On Thu, Sep 22, 2011 at 4:09 AM, Hetty ter Haar <oldavenue@googlemail.com> wrote:
Troy Davis execution goes ahead despite serious doubts about his guilt
Condemned man proclaimed innocence in last words to victim's family
before lethal injection in Georgia prison
Ed Pilkington in Jackson
Thursday September 22 2011
guardian.co.uk
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/sep/22/troy-davis-execution-last-words
Moments before he was put to death, Troy Davis lifted his head from
the gurney to which he was strapped and looked the family of Mark
MacPhail, the police officer for whose murder he was convicted,
directly in the eyes.
"I want to talk to the MacPhail family," he said. "I was not
responsible for what happened that night. I did not have a gun. I was
not the one who took the life of your father, son, brother."
He then appealed to his own family and friends to "keep the faith",
said to the medical personnel who were about to kill him "may God have
mercy on your souls", and laid his head down again.
He was administered with a triple lethal injection of pentobarbital,
pancuronium bromide and potassium chloride, and at 11.08pm he was
pronounced dead.
The debate about what happened in Georgia's Diagnostic and
Classification Prison in Jackson late on Wednesday night will continue
long after the gurney has been put away. In the final gruesome hours
of waiting, the American judicial system at its very highest echelons
was involved ? including the US supreme court, which issued the
decisive final ruling. The decision to press ahead with the death
sentence despite serious doubts over Davis's guilt drew accusations
that this was the system at its most grotesque.
It was Davis's fourth execution date, and it was dragged out, for more
than four hours, to what must have been tortuous effect for the
prisoner and his family.
Davis, 42, became the 52nd man to be executed in Georgia since the
same supreme court reinstated the death penalty in 1973. His lawyers
and thousands of supporters around the world were convinced that an
innocent man had been sent to his death.
As news of his death filtered out of the maximum security prison, his
family was still huddled in an area of the prison grounds, surrounded
by well-wishers. His sister, Martina Correia, had earlier vowed to
continue the fight to end all capital punishment in America and said
her brother's story would be a galvanising force for others.
"His message to young people is ? you can lie down or you can stand up
and fight," she said.
After the execution, Davis's lawyers lamented what one described as a
"legal lynching". Thomas Ruffin said that the execution was "racially
bigoted".
"In the state of Georgia 48.4% of people on death row this morning
were black males, and in Georgia they make up no more than 15% of the
population."
Ruffin said that seven of the nine witnesses at Davis's 1991 trial had
since recanted. They included a man who said under oath that he had
seen MacPhail being killed, and that it was not Davis who shot him but
another man called Sylvester Cole.
Another witness said under oath that she had heard Coles confess three
times to killing MacPhail and using Davis as the fall guy.
But throughout Wednesday last-ditch legal manoeuvres by Davis's
defence team failed one by one as both state and federal judges ruled
against them. First, a request for Davis to undergo a lie-detector
test was rejected. A Georgia judge refused an appeal, then the state
supreme court followed suit. In the end his only hope was the US
supreme court, and for a moment at 7pm, just as the execution was due
to take place, it seemed that the justices had ordered a stay. But the
delay was only temporary and at around 10.15pm the court ruled that
the execution should go ahead.
The decision was welcomed by the MacPhail family. "He [Davis] had all
the chances in the world," the officer's mother, Anneliese MacPhail,
told the Associated Press. "It has got to come to an end."
But a second lawyer for Davis, Jason Ewart, said that as he died he
took with him "his quest for justice. In the midst of all the
newspaper headlines and vigils you can sometimes lose sight of the man
who was on death row. Troy Davis was a family man, and his family
mourns tonight."
John Lewis, a local radio reporter who was present at the execution,
said that while the prisoner was being killed MacPhail family members
sat in the front row looking intently at him. As they left the room
after he was pronounced dead, some of them smiled.
"So at least someone got some satisfaction out of this," Lewis said.
guardian.co.uk Copyright (c) Guardian News and Media Limited. 2011
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La Vonda R. Staples
Adjunct Professor, Department of Social Sciences
Community College of the District of Columbia
314-570-6483
"It is the duty of all who have been fortunate to receive an education to assist others in the same pursuit."
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