Vol. 75/No. 35      October 3, 2011

During his 20 years on death row, the fight has become a symbol of class “justice” meted out to working people under capitalism.

Hundreds protested outside the prison the night of the execution. Participants reported a massive police presence, with dozens in riot gear.

Truck drivers passing by honked in support.

“From what I hear, a lot of people think he’s not guilty,” said Terry Thomas, a 54-year-old truck driver. “Why is the government rushing to judgment?”

“It’s so blatant they practice ‘guilty until proven innocent,’” said Cicely Keller, a 35-year-old teacher from Conyers, Ga. She and her husband Melvin Keller, a route driver, were attending their first protest. “The main purpose for me coming out is to show my daughter what goes on,” she said.

Patt Gunn said in his 30 years of activity against the death penalty, “it has been poor whites and poor Blacks” who’ve been executed.

Davis, who is Black, was convicted for the 1989 killing of a policeman in Savannah, Ga. No physical evidence linked him to the killing. Seven of nine nonpolice witnesses subsequently recanted or changed their testimony, many saying they were pressured by cops to finger Davis.

“Some detectives… . were telling me that I was an accessory to murder and that I would pay like Troy was going to pay if I didn’t tell them what they wanted to hear,” D.D. Collins, one of the initial witnesses, has sworn.

Timothy Smith, a 30-year-old machine operator who lives near the prison, also attended his first protest the night of the execution. He said he and a few coworkers had “been discussing about no evidence and the witnesses who recanted. I told them I was going to come.”

On September 15 Davis’s supporters turned in petitions with more than 663,000 signatures to the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles calling for clemency. Some 2,500 marched in Atlanta the next day, followed by a service drawing some 3,000 people at the Ebenezer Baptist Church.

The parole board heard Davis’s clemency appeal September 19. Brenda Forrest, a juror who voted to find him guilty, told the board she wouldn’t have convicted Davis if she had known what she knows today. Two other jurors submitted affidavits to the board for clemency. The board denied clemency the next day.

Davis’s request to take a polygraph test on the day of his execution was rejected by Georgia authorities.

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People petitioned the Justice Department to stop the execution to consider civil rights violations involved in the case.

NAACP President Benjamin Jealous said he tried to contact President Barack Obama to ask him to intervene. White House Press Secretary Jay Carney issued a statement September 21 saying it was inappropriate for Obama to “weigh in on specific cases like this one, which is a state prosecution.”

Initially set for 7 p.m., the execution was delayed while the U.S. Supreme Court considered a plea by Davis’s attorney. In that 11th-hour filing, Davis’s attorneys said Georgia courts had made “substantial constitutional errors” by dismissing new evidence “that false, misleading and materially inaccurate information” was presented at his trial.

Shortly after 10 p.m. the Supreme Court justices issued a one-sentence rejection of a stay of execution.

According to an AP reporter who witnessed the execution, in his final moments Davis said: “I’d like to address the MacPhail family. Let you know, despite the situation you are in, I’m not the one who personally killed your son, your father, your brother. I am innocent.

“The incident that happened that night is not my fault. I did not have a gun. All I can ask … is that you look deeper into this case so that you really can finally see the truth.

“I ask my friends and family to continue to fight this fight.”

Lisa Potash and Rachele Fruit contributed to this article from Georgia.
 
 
Related articles:
Legal lynching of Troy Davis is message to working class  
 
 
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