The Murder of Troy Davis Shatters American Myth of 'Justice For All'

‎"If you are pro-death penalty, you should be shouting twice as loud as the rest of us about the imminent murder of Troy Davis. Otherwise, you can't claim to be supporting a stark but necessary act of justice. You're just a fan of killing people in general. There are words for people like that. None of them are nice." Tom Chivers - Writer for UK's right wing Daily Telegraph.

It was three am, Thursday morning, before the tears stopped pouring down my face long enough to go to sleep. Troy Davis had been dead for nearly four hours, murdered by the state of Georgia with the support of millions of disgusting, cheering Americans.

I loathe them all and am embarrassed they are my countrymen. It is unlikely that any amount of education, emotional maturity, experience, or even simple moral decency will ever convince the mouth-breathing half of the country that it is wrong to kill. Sure, it's in their Bible (both testaments!) and even made it into the Cliffs Notes for the Bible, aka the Ten Commandments. And sure, Jesus said to turn the other cheek and forgo violence and all that jazz.

But who needs moral maturity when the moral majority is itching to hang another negro?

Let's not act like this was anything other than a lynching. Sure, it was done with the consent of a conservative court system in a conservative state. And sure, they spared a tree the indignity of one more swinging neck, choosing instead to poison Troy Davis to death. But let's not pretend this wasn't everything lynchings were — and still are — in American history.

It was a deeply disturbing example of how injustice is heaped upon the poor and the black, a perfect storm of the flaws inherent in the American system: racism, police corruption, judicial deference, fabrication of evidence, savage bloodlust, revenge fantasies, and poverty.

The reality is that, whether Davis pulled the trigger that killed officer Mark MacPhail or not, he was not going to get a fair trial. The police had already determined he, and not Sylvester Coles, was the one who shot MacPhail. The police then did what all police officers do: they manipulated witnesses and fabricated evidence to ensure that Davis would hang for his "crime".

The court system, already rigged against defendants of modest means, was surely not going to set free a "cop killer", particularly not one who was young and black. After all, it was Davis' word against the words of nine key witnesses and all those white cops who wanted vengeance for MacPhail. He didn't stand a chance.

We often talk in America glowingly about our court system. Everyone is innocent until proven guilty, right? Wrong. People are often convicted on flimsy evidence, eyewitness accounts that are either wholly invented or mistaken, police corruption, and absent DNA or physical evidence. Davis certainly was.

Once convicted, the impetus for proof falls perversely on the defendant. Appeals courts will not consider new facts or retry the case, unless there are some Constitutional flaws in the original case. This standard of doing nothing goes right on up to the Supreme Court, who will only intervene if there is a Constitutional question.

It does not matter whether the person is actually innocent or guilty. All that matters is that the process was followed properly. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, an allegedly pro-life, Catholic man of god, had this disgusting blurb to offer:

“This court has never held that the Constitution forbids the execution of a convicted defendant who has had a full and fair trial but is later able to convince a habeas court that he is ‘actually' innocent. Quite to the contrary, we have repeatedly left that question unresolved, while expressing considerable doubt that any claim based on alleged ‘actual innocence' is constitutionally cognizable.”

In other words, the Constitution does not protect you from being executed despite being innocent, so long as the state can put forth a really good sham trial. It's the sort of thing I expect from North Korea, not North America.

So that's the standard burden that the state must meet: a good sham, show trial and it's off to the execution chambers for your defendant of choice. And boy, did they barely even meet the standards of a good show trial in the Davis case. Consider the following facts:

• Nine key witnesses said Davis committed the crime. SEVEN of them recanted their stories. Appeals courts decided to stick with their original stories, despite the witnesses claiming they were intimidated and threatened by the police unless they cooperated in prosecuting Davis.
• Dorothy Ferrell, one of the witnesses, said she told detectives Davis was the shooter despite not knowing who the shooter was because police threatened to revoke her parole.
• Darell Collins said Davis did it after police told him they would charge him as an accomplice if he did not cooperate.
• Antonie Williams said he signed off on statements saying that Davis committed the murder, despite telling police that he did not know who shot MacPhail. Williams is illiterate and did not know what he was signing.
• Two witnesses who said Davis confessed to them later said they made that story up; Davis never confessed to them. They said Davis confessed after police threatened them if they did not cooperate. (Notice a pattern?)

Two key witnesses did not recant their stories. One of those witnesses was Sylvester Coles — the other potential shooter that night. Nine different people came forward to say they were with Coles when he confessed to having killed the cop and getting away with it. Nine!

None of this even includes the troubling police errors made in this case, as reported by The New York Times.

"The grievous errors in the Davis case were numerous, and many arose out of eyewitness identification. The Savannah police contaminated the memories of four witnesses by re-enacting the crime with them present so that their individual perceptions were turned into a group one. The police showed some of the witnesses Mr. Davis's photograph even before the lineup. His lineup picture was set apart by a different background. The lineup was also administered by a police officer involved in the investigation, increasing the potential for influencing the witnesses," the Times said.

And yet, despite the errors and despite the police manipulation and despite fabrication of evidence and despite lying witnesses and despite a lack of physical evidence and despite no DNA evidence and despite all logic, reason, and sanity, the state of Georgia murdered Troy Davis.

"Tonight the state of Georgia legally lynched an innocent man," Davis' lawyer Thomas Ruffin Jr. said. "Tonight I witnessed something tragic."

We all did. The question is, will we do anything about it?

There are a few things I am doing.

First, this case has opened my eyes in ways that a thousand academic studies could not. The death penalty is wrong and should never, ever be used. It is barbaric and in an imperfect world with an imperfect justice system, the state has no business putting people to death.

Keep in mind that this is, as my friend put it, the government that cannot get anything right...and we trust them to, on this one issue (criminal convictions) get it right 100 percent of the time and only kill the guilty?

You can join Amnesty International in their efforts to end the death penalty, among other things they fight for worldwide. Their website is www.amnesty.org. I signed up last night.

Second, you can join Michael Moore in his boycott of all things related to Georgia. There really isn't much I can do to stop Georgia from executing people, short of cutting them off financially. I can speak and vote with my dollars. The people of Georgia are capable of rising up and demanding better from their elected officials. They could change their laws. They don't, and instead support the death penalty. That makes them complicit in Davis' death.

Here is what Moore had to say. "I encourage everyone I know to never travel to Georgia, never buy anything made in Georgia, to never do business in Georgia. I will ask my publisher to pull my book from every Georgia bookstore and if they won't do that I will donate every dime of every royalty my book makes in Georgia to help defeat the racists and killers who run that state. I ask all Americans with a conscience to shun anything and everything to do with the murderous state of Georgia."

Click here for a list of companies based in Georgia. I am boycotting any products they sell, and over the course of the next week or so, will be sending a personal letter to the CEO of each of the major companies, explaining to them why I will no longer be using their products or services. I would welcome all my readers to do the same.

Some of the major companies based in Georgia include Home Depot, Coca Cola, Turner Television Networks, Delta Airlines, UPS, Aflac, Newell Rubbermaid, and credit rating agency Equifax.

Finally, let's hear from the man Georgia murdered last night. He deserves a voice in this process, too, even as his light was snuffed out by Georgia last night.

A letter from Troy Davis:

To All:

I want to thank all of you for your efforts and dedication to Human Rights and Human Kindness, in the past year I have experienced such emotion, joy, sadness and never ending faith. It is because of all of you that I am alive today, as I look at my sister Martina I am marveled by the love she has for me and of course I worry about her and her health, but as she tells me she is the eldest and she will not back down from this fight to save my life and prove to the world that I am innocent of this terrible crime.

As I look at my mail from across the globe, from places I have never ever dreamed I would know about and people speaking languages and expressing cultures and religions I could only hope to one day see first hand. I am humbled by the emotion that fills my heart with overwhelming, overflowing Joy. I can't even explain the insurgence of emotion I feel when I try to express the strength I draw from you all, it compounds my faith and it shows me yet again that this is not a case about the death penalty, this is not a case about Troy Davis, this is a case about Justice and the Human Spirit to see Justice prevail.

I cannot answer all of your letters but I do read them all, I cannot see you all but I can imagine your faces, I cannot hear you speak but your letters take me to the far reaches of the world, I cannot touch you physically but I feel your warmth everyday I exist.

So Thank you and remember I am in a place where execution can only destroy your physical form but because of my faith in God, my family and all of you I have been spiritually free for some time and no matter what happens in the days, weeks to come, this Movement to end the death penalty, to seek true justice, to expose a system that fails to protect the innocent must be accelerated. There are so many more Troy Davis'. This fight to end the death penalty is not won or lost through me but through our strength to move forward and save every innocent person in captivity around the globe. We need to dismantle this Unjust system city by city, state by state and country by country.

I can't wait to Stand with you, no matter if that is in physical or spiritual form, I will one day be announcing,

“I AM TROY DAVIS, and I AM FREE!”

We are all Troy Davis. Until there are no more Troy Davis', none of us are free.

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