Georgia must halt execution

Opinion: September 17, 2011 at 12:00a.m.

By Darryl Lorenzo Wellington

McClatchy-Tribune

The state of Georgia is preparing to execute a man whose conviction was based on several eyewitness accounts that have now been recanted.

The 42-year-old African-American man on death row is Troy Anthony Davis. His execution is scheduled for Wednesday.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu is against the sentence being carried out. Former President Jimmy Carter is against it, as well as former FBI chief William Sessions, among many other luminaries.

I am not a famous name, but I join these eminent personalities in calling for Davis’s pardon, retrial or, at the very least, the lessening of his sentence to life imprisonment.

Davis was charged with the murder of an off-duty police officer, Mark MacPhail, in Savannah, Ga., in 1989.

I was a resident of Savannah that year. I well remember the tragic shooting death of the white police officer, and the hysteria that subsequently overtook the city. The primary suspect was immediately identified as a young African-American, which heightened the anxiety in a city already rife with racial tensions.

Savannah — in particular black Savannah — was on edge for three or four days, as the police sweep targeted black communities. Davis, whose name had been circulating in the media, then turned himself in.

Honestly, upon the suspect’s arrest, black men in Savannah breathed a sigh of relief. The heat on the everyday, law-abiding black American was off.

But what of the man who was accused? I remember feeling at the time that, given the community hysteria, there was little chance the Davis would get a fair trial.

He didn’t.

Davis has consistently maintained he is a victim of false identification. He has never denied that he was present at the crime scene near the time of the shooting, but otherwise the evidence convicting him is dubious.

A murder weapon was never recovered, and no physical evidence connects him to the shooting.

The reason his case has generated such controversy is that it hinges on circumstantial evidence, in particular the testimony of nine state prosecution witnesses. These include several eyewitnesses, who in 1991 claimed they directly witnessed the crime, or that soon thereafter Davis privately confessed to them. This testimony has by and large been shown to be problematic.

Seven of the nine witnesses have signed affidavits stating that their testimony in 1991 was coerced. Witnesses — many of whom had criminal records themselves — appear to have been strong-armed into fingering Davis.

One witness, Dorothy Ferrell, for example, stated in a 2000 affidavit: “I told the detective that Troy Davis was the shooter, even though the truth was that I didn’t know who shot the officer.” She said she lied because she felt susceptible to police bullying, given that she was on parole for a shoplifting conviction.

Intimidation

Another eyewitness later stated he had been intimidated by the police and misinformed regarding a statement he signed that positively identified Davis. He couldn’t read the statement himself because he was, in fact, functionally illiterate.

Of the two remaining witnesses who still accuse Davis, one is himself a suspect in the case.

Davis’ 1991 trial was a mockery — an over-the-top push to convict a suspect, no matter how doubtful the tactics.

None of this necessarily makes Troy Davis innocent, but it calls into question whether his guilt has ever been satisfactorily proven.

I do not know, for certain, whether Troy Davis is guilty or innocent. But I do know that he didn’t get a fair trial.

And I know that to carry out the death penalty when the evidence is so dubious would be a terrible miscarriage of justice.

Wellington is a writer for Progressive Media Project, a source of liberal commentary on domestic and international issues; it is affiliated with The Progressive magazine.