have you read about him? Massive protests [people wearing "I Am Troy Davis" t-shirts] in Georgia and support from Amnesty and NAACP and Desmund Tutu have been to no avail. His third and last date of execution has been set for 7 pm this September 21, ironically also the International Day of Peace. There are so many serious doubts about the eyewitness testimonies used to convict him of the murder of police Officer MacPhail in Savannah, GA. There was no evidence linking Troy Davis to the crime and the murder weapon was never found. One of the chief witnesses against him was one of the other suspects in the case. Since his original trial, eye witness testimony has been shown to be very unreliable, especially in contrast to DNA evidence of which there was none for this crime. On top of that most of the witnesses have retracted their testimony. One juror was viewed on CNN, saying “If I knew then what I know now, Troy Davis would not be on death row.” One witness was a woman in a 2nd floor balcony across the street from the shooting that took place in a dark parking lot. She could not have recognized or identified Troy Davis or anyone as the perpetrator, yet she was a court witness and helped convict Troy Davis.
You can read all about it at www.amnestyusa.org if you wish. The only thing that can stop the execution of Troy Davis, since all appeals have been exhausted, is the State Board of Pardons and Paroles in Georgia. I hope you’ll take some time to read about Troy Davis. I hope you’ll write a letter to the parole board in his support. He does not deserve to die. I hope Georgia will not kill him. If it could happen to him, it could happen to me. Or you. Here’s the letter I’m sending:
Georgia State Board of Pardons and Paroles
2 Martin Luther King, Jr. Drive, SE
Suite 458, Balcony Level, East Tower
Atlanta, Georgia 30334-4909
Dear Board members,
I call upon you to grant clemency and to commute the death sentence of Troy Davis. His guilt has not been proven beyond a reasonable doubt, since doubts continue even after the federal evidentiary hearing in 2010. The crime of killing a policeman is huge, but executing the wrong man for the murder does not help either Officer MacPhail or his family or the justice system in Georgia.
I make my plea to you, the Board of Pardons and Paroles, which itself was established to be a failsafe against the irreversible error of executing an innocent person, and to all current members of the Board, that stated in 2007 that the Board would not allow any execution to proceed where there was any doubt about the guilt of the prisoner. Grave doubts remain today about the guilt of Troy Davis. His original conviction was based on eyewitness testimony that, since that time, has been shown to be unreliable in general and has been retracted specifically in the Troy Davis case by most of the witnesses. Since 1976 more than 130 people have been released from death row in the USA on the grounds of innocence, even though they were found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt at their original trial.
Witness Benjamin Gordon, only 16-years-old at the time of the shooting of Officer MacPhail, later said he was coerced by police into signing a statement implicating Troy Davis, and Gordon signed another statement implicating his relative in 2008. Gordon was declared “not a credible witness” by Judge Moore, and yet she upheld Davis’s conviction that was based on this unreliable witness’s testimony. Another witness “identified” Troy Davis as the shooter even though she was across the street from the shooting that took place in a dark parking lot. She could not possibly have seen well enough to recognize and identify Troy Davis from her vantage point. Yet her testimony, in a trial with minimal real evidence, was used to convict Troy Davis and sentence him to death.
This is not worthy of the American system of justice. Georgia should align with the international community by taking the position that people should only be convicted of murder when there is clear and convincing evidence leaving no room for an alternative explanation of the facts. Certainly no one should be executed when doubts remain in their case, and there are definitely major doubts in the case of Troy Davis. Again, I call upon you to grant clemency and to commute the death sentence of Troy Davis.
