Troy Davis' Execution Eve Sees Last-Minute Efforts To Save His Life
Early this morning, Martina Davis-Correia, her two sisters and her son drove out to the prison in Jackson, Georgia, where her brother, Troy Davis, is set to be executed tomorrow evening.
Word came down from the state pardon board today that Davis, on death row for the 1989 murder of a police officer, would not be pardoned. While the Davis family prepared for the end of what has been a decades-long fight to prove Davis' innocence, another family rejoiced.
"That's what we wanted, and that's what we got," Anneliese MacPhail, the victim's mother, 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 son of the dead officer, Mark MacPhail.
But for Troy Davis' family and his supporters, the looming finality of the board's decision to carry out his execution, sent a very different message.
"It is bigger than Troy. It really reflects the attitude of a country and a state that still sees black life as meaningless," said Edward DuBose, president of the Georgia State Conference of the N.A.A.C.P. "That is the only conclusion that you could come away with from the decision made by the parole board."
DuBose and others spent time with the Davis family last night, all hoping that some miracle would come through, or that the board would take another opportunity to review evidence the family claims could vindicate Davis. DuBose said that Davis-Correia and her family set off early this morning for the prison, well before the decision had been made.
"They are hanging on," DuBose said. "But clearly they are emotionally shocked."
Meanwhile, as the state moves closer to Davis' execution, there are still groups fighting to save his life, albeit against improbable odds.
“We’re going to fight to the very end,” said Rashad Robinson, executive director of ColorOfChange.org, a web-based grassroots organization that rallies behind causes that affect African Americans. “Not doing anything isn’t going to get us any type of movement. The only way we are going to have some sort to success is to continue to press forward. The fact that Troy Davis hasn’t already been executed in the state of Georgia is a testament to the activists that have already spoken out and the lawyers and organizations that haven’t given up.”
Robinson said that ColorOfChange and other organizations, including Amnesty International and the N.A.A.C.P "will continue to fight this decision and tell Troy's story as long as we can," in spite of the board's decision.
"It is unimaginable how they could have come to this decision in the face of all the evidence which indicates that Troy Davis didn't commit the crime of which he was accused," he said.
Robinson said that more than 100,000 ColorOfChange members "clearly and strongly said that killing a man who may be innocent is not justice" and that the group intended to ask the board to reconsider.
The N.A.A.C.P said it would consider asking President Barack Obama to intervene, though he has no jurisdiction in the state's decision.
The Rev. Al Sharpton is planning to hold a vigil in Jackson on Wednesday.
"
t is incredibly ironic and tragic that this is happening while our first black president is sitting in the White House," said Kevin Powell, an author and activist in a blog on The Huffington Post:
We, America, like to pat ourselves on the back and say job well done whenever there is a shred of racial or social progress in our fair nation. But then we habitually figure out ways to take one, two, several steps back, with this Troy Davis execution, with the rise of the Tea Party and its thinly-veiled racial paranoia politics, to push America right back to the good old says of segregation, Jim Crow, brute hatred of those who are different, while social inequalities run rampant like rats in the night.
Davis, convicted of the 1989 killing of an off-duty Savannah police officer, has steadfastly maintained his innocence. In the decades since his conviction, his case has gained the support of former President Jimmy Carter, former U.S. Rep. Bob Barr, one-time FBI Director William Sessions, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and even Pope Benedict XVI, among others.
Earlier this year the U.S. Supreme Court turned down what likely was Davis' last set of appeals. In 2009, Davis, by filing an original writ of habeas corpus to the Supreme Court, convinced the justices to order a federal court in Georgia to review new evidence that Davis said would establish his innocence. By then, according to reports, several of the witnesses had recanted their earlier testimony that Davis had gunned down officer MacPhail in a Burger King parking lot that night 20 years earlier.
The new hearing in June of 2010 gave Davis a chance to present his new evidence in his defense. He chose not to take the stand or call on witnesses who had given statements on his behalf. The trial judge concluded that Davis' evidence was "largely smoke and mirrors," according to a New York Times article from earlier this year. The Supreme Court refused to review Moore's ruling.
"I wanted to believe that we had abandoned the Old South, but the decision by the parole board not only reflects that we have not abandoned the Old South, but we have not even left the days of Jim Crow," said DuBose, who at 53 said he can recall the last days of cradle-to-grave segregation in Georgia.
"I think it's a message that they said during Jim Crow: Stay in your place. It is a message to every African American, whether you are guilty or innocent, that there is a place for you and you need to stay in it."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/20...72291.html
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