ChickenBones: A Journal
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Witnesses were coerced. One was threatened with 10-12 years in jail if he didnt implicate Davis.
Another, Sylvester Redd Coles, was himself a suspect in the shooting. Coles had brandished a .38
earlier in the evening. He told the court hed thrown the gun away.
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Can Georgia Do Right?
Troy Davis seeks closure in the form of justice By David Morse
Is the legal system of the state of Georgia up to the task when the task is to rectify the flawed trial of a black man accused of killing a white police officer? The world is waiting to see if justice can prevail.
Fortunately, on Friday, October 24, the U.S. Court of Appeals for Georgias 11th Circuit issued a stay of execution that narrowly prevented accused cop killer Troy Davis from being put to death by lethal injection the following Monday.
This is the third stay of execution in a case that has attracted worldwide interest. Troy Anthony Davis is charged with the 1989 murder of police officer Mark Allen MacPhail. Davis has been in prison for 19 years, most of that time on death row.
Circumstances surrounding officer MacPhails death are murky. The violence erupted in a dimly-lit parking lot late at night when someone in a group of men opened fire with a .38 caliber pistol.
That someone, according to the lawyer prosecuting the case, was Troy Davis. But Davis, who was 20 at the time, was very likely framed.
In the absence of solid physical evidence, including a murder weapon (the gun was supposedly never found) witness testimony is especially crucial. However, most of the witnesses had been drinking, and once the shooting started, they were seeking cover.
Witnesses were coerced. One was threatened with 10-12 years in jail if he didnt implicate Davis. Another, Sylvester Redd Coles, was himself a suspect in the shooting. Coles had brandished a .38 earlier in the evening. He told the court hed thrown the gun away.
Key testimony came from a woman standing 160 feet away, looking at four black men scrambling about in a fracas that was over before it began. Pressured into identifying Davis at the trial, the woman called his defense that night said it was all lies. When that was reported to the court, the woman, Dorothy Ferrell, was arrested. Her lawyer told her she could be convicted of perjury and imprisoned for ten years.
She was a single mother of four, observes attorney Deirdre OConnor, director of Innocence Matters. She chose freedom over the truth. Another witness said he couldnt identify the shooter when questioned that night, and again a month later. Two years later, he confidently identified Davis as the murderer.
Of the nine witnesses who testified against Davis, seven have tried to recant. However, the recantations have been blocked for technical reasons.
Despite the shakiness of the case against Davis, the U.S. Supreme Court decided October 14, 2008 not to hear Daviss appeal. Justice John Paul Stevens, speaking for the minority, questioned the adequacy of Georgias appeal process. In another case involving Georgia, Stevens found particularly troubling Georgias track record with respect to cases involving black defendants and white victims.
The U.S. Supreme courts decision tossed Troy Daviss life back into the hands of Georgia, whose supreme court had already denied the appeal on procedural grounds.
Prosecution lawyer Spencer Lawton, who out-lawyered Daviss meager defense team in the original trial, continues to press for the death penalty. Lawton was recently interviewed by radio journalist Dori Smith, who asked him if the unusually high proportion of witnesses trying to recant did not perhaps undermine the credibility of the trial testimony.
On the contrary, Lawton responded. The high number made the recantations suspect. He called it too much of a coincidence, and asked rhetorically if you couldnt trust the witnesses then, how were you going to trust them later?
Lawton went on to suggest that the clamor raised on behalf of Troy Davis by public interest groups like ACLU, Amnesty International, and the Innocence Project is tantamount to a mob gathered outside jurors doors.
As for Daviss 19-year dance with death, Lawton says Cases like this cant drag on forever, he said. Everybody suffers, The family of the murdered police officer and even the defendant himself Troy Davis — are entitled to closure.
Closure for Troy Davis is to be death?
If Lawtons Alice in Wonderland logic seems outrageous, its the same logic that informed the Georgia Supreme Courts blinkered approach to the earlier appeal, when it allowed procedural gambits to override serious concern for justice.
It is the logic of the very mob that Lawton decries. One cant but ask, would the same mentality prevail if the accused were white
More is at stake here than one mans life. Even setting aside the ethical and philosophical questions surrounding capital punishment, the fact remains: If Troy Davis cannot receive a fair and impartial trial in Georgia, this raises serious questions about the states ability in this the twenty-first century to provide liberty and justice for all.
Troy Davis seeks closure in the form of justice. We all do. (c) David Morse 2008 David Morse is a journalist and human rights activist who has written extensively about Sudan. His web-site: www.david-morse.com.
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1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created
By Charles C. Mann
Im a big fan of Charles Manns previous book 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus, in which he provides a sweeping and provocative examination of North and South America prior to the arrival of Christopher Columbus. Its exhaustively researched but so wonderfully written that its anything but exhausting to read. With his follow-up, 1493, Mann has taken it to a new, truly global level. Building on the groundbreaking work of Alfred Crosby (author of The Columbian Exchange and, Im proud to say, a fellow Nantucketer), Mann has written nothing less than the story of our world: how a planet of what were once several autonomous continents is quickly becoming a single, globalized entity.
Mann not only talked to countless scientists and researchers; he visited the places he writes about, and as a consequence, the book has a marvelously wide-ranging yet personal feel as we follow Mann from one far-flung corner of the world to the next. And always, the prose is masterful. In telling the improbable story of how Spanish and Chinese cultures collided in the Philippines in the sixteenth century, he takes us to the island of Mindoro whose southern coast consists of a number of small bays, one next to another like tooth marks in an apple. We learn how the spread of malaria, the potato, tobacco, guano, rubber plants, and sugar cane have disrupted and convulsed the planet and will continue to do so until we are finally living on one integrated or at least close-to-integrated Earth. Whether or not the human instigators of all this remarkable change will survive the process they helped to initiate more than five hundred years ago remains, Mann suggests in this monumental and revelatory book, an open question.
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Migration, Labour Markets and the Rescue Industry
This book explodes several myths: that selling sex is completely different from any other kind of work, that migrants who sell sex are passive victims and that the multitude of people out to save them are without self-interest. Laura Agustín makes a passionate case against these stereotypes, arguing that the label ‘trafficked’ does not accurately describe migrants’ lives and that the ‘rescue industry’ serves to disempower them. Based on extensive research amongst both migrants who sell sex and social helpers, Sex at the Margins provides a radically different analysis. Frequently, says Agustin, migrants make rational choices to travel and work in the sex industry, and although they are treated like a marginalised group they form part of the dynamic global economy. Both powerful and controversial, this book is essential reading for all those who want to understand the increasingly important relationship between sex markets, migration and the desire for social justice. “Sex at the Margins rips apart distinctions between migrants, service work and sexual labour and reveals the utter complexity of the contemporary sex industry. This book is set to be a trailblazer in the study of sexuality.”Lisa Adkins, University of London
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The White Masters of the World
From The World and Africa, 1965
W. E. B. Du Bois Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization (Fletcher)
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posted 25 October 2008
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