After a long twenty-year fight for his freedom, death row inmate Troy Davis was finally executed on Wednesday, Sept. 21. Convicted of murdering police officer Mark MacPhail back in August 1989 in Savannah, Ga., Davis claimed his innocence up until the last moments of his life. Even a mass number of supporters (among them former U.S. president Jimmy Carter, Pope Benedict XVI and former FBI Director William S. Sessions), nearly one million petition signatures to the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles, plus lack of evidence to properly prove his guilt could not spare this possibly innocent man from such a terrible fate.
The execution, done by the process of lethal injection, took place at the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification State Prison in Butts County, Ga. Davis was scheduled to be executed at 7 p.m. but it was delayed due to a last minute appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. After the appeal to grant Davis clemency was denied, the execution proceeded, and Davis was pronounced dead at around 11:08 p.m.
Davis' family, as well as his supporters, believed this to be an inexcusable act of injustice carried out by the state of Georgia. With no physical evidence against Davis, the prosecution was basically relying on witness testimony. However, seven of the nine eyewitnesses who say they saw Davis shoot officer MacPhail recanted their statements, claiming they were pressured by detectives to testify against him.
There was also the possibility of another suspect, Sylvester "Red" Coles, who was one of the nine eyewitnesses who testified against Davis, though he did not recant his accusations. Some even said that Coles admitted to shooting MacPhail, but this was all regarded as hearsay and could not hold up in court. With so many holes and inconsistencies surrounding the case, supporters of Davis felt that the execution should not have taken place. Even though the prosecution claimed there was not enough sufficient evidence to prove Davis' innocence, there also was too much doubt regarding witness testimony to prove his guilt.
Amnesty International, one of the human rights groups which supported Davis' case, opposes the death penalty altogether, claiming that it is " … the ultimate, irreversible denial of human rights. It is the premeditated cold-blooded killing of a human being by the state."
Larry Cox, executive director of Amnesty International, had this to say on Amnestyusa.org after Davis' execution: "The U.S. justice system was shaken to its core as Georgia executed a person who may well be innocent. Killing a man under this enormous cloud of doubt is horrific and amounts to a catastrophic failure of the justice system. While many courts examined this case, the march to the death chamber only slowed, but never stopped. Justice may be blind; but in this case, the justice system was blind to the facts …"
Cox, along with Amnesty as well as other human rights groups, are doing everything in their power to abolish the death penalty. In the case of Troy Davis, this proves that killing a person as a means of justice is injustice in itself.
