Troy Davis Update

hat tip-Pragmatic Obots Unite:


BREAKING NEWS: Parole Board Denies Clemency for Troy Davis (UPDATE II)
UPDATE:



NCADP Urgent Action Alert

As disappointing as this is, the famous Joe Hill quote from before he was executed comes to mind: "Don't waste any time in mourning. Organize...!"

Troy Davis is not dead yet!

Right now, please immediately act and urge the parole board to reconsider their decision. Please politely e-mail (Clemency_Information@pap.state.ga.us) the board members at or fax their office at (404) 651-8502.

[J]oin us in calling on the Board to reconsider its decision, and on the Chatham County (Savannah) District Attorney Larry Chisolm to do the right thing. They have until the final moments before Troy's scheduled execution to put the brakes on this runaway justice system.

Then, join a local demonstration, or initiate one yourself. Today is a Day of Protest to express our outrage at the recent decision to deny Troy Davis clemency. And on Wednesday (Sept. 21), we're calling for a Day of Vigil on Troy's impending execution date.

UPDATE II:

Mistermix from Balloon Juice has an excellent primer on sending free faxes.



Georgia State Board of Pardons and Paroles
(l-r) Vice Chairman Albert Murray, Member Robert E. Keller, Member L. Gale Buckner, Chairman James E. Donald and Member Terry Barnard
(Photo: State Board of Pardons and Paroles site)

From AJC.com:

Parole board denies clemency for Troy Davis

By Bill Rankin

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

The state Board of Pardons and Paroles on Tuesday denied clemency for Troy Anthony Davis after hearing pleas for mercy from Davis' family and calls for his execution by surviving relatives of a murdered Savannah police officer.

"I am utterly shocked and disappointed at the failure of our justice system at all levels to correct a miscarriage of justice," Brian Kammer, one of Davis' attorneys, said Tuesday after the decision was announced.

Davis' case has already taken more unexpected turns than just about any death-penalty case in Georgia history and his innocence claims have attracted international attention. Its resolution was postponed once again when the parole board late Monday announced it would not be making an immediate decision as to whether Davis should live or die.

Davis, 42, is scheduled to be put to death by lethal injection on Wednesday at 7 p.m. at the state prison in Jackson. He was sentenced to death for the 1989 murder of off-duty Savannah Police Officer Mark Allen MacPhail.

Troy Davis Will Die in 7 Days

Troy Davis will die in 7 DAYS.

From The Atlantic Monthly:

Explaining the Death Penalty to My Children

A family struggles to understand why Georgia prisoner Troy Davis is scheduled to be executed, even though the case against him has fallen apart.


"How does it work?" my eight-year-old asked last Saturday morning . "Will he just stand there and have to -- let them kill him?"
She was asking me about Troy Davis, a man on Georgia's death row who is slated to be executed on September 21.

There's been much talk about Davis in our house, so the night before, I'd tried to explain: Found guilty of killing a police officer, Davis was sentenced to death in 1991, but in the meantime, the case against him has fallen apart.

Seven out of the nine people who said it was him have "recanted" or changed their testimony, I told my daughter and her older brother, explaining what that meant. "What about the other two?" my son asked.

Well, I don't know about one of them, I said, but the other -- Sylvester "Redd" Coles, the first person to accuse Davis -- might have actually been the shooter. Since Davis's conviction, several people have testified that he lied about Davis to protect himself. And boasted about getting away with it.

To make things worse, I said, they don't have any physical evidence against Davis either, nothing you can see or touch. What little physical evidence the State of Georgia once had it has since withdrawn -- new forensics technologies have revealed grievous error, and the assumptions of the past were shown to be wrong.

I explained a little about the appeals process, but also that once you're found guilty of something, it's very hard to get that changed. Try as I might, I couldn't reasonably explain to my children why the judge who heard new testimony at a 2010 hearing rejected that testimony -- I don't understand, I said, why he felt the witnesses must have been trustworthy in 1991, but that they no longer were 19 years later.

Read the rest of the article at the link above.

Rev. Al did a spot on his show about Davis yesterday.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Gerald Hankerson and Megan Thomas talked about Troy Davis and the upcoming rally to support him and block his execution.

Troy Davis Rally from paul jackson on Vimeo.

SCOTUS Orders a New Hearing for Troy Davis

from JJP


It may look like the NAACP as well as the efforts of other grassroots have paid off in getting a new hearing for this brotha:

WASHINGTON (AFP) – The US Supreme Court on Monday ordered that Troy Davis, a high-profile death row inmate, should receive a new hearing to determine whether evidence not available at his trial could prove him innocent.

"The district court should receive testimony and make findings of fact as to whether evidence that could have been obtained at the time of the trial clearly establishes petitioner's innocence," the court said.

Davis, who is black, was sentenced to death in 1989 for the murder of Mark Allen MacPhail, a white policeman, in Savannah, Georgia. He has always proclaimed his innocence.

The weapon used in the murder was never found, and neither DNA nor fingerprints implicated Davis in the crime.

In 1981, nine witnesses testified against him, but seven of them have said that they were pressured by police to incriminate Davis.

Maybe the SCOTUS has decided they want that credibility that they used to have, restored when they lost their minds, abdicated their responsibilities as impartial jurists and decided a Presidential election almost ten years ago. With a new trial, this brotha should be walking out of prison in a few months - and be able to say he walked away from DEATH ROW. What a memoir he could write, and he needs to have John Burris on speed dial to sue the state of Georgia for wrongfully imprisoning him in the first place because of their bigotry.