Parole board snubs recanted testimony; World outraged by Troy Davis case

By Monica Moorehead

Sep 21, 2011

Sept. 20 — The Georgia State Board of Parole and Pardons denied clemency to death-row inmate Troy Davis this morning. With this latest decision and all other legal channels seemingly exhausted, Davis faces imminent execution on Sept. 21 at 7 p.m. at the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison in Jackson, Ga.

The other three times that Davis, a 42-year-old African American, has faced lethal injection, he was granted stays of execution. There is a last-minute campaign to put pressure on District Attorney Larry Chisholm, who called for the death penalty for Davis in the original trial, to withdraw the death warrant.

Millions of people in the U.S. and worldwide have been outraged by this horrendous decision. This outrage has been expressed by hundreds of protests, most notably on Sept. 16, an official global day of solidarity with Troy Davis. (See pages 6-7.)

Then, once the board called for Davis’ execution, people responded by calling emergency demonstrations in New York, Baltimore, Atlanta and elsewhere in the United States and worldwide on Sept. 20 and 21.

Hundreds of thousands of people signed petitions organized by Amnesty International, the NAACP and the International Action Center that generated millions of letters to the board, Congressional representatives, the White House, and Georgia governor demanding no execution of Troy Davis.

If one is in chains, we all are

Outside the board’s office in downtown Atlanta, the Rev. Marvin Morgan chained himself to a flagpole to protest the clemency denial. He then declared that he had started a hunger strike. Morgan said, “If the state of Georgia can intentionally kill a person in a case surrounded with this much doubt, then we’re all subject to the same fate.” (Los Angeles Times, Sept. 20)

Of the long, looped chains holding him, secured with a Master lock, he said they were “saying that when one person’s in bondage, we’re all in bondage. I am not insane. I believe this act indicates my sanity more than anything else.’ ” Morgan, 63 years old, was then arrested by a half dozen cops for trespassing on state property.

Davis was charged with first degree murder in the 1989 shooting of an off-duty police officer, Mark MacPhail, in Savannah, Ga. He was sentenced to death in 1991 based on the eyewitness testimony of several witnesses. Years later, at least seven of those witnesses recanted their testimony, saying that they were coerced by the police into implicating Davis.

One juror, Brenda Forest, publicly stated that if she had had all the facts during Davis’ trial, she would never have convicted him.

Edward DuBose, Georgia State Conference president of the NAACP, who visited Davis today after the board decision, said, “It is bigger than Troy. It really reflects the attitude of a country and a state that still sees Black life as meaningless. That is the only conclusion that you could come away with from the decision made by the parole board.” (www.eons.com, Sept. 20)

In reaction to the clemency ruling, Laura Moye, an Amnesty International representative in Georgia, stated at a Sept. 20 press conference: “This is an affront to human rights. This is not just a case here in Georgia where over 40,000 people have joined their voices in signing our petitions. This is an international human rights case. We are facing an international human rights scandal tomorrow.” (MSNBC)

When asked by an MSNBC reporter what’s next after the clemency denial, Dianne Mathiowetz, a leading organizer of the Atlanta IAC, said, “The struggle for justice never ends. Troy has said it many times himself. He wants all of his supporters not just to be concerned about the facts in his case, and the denial of justice in his case, but that we extend that activism to the many, many thousands of others who are incarcerated and also facing death. We will continue the fight. We are still trying to stop this execution here in Georgia. We are not giving up.” (Sept. 20)

When asked about the people demanding justice for Davis, Mathiowetz replied, “The millions of people who are watching this case are not high-profile people. They are the people who are losing their jobs, losing their homes, facing their own situations with the criminal justice system, whether it’s banks that foreclose on them illegally, bosses who lay them off, etc.

“The issue of why this decision came down from the board when they previously had said that no prisoner would be executed in Georgia where there remained any doubt, and clearly there isn’t just a shadow of a doubt, but there are mountains of doubt. In my opinion, this is a political decision, a decision not based on law.”

This latest atrocity has once again shone a bright light on the racist injustice that is interwoven into the social fabric of U.S. society, especially when a Black man is accused of killing a white police officer. Nine times out of ten, capital punishment is involved. The case of death-row political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal in Pennsylvania is a case in point.

The Georgia board’s decision was all about protecting the reputations of police officers who forced witnesses to testify against Davis. In other words, if Davis’ life has to be sacrificed to cover up police misconduct, then so be it. This view is the norm, not the exception.

Mathiowetz told WW: “If there was still anyone who had doubts about the innocence of Troy Davis, there is no doubt now about the guilt of the state of Georgia in going forward with a death sentence when so much doubt has been cast on the original trial verdict.

“For all the millions of people who are watching this case, the board decision makes clear this system has nothing to offer people — no justice, no jobs, no health care, no education and no fairness.”

It appears that the blood of another oppressed person, Troy Davis, will be dripping from the already bloody hands of Georgia.