FRFI 223 October/November 2011
On 21 September 2011 the US state of Georgia legally murdered 42-year-old black prisoner Troy Davis. Troy was convicted of the 1989 killing of white police officer Mark MacPhail and had always maintained his innocence. A national and international campaign against his execution was supported by Amnesty International, former US President Jimmy Carter, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and the Pope, and one million people signed a petition calling for clemency. On the night of his death protesters gathered outside the prison in Jackson, Georgia, many wearing T-shirts and holding placards proclaiming ‘I am Troy Davis’. All this was not enough to save his life. The execution was due to take place at 7pm local time and there was a temporary reprieve while the Supreme Court deliberated on and rejected a last-minute petition. President Barack Obama refused to intervene in the case, stating it would not be ‘appropriate’. Troy Davis was put to death by lethal injection at 11pm.
Troy was convicted in August 1991, entirely on the basis of witness testimony, which contained inconsistencies even at the time of the trial. There was no forensic or any other kind of evidence against him. Since then, seven out of nine of the non-police witnesses have retracted or contradicted their testimony and many have stated in sworn affidavits that they were pressured or coerced by police into testifying or signing statements against him.
During the 20 years between Troy’s original conviction and his death there have been numerous appeals and legal challenges. Three previous execution dates were set aside, following various submissions. Throughout this process Troy had the support of his family, legal team and campaigners, all of whom spoke out, not only about his individual innocence, but in order to highlight the racist nature of the US death penalty. After the execution, lawyer Thomas Ruffin described the execution as ‘racially bigoted’ and a ‘legal lynching’, and pointed out to the press that: ‘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.’
The continuing racist nature of the US death penalty, ever since the days of slavery, is widely known. The first detailed study to clearly expose this in modern times was in fact carried out in Georgia in 1972. The Baldus Study established that black defendants were 1.7 times more likely to receive the death penalty than white defendants and that murderers of white victims were 4.3 times more likely to be sentenced to death than those who had killed black people. In the past 30 years, similar studies across the ‘death penalty states’ of the US have repeatedly come up with similar conclusions. Nationally, black and white people are victims of homicide in roughly equal numbers, yet 80% of those executed have been convicted of killing white people.
Alongside Britain, the US has appointed itself the world’s policeman, the arbiter of international right and wrong. The execution of Troy Davis demonstrates yet again how Obama’s government has no more right than that of any of his predecessors to lecture any other country on its judicial system or human rights record.
End the racist death penalty!
Nicki Jameson
