Black-Afrikan People Must Fight Against the Death Penalty !

The Conscious Community Jan. 11, 2012

by Sis. Marpessa Kupendua - 1/2012

"Had it not been for slavery, the death penalty would have likely been abolished in America. Slavery became a haven for the death penalty. In Virginia, before the end of slavery, there was only one crime for which a white person could be executed. But there were 66 crimes for which a slave could be executed." – Sis. Angela Davis, 2003

Most of us in the Black/Afrikan community very understandably worry more about our children being killed on the streets than by lethal injection. Some of our neighborhoods are devastated by drugs, poverty and violence and so discussions around the uneven application of the death penalty are a glaring non-issue when so many of us live on the frontlines of these war zones. Each day we hear and read of horror stories that fill us with disbelief, anguish and rage and many want an eye for an eye! We so readily identify with being victimized that we even support the executions of juveniles and the mentally disabled in particularly gruesome incidences. It also seems a preposterous topic to raise because most people can't possibly foresee that any member of their immediate families could ever face a death sentence.

But when this system offers to murder on our alleged behalf, it carries a double-edged sword. Many may believe in the execution of the perpetrator of today's heinous leading news story, but be outraged at the blatantly unjust execution of another. Unfortunately, we are not given the luxury to pick and choose once we support state-sanctioned murder -- we are either for it, regardless of how corrupt many of these sham trials are, or against it! In 2008 the Death Penalty Information Center stated that 127 death row inmates had been exonerated, and that's just those who were fortunate enough to get evidence admitted that cleared them. The courageous work of anti-lynching heroine Ida B. Wells was not meant to culminate in high-tech state lynchings where even the cause of death is certified as 'homicide'.

Statistical data is abundant that the criminal justice system, from profiling, arrest, and sentencing, impacts Black/Afrikan and Latino defendants the harshest, and the death penalty is, of course, no exception.(1) Although some political activists will concede the racist, classist and political aspects of the death penalty in specific cases, they continue to remain uninvolved in the larger struggle to abolish it completely.

Black activists must dialogue and challenge that mindset within our ranks, or we continue to risk that far too many of our brothers and sisters – such as Bro. Gregory (Ajamu) Resnover, Bro. Ziyon Yisrayah, Bro. Shaka Sankofa, Bro. Troy Davis and many more – will be wiped off of the planet. If we stand against racist oppression, we must fully understand that we are all under potential threat of life – slow-speed death sentences -- or straight up legalized lynching.

Since Georgia succeeded in murdering Troy Davis, an innocent man with worldwide support during which Black people held the highest positions in this country and did not intervene, what is to stop the executions of dozens more wrongfully convicted and oversentenced captives with limited or no support, particular those the state paints as 'terrorists' during the age of NDAA? We must include the abolition of the death penalty as a major plank of all of our platforms. No more treating capital punishment as a back burner issue and dismissing it as a largely white movement!

Existing mostly-white anti-DP organizations should be confronted as to their lack of employment of Blacks and other people of color, especially those who have intimate knowledge of the death penalty through personal experience. Bro. Lawrence Hayes wrote an open letter to anti-DP organizations in December, 2011, that explains his personal frustration as someone who was entombed for 2 1/2 yrs in the death house and 20 yrs in prison before being exonerated: "After my release, I help found the Campaign to End the Death Penalty and have worked in Education, as a Paralegal, for an anti death penalty United Nation's NGO and in Human Service. I am well educated, can write and publicly articulate my positions, I am conscious and bring first hand experience to an organization that no other employee has. However, for the past five years I've made several attempts to work in a capacity directly involving anti death penalty work, mainly with groups like the Washington, DC based National Death Penalty Center, ACLU, NAACP Legal Defense Fund, Amnesty International, etc. and haven't been able to land a job. This disturbs me to no end and I would like the anti death penalty activist community, these organizations volunteer members, staff and donors to ask this question of why, with the release so many former death house prisoners, they don't have a single one working for them."

"I must admit that at times I wonder and question the intentions and knowledge of the death penalty activists (abolishers) who are horrified and oppose the killing of human beings, but who are not horrified at the very system in its totality, which renders such biased and unjust sentences upon its citizens and which contributes to the dehumanizing of its citizens. I say in turn that it's not just the death penalty which must be overturned, but the whole institution of criminal justice as we know it must be overturned." – From "What Is a Death Sentence?" by Bro. Adullah Hameen, who was legally lynched by the State of Delaware on May 25, 2001

The oppression of the Black community via the criminal justice system and its agents intensifies by the day. Vicious police attacks are openly viewed in all their sick glory via the internet, putting their hate speech, beatings, shootings and murders on full blast before the world. We are also all too familiar with the massive oversentencing of Blacks vs. their white counterparts, manufactured evidence, tortured confessions, deliberate confusion, lies and even more. Our children are seen as sub-human, easily manipulated, animalistic and unemployable, sent down a conveyor belt straight to these dungeons and thus insuring the financing of their own encagement.

Even though many folks will concede that some captives may be innocent, at least of lesser counts than those with which they've been charged, and that some belong in drug or psychiatric treatment and not prison, and that of course some are becoming more hardened and callous than when they went in, and that yes some will be raped, beaten, tortured, enslaved for corporate profit while in prison and even killed – the bottom line for many remains that our community cannot be seen as making excuses for crime, a la Bill Cosby. As a result, many of our brothers and sisters will advocate even harsher punishments than the system already has in place and mimic those who would call for the jailing of our children for "crimes" such as wearing sagging pants or violation of noise ordinances!

We still yet believe that this system's laws are designed to protect us, when nothing could be further from the truth! When presented with evidence that the death penalty is race- and class-based and not evenly applied, many will respond that yes, it needs to made fair, but it doesn't need to be gotten rid of, not in all cases. These laws are abitrary, political, and remade at the whim of whoever is holding our lives in their hands. This system's very foundation of racism and corruption can never be reformed or "made fair," so it definitely cannot be trusted to determine who lives and who dies.

Capital punishment is itself premeditated murder! It's about keeping alive this country's bloodthirsty passion for lynching, a passion which they will fight to feed even in the face of overwhelming innocence, recantations of perjured testimony, even to the point where an unhealthy inmate will be cured just so that they can be healthy enough to be murdered on death day!

But how many police officers and/or other officials were given the death penalty for the terrorist murders of 11 members of the MOVE family – men, women and children – when police dropped a BOMB on their home in Philadelphia in May, 1985?! How many police officers were given the death penalty in the bloody murder of 7 year old Ayanna Jones in Detroit as she slept on the sofa in her family's apartment in May, 2010? How many police and/or other officials are given the death penalty for the murders of people in our communities, period? Their badges, guns, tasers and titles do not give them the right to judge who gets to live or die – on the streets or in their prison death chambers!

"As I sit here on my bed, exhausted yet full of joy and uncertainty, feeling the affects of seven and a half years of constant chemotherapy, I am reflecting on the day of Sept. 23, 2008, as we entered the grounds of the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison, where I wanted to cry but I could not; I wanted to yell but I could not; I wanted to leave but I could not. Then I watched the expression on my son's face, that for the first time in his 14 years of visiting death row, he witnessed more than 100 SWAT, Tactical Squad officers, corrections officers with dozens of dogs, shotguns in hand, all because the state of Georgia wants to kill his Uncle Troy. I have only seen such force on television from the civil rights era." – from "Silencing our Joy" by Sis. Martina Correia, sister of innocent death row prisoner, Troy Davis, Sept. 25, 2008(3)

When addressing the needs of families of victims of crime, we must include the families of death row inmates. They are among the most underserved and unspoken of as they, too, cope with the tremendous depression suffered by all grief-stricken victims. These families, adults and children, are barely able to function while on the dizzying legal rollercoaster leading up to their family member's date with death. Some are treated as pariahs within their own community while struggling to carry on with work and school – simultaneously acting as their loved one's source of emotional and financial support, traveling sometimes incredibly long distances to visit through glass or even by video, gouged by outrageously over-priced phone calls and advocating for these inmates with inadequate legal representatives(2), politricians and god-complexed prison officials. These families are not offered comfort or treated with even the most basic human dignity.

The good news is that more and more community activists, and most significantly our creative and genius-filled young brothers and sisters, are not only adopting a community-wide view that eclipses the media and societal pressure to be consumed with self and self alone, but even understanding the broader significance of our people's global struggle for liberation and self-determination! There exists an incredible potential to seize the time and build a strong anti-death penalty contingent within our organizations and/or to make certain that a representative of our groups becomes involved with existing anti-DP organizing in our area, lest we continue to scramble and scurry when emergencies arise. There is an immediate need for education and discussion around the issue of capital punishment and there is an abundance of anti-DP information on and off-line to be disseminated within any gathering of our people.

Furthermore, these politricians have to be made to feel that their continued allegiance to capital punishment will negatively impact their careers, and so will anyone else who purports to act as a religious or other type of representative spokesperson for our communities. Anyone who speaks about being 'pro-life' should be confronted if they are not just as passionate regarding abolition of the death penalty!

Addressing police and prison issues is critical to building grassroots activism in any real and meaningful way, it is a fact of life for the Black/brown segment of the 99%, and the issue of state sponsored murder is a crucial part of that. This is the system that far too many of our families are touched by and, as Bro. Hameen wrote, not just the death penalty but "the whole institution of criminal justice as we know it must be overturned." We must make it "un-hip" to be down with the death penalty, particularly amongst our own ranks!

"I think we need to increase our tactical strategies to include boycotts and national/international protest. I think we need to push for psychological and emotional therapeutic counseling (stress, anxiety, anger management and bereavement) for the families of men and women facing capital punishment, especially after an execution. I, also, believe that because of the economic situations in most African-American and Taino communities, we need to develop creative ways to organize the African-American and Taino anti death penalty voice." Bro. Lawrence Hayes, exonerated death row inmate.

ABOLISH THE RACIST, CLASSIST DEATH PENALTY! FORWARD EVER!

References

(1) From www.deathpenaltyinfo.org:

• Even though blacks and whites are murder victims in nearly equal numbers of crimes, 80 percent of people executed since the death penalty was reinstated have been executed for murders involving white victims.

• More than 20 percent of Black defendants who have been executed were convicted by all-white juries.

(2) More at www.innocenceproject.org/understand/Bad-Lawyering.php. Please also check www.troyanthonydavis.org, www.onamove.com and www.freemumia.com.

(3) Sis. Martina Correira died of cancer on December 1, 2011, 2 1/2 months after the state's premeditated murder of her innocent brother, Troy Davis.

(Portions were taken from http://dreadtimes.com/blogs/entry/The-Black-Afrikan-Community-and-the-Death-Penalty)

A Witness for Troy Davis: a Legalized Lynching

Date: Mon, 28 Nov 2011
From: blackaugustrebellion@gmail.com

Thomas Ruffin, Jr., Esquire © October-November 2011

“Stand Up! Testify! We Won’t Let Troy Davis Die!”
The militant chant of hundreds of mainly black, but also many white, protesters
marching on the state capitol building to a somber NAACP-Amnesty-International
prayer vigil in downtown Atlanta, Georgia, the night before the Troy Davis execution
on September 21, 2011.

On September 21, 2011, I witnessed the legalized lynching of my client,
Troy Anthony Davis, who died by “lethal injection” shortly before his
forty-third birthday. A funny man, and, indeed, a religious and
politically sensitive black man, Troy Davis assumed a very public role that
he never wanted: that of facing execution for a crime someone else
committed. Before then, he braved through the ordeal of being falsely
accused and tried in Savannah, Georgia, for the senseless murder of a white
police officer. After being convicted and sentenced to death in August
1991, Troy realized that, notwithstanding this nation’s simplistic claims
of equality and fairness, American courts do not provide an invisible
barrier called “justice” as protection for the wrongly accused, especially
those who are black and poor. After all, in the United States, poor
people, especially blacks and Latinos, face imprisonment and suffering,
including execution, at a rate vastly disproportionate to our numbers in
American society.

For example, in Georgia, where black males make up no more than about 15%
of the state’s population, black men comprise about 48.4% of Georgia’s
death row. In fact, in Georgia, where black people in general constitute
about 30% of the state’s population, we make up about 61.5% of Georgia’s
prison population. That is to say, about 33,669 of Georgia’s prison
population are black. After a close reading of history, we should not be
surprised. After all, from 1882 through 1923, white mobs in Georgia
publicly lynched 458 people, 95% or 435 of whom were black people of
African descent. Afterwards, from 1924 through the present, Georgia
“legally” executed 471 people, 74.9% or 353 of whom were black. Most, if
not all, of the executed, like the lynched victims before, never received
the protections in the law that well-to-do whites receive in Georgia.
However, in a system based in its origins on a form of white capital
supremacy, elected policy makers and other such elites seldom worry about
adequate legal protections for blacks and the poor.

In fact, in the United States, black people of African descent, or rather
those born in this country and whose first language is English, comprise an
estimated 12.2% to 13% of the American populace. However, black males make
up about fifty percent of the American prison population and, as of January
1, 2011, about 41.8% of America’s total death row population. To be sure,
for every 100,000 black males living in the United States on June 30, 2009,
about 4,749 were imprisoned. Hence, a total of perhaps 1,021,000 black men
(not including Hispanic black men) were imprisoned in June 2009. As of
August 27, 2011, federal prisons incarcerated about 217,582 people, about
37.9% of whom were black. As a matter of fact, by January 1, 2011, the
federal government imprisoned sixty-seven people on its death row, about
50.7% or thirty-four of whom were black men.

For similar examples, we should look at Maryland and Virginia, two
mid-Atlantic states. In Maryland, where black males make up about 14% of
the state population, and where the total black population constitutes no
more than about 28% of the state populace, the total prison and jail
population equals about 23,285 people, with about 77% of that number being
black. In the meantime, Maryland’s death row imprisons five men, 80% or
four of whom are black. Similarly, in Virginia, where black people
constitute about 20% of the state’s population, we make up about 68% of the
state’s prison and jail population of about 35,564. Furthermore, black
men, who constitute about 10% of Virginia’s population, make up at least
45.4% of the condemned on Virginia’s death row. In sum, for every 100,000
black people in Maryland, 1,579 live in Maryland prisons or jails. As for
Virginia, for every 100,000 black people, 2,331 are imprisoned by the
Virginia commonwealth. In contrast, for every 100,000 white people in
Maryland, merely 288 are incarcerated by the state. Similarly, for every
100,000 white people in Virginia, merely 396 are imprisoned by the
commonwealth.

This pattern of racial bias persists throughout much of the United States,
at least where black people make up a sizable percentage of the state
population. In North Carolina, where black people make up about 21.5% of
the population, we make up about 51.5% of its death row population and
about 64% of its prison population. In South Carolina, where black people
constitute 29.5% of the populace, we comprise about 52.4% of the state’s
death row population and about 69% of its prison population. While these
and other examples from the south may be instructive, little difference
will come from a review of the north. In Ohio, for example, where black
people constitute about 11.8% of the population, we make up about 51.5% of
Ohio’s death row. Similarly, we make up about 52% of the state’s prison
population. Likewise, in Pennsylvania, where black people make up about
10.8% of the population, we provide a little more than 60.7% of the state’s
death row population and about 56% of its prison population.

Despite these numbers, black people do not commit most of the crimes in the
United States. As a matter of fact, black people never committed most of
the felony or misdemeanor offenses in the United States. Rather, we simply
faced in a racially disparate fashion deliberate targeting by American
police. In fact, according to a U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics report
titled Race of Prisoners Admitted to State and Federal Institutions,
1926-86, black people, in 1926, during some of the harshest conditions of
so-called “Jim Crow” or apartheid segregation, constituted no more than
about 21.4% of the American prison population. By 1950, the percentage
increased to 29.7%. Apparently, the trend towards focusing the
government’s police powers on black communities for prosecution and
imprisonment gradually increased over the last century, probably as
lynch-law and racial segregation waned while more discreet forms of
oppression became preferable. Over the years, this racially bigoted
pattern of policing resulted in a number of injustices.

At the end of the day, these injustices included the wrongful prosecution,
the twenty-two-year imprisonment, and, ultimately, the legalized lynching
of Troy Anthony Davis. As a result, many of us proclaim as an act of
solidarity that “I am Troy Davis”. Meanwhile, the insidious nature of the
machine that poisoned Troy to death can best be identified by the
politicians, the judges, the lawyers, the police, the prison employees, the
lobbyists, and the contractors who benefit from the system and who make
sure that it functions. These people long for a morally acceptable forum
for their constituencies’ blood lust. While never admitting to racial
bias, they can never escape the statistics that outline their collective
ambition for racially disproportionate executions. Nor can they credibly
dispute the sworn recantations by seven of the nine surviving witnesses
who, at first, testified against Troy Davis in August 1991 on the murder
charge, but who later confessed that they lied at trial against Troy and
often did so because of illegal pressures or suasion from local police. In
addition, the Georgia politicians and judges who maintain the death penalty
ignored the sworn proof offered by additional eyewitnesses who saw Officer
MacPhail’s murder, or who heard a confession to the crime, and who
ultimately disclosed under oath that Sylvester “Red” Coles, a police
informant, actually committed the murder or confessed to the crime, not
Troy Davis.

For those offended by Troy’s murder, we should honor the words “I am Troy
Davis” by working to abolish the American death penalty, and we should
insist upon achieving that goal within three to five years of Troy’s
execution. While pursuing this goal, we should also eliminate racially
disparate imprisonment in American society. As a partial remedy to the
fiscal troubles of the United States, we should demand that racially
disparate imprisonment and policing come to an end within three to five
years, if not immediately. As a matter of conscience and sound public
policy, the two causes must be linked. After all, the scourge of America’s
death penalty must end, and the pervasive system of police state apartheid
must be crushed into nonexistence, if the United States would atone for its
biased prosecutions against those who, because of incarceration, embody the
words “I am Troy Davis”.

At the end of the day, racial minorities should not be targeted for prison.
Innocents and the poor should not be legally lynched on America’s death
row. The American police state, with its history of racial slavery and
other forms of oppression, should not be trusted with seemingly unlimited
power to torment the poor and peoples of color. In other words, the
enforcement of the law should not be based upon its violation by the state.
Hence, if constitutional precepts such as “due process” and “equal
protection of the law” mean anything, then racially disparate prosecutions
and callous indifference to innocence should not be the norm. We should
oppose these evils until they no longer exist. In his last words, Troy
Davis issued more or less this same mandate late at night on September 21,
2011, while strapped down to a gurney in a rural Georgia prison. Many of
us heard Troy’s mandate. The question before us today is whether we will
fulfill it.

Troy Anthony Davis and Useless Leadership

A Black Agenda Radio commentary by editor and columnist Jared Ball

The grotesque spectacle of Georgia’s final execution of Troy Davis may have been politically useful to the pretenders to the mantel of Black leadership, but in the end the misleadership class proved useless to Troy. “My last words would have been to spread out, break those ranks and let Sharpton, Barack and Jealous know, no more show time for you and the God you keep praising as all ‘capable’ when he can’t keep me from the poison.”

Troy Anthony Davis and Useless Leadership

A Black Agenda Radio commentary by editor and columnist Jared Ball

“Amy Goodman used his death like CNN used Desert Storm.”

Not long after the 4-hour additional torture imposed on Davis by the Supreme Court, and after the final word came that Troy was dead, I got a phone call from an angry friend. He began by asking, “what is the value in electing or investing support for a leadership that cannot stop even this? What is the value in investing support behind these so-called ‘movements’ that benefit useless leadership more than the people they claim to be moving for?” And then he said, “Troy was definitely a better man than me.”

“Word?” I asked. “That’s my word,” he said. He took a breath to calm himself and went on. “First of all, his last words were praise to his supporters and all those gathered around the world. Then he had words of encouragement for the family of the cop he didn’t kill. No way man. I would have been of no use.” That line struck me. “What do you mean, ‘no use’?” I asked. “Everyone knows he didn’t do it,” he went on. “Everyone knows it and yet they all use him while he dies in convenient fashion.” “Convenient fashion? That’s deep my man,” I said. “Did you watch the coverage on Democracy Now! last night?” he asked. “Every minute,” I said. “Then you know what I mean. The cop’s family got polite support from a man from whom they gained closure, the activists got praise from a man they were too soft to save, and Amy Goodman’s people got love for doing what they should have been doing for at least 10 years.”

“You saw their coverage right?” “Yes,” I said. “Then you noticed how it is on the night Troy is killed that they gave more attention to his case than during the entire 20 years of his incarceration. And how often do they talk about the associated issues of mass Black imprisonment?” “Ok,” I said. But he went on, increasingly angered, “What you saw was spectacle. Amy Goodman used his death like CNN used Desert Storm, you heard her say, ‘and we are the only ones here covering the moment.’ Just like CNN she was locking up 10 more years of support from the Left as the major media.” “She didn’t do some good with coverage?” I asked, sounding like the people I usually refer to as soft. “Whatever good she did was useless to Troy and the rest of us. And look what she did the next day; went right back to her real top stories, Israel and Palestine and mainstream journalist book writers.”

“Make them storm trooper cops need that gear they brought to the rally.”

“But that wouldn’t have worked with me,” he went on. “Because I would have used my last words to tell them to go home, go back to the stories you prefer. I don’t want to become a fund-raiser for you. You didn’t tell my story enough or in ways to get your audience to get me out, I am about to die anyway, so to me, you are useless.” “In fact,” he said, with even more venom in his voice, “I would have told everyone gathered out front, everyone listening to whatever media was covering me, that they should go become a problem, the kind of problem that keeps me alive or gets me out. Make them storm trooper cops need that gear they brought to the rally. Tell them that I won’t be the only one to transition tonight. But don’t use me to add to your phony activist credentials. If indeed we are ‘all Troy Davis’ then we all should be prepared to die tonight.”

He noticed that my silent discomfort. He sensed my fear of my own politics. But he was angry and relentless. “My last words would have been to spread out, break those ranks and let Sharpton, Brock and Jealous know, no more show time for you and the God you keep praising as all ‘capable’ when he can’t keep me from the poison. Your God is useless. We don’t praise the same one, if we praise one at all. My God wouldn’t let me and mine suffer while others use that suffering to enrich and reposition themselves.” “I feel you,” I said. “And it was even more infuriating to listen to them apologize for Obama’s inability to inter…” I could not even finish the sentence.

“Obama’s uselessness was so evident and emblematic” he interrupted. “A Black president, a Black attorney general, a Black supreme court justice, two Black men on the Georgia parole board, all the Black civil rights glitterati and still nothing could be done. It is final proof, if we still needed it, of the uselessness of what is called ‘leadership’.”

I agree but only wish I had the courage to say it myself.

For Black Agenda Radio I’m Jared Ball. On the web go to BlackAgendaReport.com.

Dr. Jared A. Ball is an associate professor of communication studies at Morgan State University in Baltimore and is the author of I Mix What I Like! A Mixtape Manifesto (AK Press). He can be found online at: IMIXWHATILIKE.COM.

Are We Troy Davis? - An Ⓐnonymous Message

Sept. 23, 2011 Anarchist News

On the street yesterday in my city I saw signs, held by people of many races, economic backgrounds and political affiliations, that said "Not In My Name" and "I Am Troy Davis".

I know, without a doubt, that this callous and unjust state-execution will not be in my name, but I also know, without a doubt, that I am not Troy Davis. I am not strong enough to claim that name. I do not weather incarceration on Death Row and I do not suffer under an unjust conviction. I do not face death with dignity and love and I do not answer people's letters with great care and concern, while the state tries methodically and repeatedly to kill me for something I did not do.

I am a white, I am male. I grew up with that privilege I am frantically trying to shed, but I cannot. I fancy myself an ally and a revolutionary, but I am neither of those, either. Not yet.

I admit, I write political prisoners as a hobby, of sorts. It gives me credibility in my mostly white, activist "community", and it makes me feel better about my privilege, about my inaction and about my cowardice. When I write these brave and resilient men and women, I never discuss their case, nor do I discuss my vanilla, above-ground activism. I never discuss politics, except in passing generalities, and I never mention the prison industrial complex. I feel that the recipients of my insipid letters do not need their attention drawn there, nor do I really know anything of it. They experience it everyday, and it would not only be stupid for me to presume that I have anything to tell them about oppression, their oppression, but an abstraction for me, but it would be rude to waste their time doing so even if I did. Instead, I write them about my life. I am aware that this is equally presumptuous of me, but it is my only truth, and the only thing I can communicate about without feeling disingenuous.

In my desk drawer, there are exactly two and one-third pages of handwriting that belong to Troy. He knew my mother's maiden name and where I grew up. He knew what seeds I collected and saved this year, and that I like to camp in the mountains. He knew the names of my ducks and he knew about my emotionally tumultuous summer, how bad it hurt, but also how transformative it was for me. He carefully read and responded to my letter detailing what happened, and he gave me support. I'm sure you can possibly imagine how conceited, selfish and undeserving that makes me feel tonight.

Troy's reality was radically different. Tonight, he died by lethal injection. He did not think of the handbuilt beehive I wrote him of, he did not wonder if I have decided to attend this term of school yet, nor did he think of our correspondence at all. He did not think of me, or you at all, because he could not. He did not think of us because we have failed him and we have forgotten and continue to forget.

Today, every single one of us who claims to care about ending imperialism and oppression have forgotten. Everyday, we fail those who are wrongfully imprisoned, convicted and enslaved in this nation under various systems of incarceration, control and coercion. We fail Mumia Abu-Jamal, journalist and former Black Panther, and we fail Leonard Peltier, writer and activist in the American Indiana Movement. In this, our bloated nation of disparity, injustice and shit, we forget Marie Mason and Eric McDavid, incarcerated for nothing but a discussion, and break our word to activist Tim DeChristopher, doomed to ten years in federal prison for making a faux-bid on some land in a last-ditch attempt to halt its destruction. We ignore Lynne Stewart, a lawyer of integrity, convicted for trying to get pertinent information to their client, regarding their defense. We fail them all and we forget them at our own peril.

But these names are mostly names we know, if we pay attention. We also fail the names you do not know, the names we are not allowed to know. We forget Puerto Rican independentistas like Dylcia Pagan, Alejandrina Torres and Carmen Valentin, who were railroaded in sham trials, trying to gain independence and fight U.S. occupation. We fail our Black revolutionary brother Sundiata Acoli, like we lie to our Black revolutionary sister, Janet Holloway Africa, when we call her "sister".

We also must not forget that we fail the names that we can never know. The people in Guantanamo Bay, and the secret prisons of the CIA, either held abroad in client states of the U.S. or on U.S. warships. We fail those who suffer extraordinary rendition. We forget those under drones strikes in Pakistan, and we fail those under repression in Columbia, corruption in Afghanistan, or starvation in Somalia. All over the world, we fail those who die at the hands of our consumerism and imperialism. We forget.

Tonight Troy Davis was scheduled to die by the state of Georgia and was killed. But if we continue to remain ignorant and forgetful about the dozens, hundreds and thousands of other unjustly imprisoned and incarcerated everywhere, we are not only decidedly not Troy Davis, and attaint his proud legacy of resistance, but we have forgotten ourselves as well, and forsake our potential, not only as activists and revolutionaries, but our heritage as people of the earth who live in light, truth and justice and instead become what we are disgusted by. We will become people who deserve no name at all, a people who do not deserve to be remembered, and a people who will die alone and forgotten.

I am not Troy Davis, nor could I ever be. But I can be myself again, and we can all be ourselves again by refusing to abide our criminal and corrupt corporate government and their mechanisms of control, deprivation and death. We can reclaim ourselves and become the activists, dissidents and revolutionaries we want to be, and claim we are, if we just refuse to forget ever again. Refuse to forget the revolutionary sacrifices and executions and refuse to let them keep occurring. Refuse to forget our planet, refuse to forgive the people who kill it with impunity for profit and refuse to forget one another in this struggle for liberation. We must refuse to let anyone, anywhere suffer alone.

We are not Troy Davis nor can we ever be. But all hope is not lost, because we can be ourselves again, if we refuse to forget. Until then, we will forgo our names and we will not use them. I will be Anonymous and so will you. Join us.

Today we can free Troy Davis, even though he is now already passed. We free him when we free his legacy. We will not forgive and we will not forget. Expect us.

September 21, 2011

—Ⓐnonymous

Troy Davis executed, supporters cry injustice

(CBS/AP) Sept. 22, 2011

JACKSON, Ga. - Strapped to a gurney in Georgia's death chamber, Troy Davis lifted his head and declared one last time that he did not kill police officer Mark MacPhail. Just a few feet away behind a glass window, MacPhail's son and brother watched in silence.

Outside the prison, a crowd of more than 500 demonstrators cried, hugged, prayed and held candles. They represented hundreds of thousands of supporters worldwide who took up the anti-death penalty cause as Davis' final days ticked away.

"I am innocent," Davis said moments before he was executed Wednesday night. "All I can ask ... is that you look deeper into this case so that you really can finally see the truth. I ask my family and friends to continue to fight this fight."

Prosecutors and MacPhail's family said justice had finally been served.

Troy Davis executed in Georgia
High Court rejects Troy Davis' last minute appeal
Troy Davis' last words: I'm innocent

"I'm kind of numb. I can't believe that it's really happened," MacPhail's mother, Anneliese MacPhail, said in a telephone interview from her home in Columbus, Ga. "All the feelings of relief and peace I've been waiting for all these years, they will come later. I certainly do want some peace."

She dismissed Davis' claims of innocence.

"He's been telling himself that for 22 years. You know how it is, he can talk himself into anything."

Davis was scheduled to die at 7 p.m., but the hour came and went as the U.S. Supreme Court apparently weighed the case. More than three hours later, the high court said it wouldn't intervene. The justices did not comment on their order rejecting Davis' request for a stay.

CBS News justice correspondent Jan Crawford reports that even the four liberal justices on the nation's highest court agreed - Davis had multiple chances to prove his innocence, and each time he failed.

Hundreds of thousands of people signed petitions on Davis' behalf and he had prominent supporters. His attorneys said seven of nine key witnesses against him disputed all or parts of their testimony, but state and federal judges repeatedly ruled against him — three times on Wednesday alone.

U.S. executions, by the numbers
White supremacist executed in Texas
The slow death of the death penalty?

Officer MacPhail's widow, Joan MacPhail-Harris, said it was "a time for healing for all families."

"I will grieve for the Davis family because now they're going to understand our pain and our hurt," she said in a telephone interview from Jackson. "My prayers go out to them. I have been praying for them all these years. And I pray there will be some peace along the way for them."

Davis' supporters staged vigils in the U.S. and Europe, declaring "I am Troy Davis" on signs, T-shirts and the Internet. Some tried increasingly frenzied measures, urging prison workers to stay home and even posting a judge's phone number online, hoping people would press him to put a stop to the lethal injection. President Barack Obama deflected calls for him to get involved.

"They say death row; we say hell no!" protesters shouted outside the Jackson prison before Davis was executed. In Washington, a crowd outside the Supreme Court yelled the same chant.

As many as 700 demonstrators gathered outside the prison as a few dozen riot police stood watch, but the crowd thinned as the night wore on and the outcome became clear.

Minister Lynn Hopkins, left, comforts her partner Carolyn Bond after hearing that the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a last minute plea of Georgia death row inmate Troy Davis In Jackson, Ga., Sept. 21, 2011.

(Credit: AP)

Davis' execution had been halted three times since 2007. The U.S. Supreme Court even gave Davis an unusual opportunity to prove his innocence in a lower court last year. While the nation's top court didn't hear the case, they did set a tough standard for Davis to exonerate himself, ruling that his attorneys must "clearly establish" Davis' innocence — a higher bar to meet than prosecutors having to prove guilt. After the hearing, a lower court judge ruled in prosecutors' favor, and the justices didn't take up the case.

His attorney Stephen Marsh said Davis would have spent part of Wednesday taking a polygraph test if pardons officials had taken his offer seriously. But they, too, said they wouldn't reconsider their decision. Georgia's governor does not have the power to grant condemned inmates clemency.

As his last hours ticked away, an upbeat and prayerful Davis turned down an offer for a special last meal as he met with friends, family and supporters.

"Troy Davis has impacted the world," his sister Martina Correia said before the execution. "They say, `I am Troy Davis,' in languages he can't speak."

Members of Davis' family who witnessed the execution left without talking to reporters.

Davis' supporters included former President Jimmy Carter, Pope Benedict XVI, a former FBI director, the NAACP, several conservative figures and many celebrities, including hip-hop star Sean "P. Diddy" Combs.

"I'm trying to bring the word to the young people: There is too much doubt," rapper Big Boi, of the Atlanta-based group Outkast, said at a church near the prison.

At a Paris rally, many of the roughly 150 demonstrators carried signs emblazoned with Davis' face. "Everyone who looks a little bit at the case knows that there is too much doubt to execute him," Nicolas Krameyer of Amnesty International said at the protest.

Davis was convicted in 1991 of killing MacPhail, who was working as a security guard at the time. MacPhail rushed to the aid of a homeless man who prosecutors said Davis was bashing with a handgun after asking him for a beer. Prosecutors said Davis had a smirk on his face as he shot the officer to death in a Burger King parking lot in Savannah.

No gun was ever found, but prosecutors say shell casings were linked to an earlier shooting for which Davis was convicted.

Witnesses placed Davis at the crime scene and identified him as the shooter, but several of them have recanted their accounts and some jurors have said they've changed their minds about his guilt. Others have claimed a man who was with Davis that night has told people he actually shot the officer.

"Such incredibly flawed eyewitness testimony should never be the basis for an execution," Marsh said. "To execute someone under these circumstances would be unconscionable."

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, which helped lead the charge to stop the execution, said it considered asking Obama to intervene, even though he cannot grant Davis clemency for a state conviction.

Press secretary Jay Carney issued a statement saying that although Obama "has worked to ensure accuracy and fairness in the criminal justice system," it was not appropriate for him "to weigh in on specific cases like this one, which is a state prosecution."

Dozens of protesters outside the White House called on the president to step in, and about 12 were arrested for disobeying police orders.

Davis was not the only U.S. inmate put to death Wednesday evening. In Texas, white supremacist gang member Lawrence Russell Brewer was put to death for the 1998 dragging death of a black man, James Byrd Jr., one of the most notorious hate crime murders in recent U.S. history.

On Thursday, Alabama is scheduled to execute Derrick Mason, who was convicted in the 1994 shooting death of convenience store clerk Angela Cagle.

Troy Davis issues parting cry before execution

Sept. 20, 2011 AFP

Troy Davis, an American convicted two decades ago of killing an off-duty
policeman, has urged opponents of the death penalty to fight on after he
is executed Wednesday following a failed bid for clemency.

The Georgia State Board of Pardons and Paroles ruled Tuesday against
Davis, who is black, and refused to commute his sentence for the shooting
in 1989 of Mark MacPhail, a married white father of a two-year-old girl
and an infant boy.

The campaign to spare Davis's life drew high-profile support from former
US president Jimmy Carter and Pope Benedict XVI, helping him escape three
previous dates with death in a racially-charged case.

"The struggle for justice doesn't end with me," Davis said in a letter to
supporters released to the public via Amnesty International USA after his
legal appeal was refused.

"This struggle is for all the Troy Davises who came before me and all the
ones who will come after me," he said in the message.

"I'm in good spirits and I'm prayerful and at peace. But I will not stop
fighting until I've taken my last breath."

There was no physical evidence tying Davis, then 20-years-old, to the
shooting and several witnesses at his trial later recanted their
testimony.

MacPhail, 27, had been working nights as a security guard when he
intervened in a brawl in a Burger King parking lot in Savannah, Georgia
and was shot in the heart and the head at point-blank range.

Some 2,000 protesters gathered, at Amnesty's urging, at the Georgia state
capitol at 7:00 pm (2300 GMT) Tuesday, exactly 24 hours before Davis is
due to become the 34th person executed in the United States this year.

The family of the victim have long maintained that Davis was guilty and
that the execution should go ahead, with MacPhail's daughter telling
journalists emotionally how she had been robbed of her father.

Davis, now 42, has always maintained his innocence amid doubts over his
conviction and says the state of Georgia is about to execute an innocent
man, but justice officials refused to commute his sentence.

"The board has considered the totality of the information presented in
this case and thoroughly deliberated on it, after which the decision was
to deny clemency," said a written statement. It did not disclose the vote
breakdown. "We've been here three times before," said Anneliese MacPhail,
the mother of the slain police officer. "We are ready to close this book
and start our lives. This has been a long haul."

MacPhail's daughter Madison, now 23, choked back the tears after Monday's
parole board hearing.

"The death penalty is the correct source of justice," she said.

All avenues for Davis now appear exhausted as Georgia's governor does not
have the power to stay executions and experts said any last-minute filings
to the state courts or the US Supreme Court would likely prove
unsuccessful.

"I am utterly shocked and disappointed at the failure of our justice
system at all levels to correct a miscarriage of justice," Davis attorney
Brian Kammer said, as rights groups and activists rushed to condemn the
decision.

African American leaders condemned the parole board's decision as
emblematic of a US criminal justice system riven with racial inequality.

"This is Jim Crow in a new era," declared Reverend Raphael Warnock of the
Ebenezer Baptist Church, referring to American segregation laws overruled
by the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

The American Civil Liberties Union urged Georgia's prison workers to
strike in a desperate bid to deprive the state of the wherewithal to carry
out the execution.

Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information
Center, said there was next-to-no chance Davis could earn a reprieve in
what he called the "biggest capital punishment case in at least a decade."

The Supreme Court became involved in the Troy Davis case in 2009 and
ordered a federal judge in Savannah to convene a hearing to consider new
evidence.

In August 2010, however, a US District Court in Georgia ruled that Davis
had failed to prove his innocence and denied him a new trial. The top US
court turned down a subsequent appeal.

A message from Troy Anthony Davis

September 10, 2011

Troy was found guilty of murdering a police officer 19 years ago,
based upon the testimony of 9 witnesses. Today, 7 of those 9 have
recanted their testimony entirely, and there are enormous problems
with the testimony of the remaining 2 witness accounts. There is NO
OTHER EVIDENCE. The murder weapon was never found. There is no DNA to
test. Troy is scheduled to die by lethal injection on September 21, 2011.

To All:

I want to thank all of you for your efforts and dedication to Human
Rights and Human Kindness, in the past year I have experienced such
emotion, joy, sadness and never ending faith. It is because of all of
you that I am alive today, as I look at my sister Martina I am
marveled by the love she has for me and of course I worry about her
and her health, but as she tells me she is the eldest and she will
not back down from this fight to save my life and prove to the world
that I am innocent of this terrible crime.

As I look at my mail from across the globe, from places I have never
ever dreamed I would know about and people speaking languages and
expressing cultures and religions I could only hope to one day see
first hand. I am humbled by the emotion that fills my heart with
overwhelming, overflowing Joy. I can't even explain the insurgence of
emotion I feel when I try to express the strength I draw from you
all, it compounds my faith and it shows me yet again that this is not
a case about the death penalty, this is not a case about Troy Davis,
this is a case about Justice and the Human Spirit to see Justice prevail.

I cannot answer all of your letters but I do read them all, I cannot
see you all but I can imagine your faces, I cannot hear you speak but
your letters take me to the far reaches of the world, I cannot touch
you physically but I feel your warmth everyday I exist.

So Thank you and remember I am in a place where execution can only
destroy your physical form but because of my faith in God, my family
and all of you I have been spiritually free for some time and no
matter what happens in the days, weeks to come, this Movement to end
the death penalty, to seek true justice, to expose a system that
fails to protect the innocent must be accelerated. There are so many
more Troy Davis'. This fight to end the death penalty is not won or
lost through me but through our strength to move forward and save
every innocent person in captivity around the globe. We need to
dismantle this Unjust system city by city, state by state and country
by country.

I can't wait to Stand with you, no matter if that is in physical or
spiritual form, I will one day be announcing,

"I AM TROY DAVIS, and I AM FREE!"

Never Stop Fighting for Justice and We will Win!

Georgia Senator Joins SCHR to Urge Execution Staff to Strike & Refuse to Kill Troy Davis

Date of Publication:
 09/20/2011

Atlanta - Today, the day before Troy Anthony
Davis is scheduled to be put to death by lethal
injection, Georgia Senate Democratic Whip Vincent
Fort and Southern Center for Human Rights
Executive Director Sara Totonchi have issued a
joint statement calling upon the individuals
charged with carrying out the execution to refuse
to participate in the killing of a possibly
innocent man.

Davis is scheduled to be executed on Wednesday,
September 21 at 7:00pm at Georgia Diagnostics &
Classifications Prison in Jackson, Georgia. The
statement, included below and sent to all parties
mentioned, appeals to the basic humanity of
individuals who each play roles in carrying out
an execution including the private medical
company that contracts with the state to be
involved in executions and the Corrections staff
at the prison.

Statement from Senator Vincent Fort and Sara
Totonchi to Those Who Will Carry Out the Execution
of Troy Davis

The execution of Troy Davis is immoral and
wrong.  Almost all of the witnesses against him
have recanted.  The courts and the parole board
have failed to use their power to prevent this
imminent miscarriage of justice. However, Troy
Davis' execution cannot take place unless human
beings at the Georgia Diagnostic &
Classifications Prison make it happen.  They can
refuse to kill Troy Davis.

We call on Dr. Carlo Musso, CEO of Rainbow
Medical Associates, the organization contracted
by the Georgia Department of Corrections to
oversee executions, to decline to participate and
not allow any physician or other medical
personnel associated with his companies to
participate in the immoral execution of a
possibly innocent man, Troy Davis.  We also call
on all employees of Dr. Musso's businesses,
Rainbow Medical Associates and CorrectHealth,
Inc., who have any involvement with implementing
the Georgia Department of Corrections execution
protocol, to refuse to participate in the
execution of Troy Davis. Remember your humanity
and that your oath is to facilitate healing, not
killing!

We are calling for a general strike or sick-out
by all but a skeleton staff of the Georgia
Diagnostic Prison on September 21st, 2011.  We
say to the prison staff: If you work on that day,
you will enable the prison to carry out the
execution of a possibly innocent man.  Please
remember your humanity!

We specifically call on Georgia Diagnostic Prison
Warden Carl Humphrey to refuse to carry out the
execution of Troy Davis, because he may be
innocent.  Warden Humphrey, remember your
humanity.   You have the power to stop this
immoral execution.  Use it!

We call on the Deputy Warden of the Georgia
Diagnostic Prison to refuse to prepare the lethal
injection drugs for injection into Troy Davis'
veins.  You have the power to disrupt this
immoral execution.  Remember your humanity and
refuse to participate!!

We call on the prison nurses, who prepare the IV
lines through which lethal chemicals will flow
through Troy Davis' veins:  Refuse to participate
in the execution of Troy Davis, because he may be
innocent.  You are human beings who have the
power to stop this immoral execution.  Your oath
is to facilitate healing, not killing!

We call on the corrections officers who are
assigned to strap Troy Davis to the lethal
injection table:  Refuse to carry out your tasks
tomorrow!  You have the power to stop this immoral
execution.  Call in sick!

We call on the members of the Injection
Team:  Strike!  Do not follow your orders!  Do
not start the flow of the lethal injection
chemicals.  If you refuse to participate, you
make it that much harder for this immoral execution
to be carried out.

Each and every one of you are human beings with
the power to refuse and resist participation in
an immoral execution of a man who may be
innocent. We implore you to use this power. Please
remember your humanity!


Media Contact: Kathryn Hamoudah 404/688-1202
<mailto:khamoudah@schr.org>khamoudah@schr.org

Troy Davis denied clemency 1 day before execution

BY GREG BLUESTEIN - Associated Press | Sept. 20, 2011

ATLANTA — Georgia's board of pardons rejected a last-ditch clemency
bid from death row inmate Troy Davis on Tuesday, one day before his
scheduled execution, despite support from figures including an
ex-president and a former FBI director for the claim that he was wrongly
convicted of killing a police officer in 1989.

Davis is scheduled to die Wednesday at 7 p.m. EDT (2300 GMT) by injection
for killing off-duty Savannah officer Mark MacPhail, who was shot dead
while rushing to help a homeless man being attacked. It is the fourth time
in four years that Davis' execution has been scheduled by Georgia
officials.

"Justice was finally served for my father," said Mark MacPhail Jr., who
was an infant when his father was gunned down. "The truth was finally
heard."

The decision appeared to leave Davis with little chance of avoiding his
execution date. Defense attorney Jason Ewart has said that the pardons
board was likely Davis' last option, but he didn't rule out filing another
legal appeal.

Kim Davis, the inmate's sister, declined immediate comment on the
decision. But his supporters said they will push the pardons board to
reconsider the case and urge prison workers to strike or call in sick on
Wednesday to prevent Davis' execution. They also will push Savannah
prosecutors to block the execution.

"This is a civil rights violation and a human rights violation in the
worst way," said the Rev. Raphael Warnock, who spoke to the board on
Davis' behalf on Monday. "There's too much doubt for this execution to
continue."

Georgia's Board of Pardons and Paroles said it considered "the totality of
the information presented" before deciding to deny clemency.

"The Board members have not taken their responsibility lightly and
certainly understand the emotions attached to a death penalty case," the
five-person panel said in a statement.

Davis' lawyers have long argued Davis was a victim of mistaken identity.
But prosecutors say they have no doubt that they charged the right person
with the crime.

Among those who supported Davis' clemency request are former president
Jimmy Carter and Pope Benedict XVI. A host of conservative figures have
also advocated on his behalf, including former U.S. Rep. Bob Barr,
ex-Justice Department official Larry Thompson and one-time FBI Director
William Sessions.

MacPhail was shot to death Aug. 19, 1989, after coming to the aid of Larry
Young, a homeless man who was pistol-whipped in a Burger King parking lot.
Prosecutors say Davis was with another man who was demanding that Young
give him a beer when Davis pulled out a handgun and bashed Young with it.
When MacPhail arrived to help, they say Davis had a smirk on his face when
he shot the officer to death.

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People said it was
considering asking President Barack Obama to intervene. Obama cannot grant
Davis clemency because Davis was convicted in state court, but could
potentially halt the execution by asking for an investigation into a
federal issue if one exists, according to Richard Dieter, executive
director of the Death Penalty Information Center.

Dieter said he thought it was unlikely Obama would intervene.

Civil rights leader Rev. Al Sharpton, who plans to hold a vigil at the
state prison in Jackson on Wednesday, called on supporters to urge Chatham
County District Attorney Larry Chisolm to block the execution.

"This is probably the most egregious injustice I have seen in a long time,
to set a precedent that a man can be executed when the evidence against
him has mostly been recanted," said Sharpton. "It's unthinkable."

Chisolm's spokeswoman, Alicia Johnson, did not immediately return calls
seeking comment Tuesday. But Chisolm has said it's unlikely he will seek
to intervene.

"What stands between the defendant and execution is the Board of Pardons
and Paroles," Chisolm said on Friday. "And I think whatever decision they
make in the case will probably be the final decision."

Davis has captured worldwide attention because of the doubt his supporters
have raised over whether he killed MacPhail. Several of the witnesses who
helped convict Davis at his 1991 trial have backed off their testimony or
recanted. Others who did not testify say another man at the scene admitted
to the shooting.

The U.S. Supreme Court even granted Davis a hearing last year to prove his
innocence, the first time it had done so for a death row inmate in at
least 50 years. But in that June 2010 hearing, Davis couldn't convince a
federal judge to grant him a new trial. The Supreme Court did not review
his case. Federal appeals courts and the Georgia Supreme Court have upheld
his conviction, leaving the parole board as his last chance.

MacPhail's relatives said they were relieved by the decision. "That's what
we wanted, and that's what we got," said Anneliese MacPhail, the victim's
mother. "We wanted to get it over with, and for him to get his
punishment."

Amnesty International USA director Larry Cox called the pardon board's
decision "unconscionable."

"Should Troy Davis be executed, Georgia may well have executed an innocent
man and in so doing discredited the justice system," Cox said.

Amnesty International and the NAACP have scheduled a demonstration at
Tuesday night on the steps of the Georgia Capitol.

Davis' legal team said in a statement it was "incredibly disappointed" by
the board's decision.

"The death penalty should not be exercised where doubt exists about the
guilt of the accused. The Board did not follow that standard here," their
statement said. "The state's case against Mr. Davis, based largely on
discredited eyewitness testimony and an inaccurate ballistics report,
cannot resolve the significant, lingering doubts that exist here."

___

Associated Press writers Kate Brumback in Atlanta and Russ Bynum in
Savannah contributed to this story.

To call the DA in Georgia to request the removal of the death certificate against Troy Davis, call 912-652-7308 ....

To call the DA in Georgia to request the removal of the death certificate against
Troy Davis, call 912-652-7308 ....

When Innocence Isn't Enough: An Audio Documentary About Troy Anthony Davis
www.blockreportradio.com
Block Report Radio - The People's Voice On The Airwaves And The Internet.

The International Council for Urban Peace, Justice and Empowerment: Letter of Support for Troy Davis

Empowerment in conjunction with Peace in the Hood
________________________________________
Mr. James E. Donald
Chairman
Georgia State Board of Pardons and Paroles
2 Martin Luther King, Jr. Dr., SE
Suite 458, Balcony Level, East Tower
Atlanta, Georgia 30334-4909

September 17, 2011

Re: Troy Davis

On behalf of The International Council for Urban Peace, Justice and Empowerment, we
are asking you to have the courage to stop the execution of an innocent man, Troy
Davis. The International Council for Urban Peace, Justice and Empowerment is the
largest National Network of grassroots, faith and community based organizations
dedicated to Urban Peace, Justice and Empowerment in the United States. The Council
serves as an umbrella organization with over 35 affiliates throughout the United
States and globally. For over 17 years, the Council has sponsored several National
Urban Peace (Street Organization) and Justice Summits. The Council has initiated
prevention, intervention and transformation work all over the U.S. and globally to
affect change in the lives of youth impacted by racism, poverty, inequality and
injustice.

Rarely has a case attracted the international attention and support as this case.
The facts are undeniable: 1) seven of the original nine witnesses recanted their
testimony stating they were coerced by strong arm tactics of the police who were
investigating the murder of one of their own; 2) one of the remaining two witnesses,
Redd Coles was himself a suspect at one time; 3) three witness stated that the same
Redd Coles confessed to them that he murdered the off duty officer; and 4) there was
no physical evidence connecting Mr. Davis to the crime.

Consider the words of U. S. Supreme Court Justice Harry A. Blackmun:

"Twenty years have passed since this Court declared that the death penalty must be
imposed fairly, and with reasonable consistency, or not at all, and, despite the
effort of the states and courts to devise legal formulas and procedural rules to
meet this daunting challenge, the death penalty remains fraught with arbitrariness,
discrimination, caprice, and mistake."– U.S. Supreme Court Justice Harry A.
Blackmun, February 22, 1994

Now consider these facts on the death penalty from the Death Penalty Fact Sheet on
the Death Penalty in the United States:

• Studies by such organizations as the United States General Accounting Office, the
American Bar Association, and The Yale University School of Law have all concluded
that the most reliable indicator of whether or not the death penalty will be sought
is the race of the victim. Prosecutors are more likely to seek the death penalty if
the victim is white and the perpetrator if African American or a person of color.

• The death penalty is not enforced on any geographically consistent basis. Almost
80% of the executions are in the south, yet the South had the highest murder rate in
the United States according to the F.B.I. Uniform Crime Statistics in 2008. The
Northeast, which had the lowest rate of executions (less than 1%), had the lowest
murder rate. (Death Penalty Fact Sheet)

• Of the death row inmates, 42% are Black. In death penalty states, 98% of the chief
prosecutors are white.

• In death penalty cases, 75% of murder victims were white. Nationally, only 59% of
murder victims were white.

• Execution is more expensive than lifelong incarceration and in some cases, can
cost tax payers as much as $250 million dollars per case (California).
The standard for convictions and death penalty cases is clean and convincing
evidence. This was clearly not met in the case. Clear and convincing evidence is not
the word of two people (one of whom was a suspect). In appeals, the state has argued
procedural issues-not the guilt or innocence.

The standard for a civilized society is not what someone has a right to do, but
having the moral courage to do the right thing. In this case, we stand as a united
organization and say that the right thing to do is to commute the death sentence of
an innocent man. Killing people to teach people that killing people is wrong does
not make moral sense. The evidence is not there, but the racism and the notorious
police blue line of protecting their own and revenging their own is there. We ask
you to look within your own conscious and have the courage to do what is right. Do
not execute an innocent man. Do not participate in a legal homicide.

Respectfully,

Amir Khalid Samad, T. Rashad Byrdsong, Jitu Sadiki, Minister Kuratibish Rashid
Spokesman Spokesman Spokesman Spokesman

A TRAVESTY OF JUSTICE: TROY HAS BEEN DENIED CLEMENCY

From Campaign to End the Death Penalty

Troy Anthony Davis has been denied clemency by the Georgia Board of Pardons and
Parole. This means that Troy could be executed tomorrow at 7 p.m. if the board does
not reverse its decision, and if no court intervenes.

Members of the Campaign to End the Death Penalty will not idly sit by while a murder
is carried out in the name of the state of Georgia. We will be holding speakouts and
rallies to demand that this execution be stopped and to urge the pardons board to
reverse its decision. We encourage everyone to come out if they can and continue to
phone, fax and e-mail messages to the board.

Over 1 million people have signed petitions in support of clemency for Troy. More
than 3,000 people marched and rallied for Troy just five days ago in Atlanta--the
largest demonstration of support for any death row prisoner since the protests to
stop the execution of Stan Tookie Williams in California in 2005. Global actions of
solidarity were held all over the world, including Germany, Hong Kong, Belgium and
Nigeria, and more than 300 actions that took place across the U.S.

Troy is supported by numerous civil rights leaders, including NAACP president Ben
Jealous, Jesse Jackson of Rainbow Push, and Al Sharpton of the National Action
Network. Other prominent supporters include President Jimmy Carter, Archbishop
Desmond Tutu, former FBI Director William Sessions, and former federal prosecutor
and death penalty supporter Bob Barr.

The question that has to be asked is: Why can't the members of the Georgia Board of
Pardons and Paroles see what over a million people have?

No physical evidence connects Troy to the murder for which he was condemned to
death, and seven of the nine witnesses against him at his original trial have
recanted their original testimony against Troy. Brenda Davis, one of the jurors in
that trial, told CNN in 2009, "If I knew then what I know now, Troy Davis would not
be on death row. The verdict would be 'not guilty.'"

Why isn't this good enough to win clemency for Troy? For that matter, why isn't it
good enough to win him a new trial where the evidence of his innocence could be
heard by a jury?

The answer is simple: It is good enough. People have won reversals in their cases
for far less than what Troy has put forward.

So why are so many politicians and state officials in Georgia determined to kill Troy?

This case is not merely a matter of guilt or innocence. Race and class have
everything to do with why Troy was arrested in the first place, and why he has had
such a hard time getting a hearing in the courts ever since. Troy was a Black man
accused of killing a white police officer in a city of the Deep South, and he was
too poor to afford good legal representation at his first trial.

Now that he does have lawyers who have been able to unravel the case against him,
Troy is required under the law to prove his innocence in a court system that wants
to accept the evidence as it was presented against him nearly 20 years ago. Without
incontrovertible proof of innocence--like DNA testing that excludes him--it is very
difficult to prove innocence in the eyes of the law.

It all comes down to this terrible truth, as Troy himself put it in an interview in
the New Abolitionist: "Georgia feels it's better to kill me than admit I'm
innocent."

If Georgia goes forward and executes Troy Davis, it will be very definition of a
modern-day lynching.

When Blacks were lynched in this country, it was often based on a lie--that they
were guilty of some crime and deserved their fate. And there was no recourse for
them in the court system or wider power structure. The perpetrators of lynchings
were almost never punished--only 1 percent of such cases ever went trial, and far
fewer were ever convicted.

Troy Davis has been convicted and sentenced to death based on a series of lies--and
he, too, has found no recourse. Because "Georgia feels it's better to kill me than
admit I'm innocent."

WE MUST STAND UP AGAINST THIS MODERN-DAY LYNCHING AND SAY NO TO THE EXECUTION OF
TROY DAVIS AND NO TO THE RACIST DEATH PENALTY.

For more information on Troy's case and to keep posted on what you can do today and
tomorrow, visit the CEDP website at http://nodeathpenalty.org. Send your messages
urging reversal to the Georgia Board of Pardons and Parole--Call 404-656-5651,
e-mail webmaster@pap.state.ga.us <mailto:webmaster@pap.state.ga.us> and fax
404-651-8502.

Troy Davis’ sister Kim: My brother got me out of my wheelchair; please help me save his life

September 18, 2011 SF BayView

Call the Georgia Board of Pardons and Parole at (404) 656-5651 – the Board is counting calls, so let’s make it a million! – and look below for More ways you can help stop the execution of Troy Davis, now set for Wednesday, Sept. 21

by Kimberly Davis

In this family photo taken in 2004, Troy is in front with his mother, Virginia Davis; in the center is Troy’s nephew, De’Jaun Correia, who is especially close to his Uncle Troy; and in back are Troy’s sisters, Ebony and Kimberly Davis and Martina Correia, who has been battling breast cancer while campaigning for her brother throughout his ordeal and is now in the hospital, too weak to physically participate in the protests.

I have a lifetime’s worth of reasons for wanting to save my brother Troy.

When I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis at age 14, Troy left high school, signed up for night classes and started working so that he could take me to physical therapy and help my mother out financially.

It was my brother’s help and reassurance through my long struggle that led me to get out of my wheelchair. He is my hero.

But as you know, the state of Georgia has set an execution date for Troy on Sept. 21, based on supposed evidence against him that does not exist.

But we believe that with God’s help, we will prevail.

Will you help us to continue to fight to save his life? I need you to reach out to the Georgia Board of Pardons and Parole one last time. Watch this video message I recorded for the NAACP, and follow the instructions to send your letter:

Last Thursday, Troy called to tell me he had just heard about the 660,000 petitions delivered to the Board of Pardons and Parole in his name. He was deeply moved. He told me he knew that had supporters around the world, but that he had no idea that the support was that widespread.

My family is so very appreciative of the support from NAACPers like you, but the fight is not over. We cannot let up now.

Twenty years ago, Troy’s conviction was based entirely on circumstantial evidence and witness testimony. In the past two decades, seven of the nine witnesses in his case have recanted their testimony or changed their stories.

There was never a shred of physical evidence or DNA connecting Troy to the crime. No murder weapon has ever been found. In fact, one of the jurors recently stated that if she knew then what she knows now about the case, she would never have sentenced Troy to death.

I know that my love for my brother is not reason enough to take him off death row. It is not reason enough to stay his execution order.

Brother and sister, Troy and Kim Davis

But there is simply no evidence to suggest that Troy committed the crime. That’s why I am asking for help from NAACP members. You have come through for us before, and we need your help now more than ever.

This Monday, Sept. 19, the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles will meet to decide Troy’s fate. It is Troy’s last chance.

Please watch my video message to the NAACP, then tell the board to stay Troy’s execution order and grant him clemency, because there is simply too much doubt.

Hundreds of thousands of people have already spoken out in the name of justice for Troy. On behalf of my family, I’m asking you to please add your voice today, and help us save my brother’s life.

The NAACP, which issued this statement, and its national president, Ben Jealous, has been a leader in the campaign to stop the execution of Troy Davis, scheduled for this Wednesday, Sept. 21. Learn more at www.naacp.org.

The execution of Troy Davis: A mother’s story

by Martina Davis Correia as told to Jen Marlowe and Monifa Bandele

My son was six weeks old when I first brought him to meet his uncle, Troy Davis. You would have thought I gave Troy a gold bar. He was scared to hold my tiny baby. I literally had to just put De’Jaun in his arms and walk away. And he was like, “But he’s so little. Come get him, get him, get him.” I said, “No, you get him. You hold him.” It was such a magical moment, because it was like I was giving my brother this gift.

Mother and son, Martina and De’Jaun Correia

As a young child, De’Jaun didn’t understand that my brother, his uncle was incarcerated, much less slated for death. When the family was getting ready to leave after a visit, he’d say, “Come on, Troy, let’s go, let’s go!” But he couldn’t go with us, and my mom would say, “He’s in school. He can’t come. One day, he’ll come home with us.”

As De’Jaun grew older, I explained to him that his uncle was in prison. But I had not yet told him that Georgia planned to kill him. He confided in his uncle more than anyone else. When De’Jaun was 12 years old, it became clear to me that my son understood far more than I had realized.

Our dog, Egypt, had gotten out of the yard and had been hit by a car. We immediately brought Egypt to a vet who told us that the dog’s leg was broken in three places and would need extensive surgery to be repaired. If Egypt did not have the surgery, she would have to be put to sleep. The cost of the surgery was upwards of $10,000.

As I drove De’Jaun home, I wondered how in the world I would come up with $10,000. Putting Egypt down might be the only realistic possibility.

In the silence of the ride, De’Jaun turned to me and said, “Mom, are you going put my dog to sleep like they’re trying to put my Uncle Troy to sleep?”

I had to swallow this giant lump in my throat to hold back the tears. I didn’t know that he related the two things. That he knew they were trying to kill his Uncle Troy. And he knew about which method that they would use to kill him. At that point, I decided that if I had to pawn my car, I wasn’t going to be able to put our dog to sleep.

In addition to dealing with his uncle facing execution, carrying a full load of advanced placement classes in his high-school’s International Baccalaureate program, my son lives with the stress of me being critically ill. I have been battling stage-four breast cancer since De’Jaun was 6 years old. My original diagnosis was six months or less. That was over 10 years ago.

My brother, Troy Davis, is on death row for the 1989 tragic murder of Savannah police officer Mark MacPhail. On Aug. 19, MacPhail was gunned down while rushing to the rescue of a homeless man being pistol-whipped in the parking lot of a Greyhound bus station. The day after the murder, a man named Sylvester “Red” Coles told the police that Troy was the shooter. Troy, then 19 years old, was arrested and eventually convicted in 1991, primarily on the basis of eyewitness testimony.

There is no physical evidence linking Troy to the crime. The murder weapon was never recovered. Yet he was sentenced to death. He has been on death row for 20 years, despite the fact that the case against him has completely unraveled. In fact, seven of the nine non-police witnesses later recanted or changed their testimonies, many stating that police coercion and intimidation led to their initial implication of my brother. Several new witnesses have come forward and implicated Sylvester Coles as the shooter.

This is Troy’s fourth time facing execution. De’Jaun remembers the first execution date vividly. It was July 17, 2007. He was 13 years old. We went to go see Troy, and Troy wasn’t really worrying about himself. He was mostly worried about his family — about us. I was looking at my mother. She was praying, praying, praying. It was a lot of people constantly praying, constantly praying.

Troy gave each family member a duty. What did he task his young nephew? He told him, “Just continue to do good in school, do what’s right, pick the right friends, watch over the family, and just respect the family. Respect your mom, your grandmother, and your aunties. Do what you love and have a good profession.” The execution was stayed within 24 hours of being carried out. The next year, Troy came within 90 minutes of being executed.

De’Jaun Correia is counting on all of us to use the power of the people to free his Uncle Troy.

My son is wise beyond his years. He’ll say, “My uncle is not the only one going through this type of pain … a lot of people really want someone to hear their case but they don’t have the power and resources.” He knows that over 130 death row inmates have been exonerated, found innocent since 1973, demonstrating just how many innocent people are convicted and sentenced to death.

On March 28, 2011, the Supreme Court denied Troy’s final appeal, clearing the way for the state of Georgia to set a fourth execution date. Two weeks later, our mother passed away from “natural causes.” De’Jaun was the one who found her. She had just received a clean bill of health from her doctor the day before her death. I don’t think she could take another execution date. I believe she died of a broken heart.

Over the years support has grown. Amnesty International, NAACP, the ACLU, ColorOfChange.org, Bishop Desmond Tutu, President Jimmy Carter and many more have stood up for Troy.

There is #toomuchdoubt in my brother’s case: There’s no physical evidence; seven out of nine witnesses have recanted or changed their testimony; there’s evidence that suggests there may be another shooter. Click here for more details.

But still, last week, the state of Georgia decided to issue an execution date – Sept. 21.

We are turning up the truth, staying hopeful and vigilantly praying that Troy’s life won’t be ended on Sept. 21.

Last week, the state of Georgia decided to issue an execution date – Sept. 21. We are turning up the truth, staying hopeful and vigilantly praying that Troy’s life won’t be ended on Sept. 21.

Our supporters have launched a number of campaigns directing people to the many ways they can support Troy. Please join them for Troy, for me and for my son.

This story first appeared on MomsRising.org, where moms and people who love them go to change our world.

More ways you can help stop the execution of Troy Davis

Bombard the Georgia Board of Pardons and Parole and Gov. Deal with calls, faxes and emails TODAY

Tell them: “Stop the execution of Troy Davis! Grant him clemency!”

• Georgia Board of Pardons and Parole: phone (404) 656-5651, fax (404) 651-8502
• Gov. Nathan Deal: phone (404) 651-1776, fax (404) 657-7332, email georgia.governor@gov.state.ga.us, or use the web contact form at http://gov.state.ga.us/contact.shtml

Sign all the petitions

• Sign the NAACP petition
• Sign the NEW NAACP petition to District Attorney Larry Chisolm, asking him to withdraw his death warrant against Troy Davis
• Sign the Color of Change petition, also to DA Larry Chisolm
• Sign the Amnesty International petition
• Sign the International Action Center petition
• Sign the Change.org petition
• Sign the ACLU petition
• Sign the Faithful America petition

The growing range of scholars, world leaders and prominent figures who are also demanding justice – including former President Jimmy Carter, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, John Legend, R.E.M., Russell Simmons, Mia Farrow, Indigo Girls, a former governor of Texas and a former member of Congress from Georgia – is simply awe-inspiring.

In not much more than a week, more than 660,000 people signed petitions to stop the execution of Troy Davis, and more are still signing them. Call the Board of Pardons and Parole at (404) 656-5651 to tell them to stop the execution and grant clemency to Troy Davis. - Photo: Michael Schiffman

The outpouring of support you’ve shown for Troy Davis so far has been phenomenal – more than 660,000 of you have signed the petition for clemency and nearly 500 events have popped up in small towns and big cities alike all over the United States. Supporters from the U.K., France, Denmark, Brazil, Hong Kong, Australia and other countries have also joined in to lend their voices.

Find more ways to help stop the execution of Troy Davis and learn more about his case

• Troy Anthony Davis, his family’s website
• NAACP Too Much Doubt Campaign
• Amnesty International Too Much Doubt Campaign
• International Action Center Stop the Execution Campaign
• Educators for Troy ‘Teach Troy Davis’ Emergency Curriculum for Educators
• Georgians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty
• National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty
• Campaign to End the Death Penalty

Write to Troy

Send our brother Troy some love and light. Troy Anthony Davis, 41, has been on death row in Georgia for more than 19 years: Troy A. Davis, 657378, GDCP G-3-79, P.O. Box 3877, Jackson GA 30233.

Watch these videos to learn vitally important information about Troy’s case

This is the fourth time the state of Georgia has set a date to murder Troy Davis. The power of the people saved him the first three times. We can do it again. And this time, we can convince the Board of Pardons and Parole to grant him clemency, FREE TROY DAVIS and return him to the loving arms of his family!

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