Troy Davis
Troy Anthony Davis was a man convicted of and executed for the August 19, 1989, murder of police officer Mark MacPhail in Savannah, Georgia. MacPhail was working as a security guard at a Burger King restaurant and was intervening to defend a man being assaulted in a nearby parking lot when he was murdered. At Davis's 1991 trial, seven witnesses testified that they had seen him shoot MacPhail, and two others testified that Davis had confessed the murder to them. There were 34 witnesses who testified for the prosecution, and six others for the defense, including Davis. Although the murder weapon was not recovered, ballistic evidence presented at trial linked bullets recovered at or near the scene to those at another shooting in which Davis was also charged. He was convicted of murder and various lesser charges, including the earlier shooting, and was sentenced to death in August 1991.
Davis maintained his innocence up to his death. In the twenty years between his conviction and execution, Davis and his defenders secured support from the public, celebrities, and human rights groups. Amnesty International and other groups such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People took up Davis's cause. Prominent politicians and leaders, including former President Jimmy Carter, Rev. Al Sharpton, Pope Benedict XVI, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, former U.S. Congressman from Georgia and presidential candidate Bob Barr, and former FBI Director and judge William S. Sessions called upon the courts to grant Davis a new trial or evidentiary hearing. In July 2007, September 2008, and October 2008, execution dates were scheduled, but courts stayed each execution before they were to take place.
In 2009, the Supreme Court of the United States ordered the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Georgia to consider whether new evidence "that could not have been obtained at the time of trial clearly establishes innocence". The court held the evidentiary hearing in June 2010. The defense presented affidavits from seven of the nine trial witnesses whose original testimony had identified Davis as the murderer, but who it contended had changed or recanted their previous testimony. Some of these writings disavowed parts of prior testimony, or implicated Sylvester "Redd" Coles, who Davis contended was the actual triggerman. Evidence that Coles had confessed to the killing was excluded as hearsay because Coles was not subpoenaed by the defense to rebut it.
In an August 2010 decision, the court upheld the conviction. The court described defense efforts to upset the conviction as "largely smoke and mirrors" and found that several of the proffered affidavits were not recantations at all. Subsequent appeals, including to the Supreme Court, were rejected, and a fourth execution date was set for September 21, 2011. Nearly one million people signed petitions urging the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles to grant clemency. The Board denied clemency and, on September 21, it refused to reconsider its decision. After a last-minute appeal to the United States Supreme Court was denied, Davis was executed on September 21, 2011.
Events of August 18–23, 1989
The charges against Troy Davis arose from the shooting of Michael Cooper, the beating of Larry Young and the murder of Officer Mark MacPhail on August 18–19, 1989.On the evening of August 18, 1989, Davis attended a pool party in the Cloverdale neighborhood of Savannah, Georgia. As he left the party with his friend Daryl Collins, the occupants of a passing car yelled obscenities and began shooting at a gathering of neighborhood teenagers. A bullet was fired at the passing car and Michael Cooper, a passenger, was struck in the jaw. Davis and Collins then went to a pool hall on Oglethorpe Avenue in the Yamacraw Village section of Savannah.
Later that evening, Davis and Collins proceeded to the parking lot of a Burger King restaurant on Oglethorpe Avenue, not far from the pool hall. There they encountered Sylvester "Redd" Coles arguing with a homeless man, Larry Young, over alcohol.
At about 1:15 am on August 19, 1989, Mark MacPhail, an off-duty police officer who was working as a security guard at the Burger King, attempted to intervene in the pistol-whipping of Young at the parking lot. MacPhail was shot twice: once through the heart and once in the face. He did not draw his gun. Bullets and shell casings which were determined to have come from a.38-caliber pistol were retrieved from the crime scene. Witnesses to the shooting agreed that a man in a white shirt had struck Young and then shot MacPhail.
On August 19, Coles told Savannah Police he had seen Davis with a.38-caliber pistol, and that Davis had assaulted Young. The same evening, Davis drove to Atlanta with his sister. In the early morning of August 20, 1989, Savannah Police searched the Davis home and seized a pair of Davis's shorts, found in a clothes dryer and reportedly stained with blood. Davis's family began negotiating with police, motivated by concerns about his safety; local drug dealers were making death threats because the police dragnet seeking Davis had disrupted their business. On August 23, 1989, Davis returned to Savannah, surrendered himself to police and was charged with MacPhail's murder.
Background of Troy Davis
Davis was the eldest child of Korean War veteran Joseph Davis and hospital worker Virginia Davis. The couple divorced when Davis was very young, and Davis grew up with four siblings in the predominantly black, middle-class neighborhood of Cloverdale in Savannah, Georgia.Davis attended Windsor Forest High School, where one teacher described him as a poor student. He dropped out in his junior year so he could drive his disabled younger sister to her rehabilitation. Davis obtained his high-school equivalency diploma from Richard Arnold Education Center in 1987. A teacher noted that he attended school regularly but seemed to lack discipline. Davis's nickname at the time was "Rah," or "Rough as Hell," but some neighbors reported that it did not reflect his behavior; they described him as a "straight-up fellow" who acted as a big brother to local children.
In July 1988, Davis pleaded guilty to carrying a concealed weapon; he was fined $250 as part of a plea agreement in which a charge of possession of a gun with altered serial numbers was dropped.
In August 1988, Davis began work as a drill technician at a plant that manufactured railroad crossing gates. His boss commented that while Davis was a likeable and good worker who appeared to have positive life goals, his job attendance was poor; by Christmas 1988, he had stopped coming to work. Davis returned to the job twice in the following months but neither time remained for long.
Davis was a coach in the Savannah Police Athletic League and had signed up for service in the United States Marine Corps.
Background of Mark MacPhail
Mark Allen MacPhail Sr., was 27 years old at the time of his murder. He was the son of a U.S. Army colonel, was married, and was father to a two-year-old daughter and an infant son. He had joined the Savannah Police Department in 1986 following six years of military service as an Army Ranger. MacPhail had worked for three years as a regular patrol officer and in the summer of 1989 had applied to train as a mounted police officer.Hundreds of mourners, including county, state, and federal law enforcement officers, attended MacPhail's funeral at Trinity Lutheran Church in Savannah on August 22, 1989.
Trial and conviction
Pre-trial proceedings
On November 15, 1989, a grand jury indicted Davis for murder, assaulting Larry Young with a pistol, shooting Michael Cooper, obstructing MacPhail in performance of his duty and possession of a firearm during the commission of a crime. Davis pleaded not guilty in April 1990.In November 1990, the presiding judge excluded forensic evidence from the pair of shorts seized at the Davis home. The judge ruled that Davis's mother did "not freely and voluntarily grant the police the right to search her home." She had testified that police officers had threatened to break down her door unless she let them into her home. The Georgia Supreme Court upheld the exclusion of the evidence in May 1991, saying that the police should have obtained a search warrant.
Davis was brought to trial in August 1991.
Prosecution case
The prosecution claimed that Davis had shot Cooper in Cloverdale, then met up with Redd Coles at a pool hall, pistol-whipped the homeless man Larry Young in the parking lot, and then killed Mark MacPhail.The prosecution called three eyewitnesses to the shooting of Cooper:
- Cooper testified that he was intoxicated at the time he was shot, and that although Davis was one of the people Cooper had quarrelled with, he "don't know me well enough to shoot me."
- Benjamin Gordon stated that the man who had shot Cooper had been wearing a white Batman T-shirt and blue shorts. On cross-examination Gordon admitted he had not seen the person who shot Cooper and stated that he did not know Davis.
- Daryl Collins made a statement to police on August 19, 1989, that he had seen Davis shoot at the car in which Cooper was travelling. However, on cross-examination at trial, Collins denied having seen Davis carrying or shooting a gun on the night in question. Collins, who was 16 at the time he made the initial statement, claimed police officers had told him he would be imprisoned if he refused to co-operate with the investigation.
- Antoine Williams testified that Davis, wearing a white shirt, had struck Young and then shot MacPhail.
- Harriet Murray and Dorothy Ferrell testified that Davis, wearing a white shirt, had struck Young and shot MacPhail. They testified Davis shot MacPhail again after he fell to the ground wounded.
- Coles testified that Davis, wearing a white shirt, had shot MacPhail. Coles admitted arguing with Young but claimed it was Davis who had hit him with a pistol. On cross-examination, Coles admitted that he owned a.38-caliber pistol but testified he had given it to another man earlier on the night in question.
- Air Force personnel Robert Grizzard, Steven Sanders, and Daniel Kinsman were also called by the prosecution. Sanders identified Davis as MacPhail's murderer. Grizzard and Kinsman stated they could not identify the gunman. Kinsman also testified that the shooter was left-handed, but Davis was right-handed.
- Daryl Collins claimed in a police statement to have seen Davis approach MacPhail. However, as with the Cooper shooting claims, Collins retracted the statement on cross-examination.
- Larry Young identified Davis as the man who hit him and then shot MacPhail. He could not remember the attacker's physical appearance, but identified Davis by the clothes he was wearing on the night.
- Jeffrey Sapp was a neighbor of the Davis family. He testified that Davis confessed to him soon after the murder.
- Kevin McQueen was an acquaintance of Davis who had been held at Chatham County Jail at the same time as Davis. McQueen claimed that Davis had admitted to being involved in the "exchange of gunfire" in which Cooper was shot and to have shot MacPhail because he was "paranoid...they'd seen him that night in Cloverdale."
In total, thirty five witnesses testified at trial for the prosecution.
The prosecution did not produce a weapon as evidence. A ballistics expert testified that the.38-caliber bullet that killed MacPhail could have been fired from the same gun that wounded Cooper. He also stated that he was confident that.38 casings found at Cloverdale matched bullet casings found near the scene of MacPhail's shooting.