In the split-second eternity when the needle connected with his arm, Troy Davis may have appreciated at last what happened to Mark MacPhail.
Perhaps Davis finally realized what death is: He wouldn’t be here to see the news about his own execution.
Davis died a humane death with loved ones nearby. But because he was black, his victim white (an off-duty police officer, no less, trying to make some extra money as a security guard) and because he had lots of celebrities backing him, Davis’ case was celebrated.
Kind of like Stanley ‘Tookie’ Williams. Remember him?
A founding member of the Crips street gang, Williams was convicted of killing four people while robbing a convenience store and a motel in 1979. Williams claimed he was innocent. He also claimed he had been redeemed in prison. (How could he be redeemed if he wasn’t guilty?) He was nominated for the Nobel peace prize, wrote some children’s books about gangs, and fought for more than two decades to get off Death Row. His attorneys sought a stay of execution based on new accounts from witnesses. Celebrities including Jamie Foxx and Mike Farrell and Jessie Jackson held a vigil outside San Quentin prison. Joan Baez sang “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.”
And, naturally, after Williams was declared dead there were shouts of “The state of California just killed an innocent man!”
These cases follow a template. In the past few years, witness recantation has become a popular feature. When all of the appeals have run out and years (decades even) have elapsed, witnesses are revisited: Are you sure you saw what you thought you saw? Are you sure? Are you sure? Are you sure? You could save a man’s life if … .
Had Williams’ life been spared, we would now be reading about efforts to win his release from prison. Likewise, had Davis’ life been spared, his attorneys’ ultimate goal would have been his release.
The public knows this, and that’s one reason why they support the death penalty. The other reason is the natural human desire for justice.
In European countries that don’t have capital punishment, polls show a majority of the citizens support it. Politicians and judges in those countries don’t have to worry about the citizens taking matters into their own hands through the initiative process, which the U.S. has in most states (including Oregon).
Politicians and judges don’t have a strong desire for capital punishment because they and their families don’t fit the profile of most murder victims. Nor do they have to live in neighborhoods ruled by the Crips or home to guys like Troy Davis.
If you want to understand why so many Americans still favor the death penalty, try working the night shift in a convenience store. Or the night desk at a motel. Or walk a security patrol after the sun goes down. Work any job that could bring you into contact with someone like Williams or Davis. Which would you fear more – ending up on Death Row or ending up dead?
“Long Live Tookie Williams!” his supporters shouted outside San Quentin after he died.
“Long Live Troy Davis,” his supporters’ signs read in a tribute to him after his execution.
If it’s any consolation to those supporters, Williams’ spirit lives on, even here in Portland, Ore. The Crips are mentioned often when the city has still another gang-related shooting.
And there will certainly be another Troy Davis ready to make the news with a pistol whipping and a shooting.
– Pamela Fitzsimmons
Related:
I don’t see any commonality between Williams and Davis, except skin color. Williams was guilty beyond reasonable doubt and it was not denied. There were no recanting witnesses. His claim to get off death row was that he was rehabilitated.
Troy Davis case involves reasonable doubt as to guilt and conviction. He denied his guilt to the end. His case involved more than just recanting witnesses. He made no claim of rehabilitation.
Ironically both cases serve to support (Williams) and oppose (Davis) the death penalty.
Death penalty is an appropriate penalty when its imposition involves facts beyond reasonable doubt at time of trial and at the imposition of the penalty.
Larry, thanks for the comment. I read your blog so I understand why you believe the way you do.
The commonality I see in Troy Davis and Tookie Williams was how the cases evolved into causes celebres, and the details of the crimes faded into the background.
I have come to seriously distrust the media’s coverage of celebrated death penalty cases. Emotion and death-penalty opponents take over. You have to dig back into the history of the Davis case, but there were other witnesses, and more credible ones (including an Air Force officer) who did not recant. Some of the witnesses who recanted are now in prison; others were subjected to community and peer pressure, including the black victim of the pistol-whipping that preceded the shooting.
Did you by any chance see Charles Lane’s column in the Washington Post? He touches on some of this, as well as some of the issues you raise.
Pamela
Davis’ murder was witnessed not by 9 witnesses (of whom the defense claims 6 recanted) but 34.
Davis had shot another man with the same gun earlier that day so that definitely qualifies as physical evidence.
When given the chance to call the two key witnesses 20 years after McPhail was murdered for trying to stop the pistol whipping of a homeless man, the defense chose not to call them, clearly afraid their testimony could not bear cross-examination.
And even in his last moments, well-schooled by lawyers, Davis told the McPhail family, “I am not PERSONALLY responsible for your son’s death.”
What the hell does THAT mean if you are factually innocent?
Troy Davis & The Innocent Frauds of the anti death penalty lobby
Dudley Sharp
The Troy Davis campaign, like many before it (1), is a simple, blatant fraud, easily uncovered by the most basic of fact checking (1).
The case for Davis’ guilt is overwhelming, just as were his due process protections, which may have surpassed that of all but a very few death row inmates.
The 2010 federal court innocence hearing found:
” . . . Mr. Davis is not innocent: the evidence produced at the hearing on the merits of Mr. Davis’s claim of actual innocence and a complete review of the record in this case does not require the reversal of the jury’s judgment that Troy Anthony Davis murdered City of Savannah Police Officer Mark Allen MacPhail on August 19, 1989.” (2)
“Ultimately, while Mr. Davis’s new evidence casts some additional, minimal doubt on his conviction, it is largely smoke and mirrors.” (2)
“As a body, this evidence does not change the balance of proof that was presented at Mr.
Davis’s trial.”(2)
“The vast majority of the evidence at trial remains intact, and the new evidence is largely not credible or lacking in probative value.” (2)
None of this came as a surprise to anyone who actually followed the case, in contrast to the Save Troy Davis folks who were, willingly, duped.
1) a) “Troy Davis: Worldwide anti death penalty deceptions, rightly, failed”,
http://homicidesurvivors.com/2011/09/25/troy-davis-worldwide-anti-death-penalty-deceptions-rightly-failed.aspx
b) “Troy Davis fairly convicted, not ‘railroaded’ ”
http://savannahnow.com/column/2011-10-06/column-spencer-lawton-troy-davis-fairly-convicted-not-railroaded
2) “Innocence Hearing”, ordered by the US Supreme Court, US DISTRICT COURT, in the SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF GEORGIA, SAVANNAH DIV.,RE TROY ANTHONY DAVIS, CASE NO. CV409-130
http://multimedia.savannahnow.com/media/pdfs/DavisRuling082410.pdf
Pamela:
Thank you very much.
So true that the Save Tookie and Save Davis efforts were so similar, from the blantant deceptions of the cause celebre circus – disgusting and expected.
The Tookie Williams” Redemption? No, Contempt.
Dudley Sharp
1. “Tookie’s Tales”, Debra Saunders, San Francisco Chronicle, 12/1/05
“LIES SO pervade the campaign waged to “save” convicted killer Stanley Tookie Williams that Williams and company don’t even bother to cover their tracks when they say things they know aren’t true. ”
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/12/01/EDG5TG04SF1.DTL
2. Martyrdom?, Townhall, John Leo, 12/19/05
“So much attention to the murderer, almost none for those he killed. So let�s remember them here: Albert Owens, a veteran and father of two young girls, shot at a 7-11, and three member of an Asian-American family who ran the Brookhaven Motel-Yen-I Yang, Tsai-Shai Yang and Yee-Chen Lin. In a rare bit of commentary, William John Hagan of Canada Free Press wrote: ‘The mainstream media has ignored the realities of the Williams case in order to promote an anti-death-penalty agenda. To present this mass murderer as a martyr is an insult to victims everywhere.’ �
http://www.townhall.com/opinion/columns/johnleo/2005/12/19/179573.html
3. “Response to Stanley Williams’ Petition for Executive Clemency “, Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office, 11/16/05
http://www.lacountyda.org/pdf/swilliams.pdf
4. Who is Stanley “Tookie” Williams?, Know Gangs
“Williams might regret his past, there is no act that will make up for the damage Williams has done and the devastation he has caused. Why not find a better role model for our children?” http://www.knowgangs.com/blog/tookie.htm
5. “He’s a murderer. He should die.”, Joshua Marquis, Los Angeles Times, 12/4/05
“Not only did (Williams) brag to his brother about the dying anguish of Owens, but after slaughtering the Yang family, he boasted to fellow gang members he had killed “some buddhaheads.”
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/sunday/editorials/la-op-tookieexecute4dec04,0,1229497,print.story?coll=la-home-sunday-opinion
Marquis is the district attorney of Clatsop County, Ore., vice president of the National District Attorneys Assn. and coauthor of “Debating the Death Penalty.” http://joshmarquis.blogspot.com
6. “Crime and punishment”, David Reinhard, The Oregonian, 12/1/05
“(Williams) broke down the door at the Brookhaven Motel. . . shot Yen-I Yang and his wife, Tsai-Shai Yang, the hotel owners, and her daughter Yee-Chen Lin, who was visiting from Taiwan.” “Yen-I Yang and Tsai-Shai Yang left six children and 10 grandchildren. Yee-Chen Lin left behind three children in Taiwan.”
http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/david_reinhard/index.ssf?/base/editorial/1133398513323040.xml&coll=7
7. “Misplaced Sympathy for Killers”, Jeff Jacoby, Boston Globe, 12/7/05
“(Williams) shot each of (the 4 murder vicitms) at close range with a 12-gauge shotgun, shattering their bodies so that they died in agony. Their suffering amused him. ”You should have heard the way he sounded when I shot him,’ ‘Williams then made gurgling or growling noises and laughed hysterically about Owens’s death.’ ”
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2005/12/07/misplaced_sympathy_for_killers/
8. CALLing out �Tookie� Williams, Dan Tierney, The Daily Cardinal (U of Wisxonsin-Madison), 11/17/05
http://www.dailycardinal.com/article.php?storyid=1027735
9. “If death penalty is law, this execution must stand”, By Rubel Shelly, The Tennessean, 12/11/05
http://www.tennessean.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20051211/NEWS03/512110400/1017/NEWS
10. “DEATH-ROW CELEBRITY HAS DIRECT LINK TO THIS CITY’S ILLS”, Gregory Kane, BALTIMORE SUN, 12/10/05
“So (Williams) still clings to the gang-banger’s code of not snitching. That doesn’t sound like “redemption” to me. That sounds like Williams has been conning a lot of people for a lot of years.”
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/local/bal-md.kane10dec10,1,7022888,print.column?coll=bal-local-columnists
11. “California should speed execution process”, Reuters 12/6/05 http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=domesticNews&storyID=2005-12-06T224034Z_01_KNE681576_RTRUKOC_0_US-CRIME-EXECUTION-CALIFORNIA.xml&archived=False
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