Byron Spellman, 16, left, Robert Coleman, 15, center, and Elijah West, 16, right, are a few of the local Savannah teens who stood in front of a crowd Saturday at Sacred Heart Church wearing T-shirts implying they are Troy Davis. They wanted to represent to the community that Davis's situation could happen to anyone at any age and that they could have just as easily been Troy Davis. One speaker said that people are walking around Savannah at this very moment without a care in the world and turning their heads to this situation, and they will continue to do so until it is their own loved one whose fate will be decided by an unjust system. Hunter McRae/Savannah Morning News
Time running out for Davis
1A | Intown | Local NewsAt 9 a.m. Monday, Troy Anthony Davis' attorneys will have their last chance to plead for his life.
Barring a favorable action by the five-member Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles, Davis is scheduled to die by lethal injection at 7 p.m. Tuesday.
It's down to that.
Friday night, Chatham County Superior Court Judge Penny Haas Freesemann rejected Davis' extraordinary motion for a new trial as insufficient to meet requirements for a hearing.
She also denied Davis' motion for a stay of execution.
Parole board members will meet privately with Davis' attorneys and supporters behind closed doors.
In a separate afternoon session starting at 1 p.m., those who oppose clemency similarly will meet with the board.
The options
Board members can deny clemency, or they can commute the death sentence to life or life without parole.
Their decision will end almost 16 years of appeals in the Aug. 19, 1989, fatal shooting of Savannah police officer Mark Allen MacPhail, 27.
Whichever way the decision goes, it will not erase the guilty verdict of a Chatham County Superior Court jury on Aug. 28, 1991.
In a filing with the board Friday, attorneys for Davis - Jay Ewart and Danielle Garten of Washington - listed 10 witnesses they plan to have speak for Davis. The list includes his sister, Martina Correia, and their mother, Virginia Davis.
The list also includes U.S. Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., who is from Atlanta, and fellow civil rights leader the Rev. Joseph Lowery.
Six others, including three from Amnesty International, also plan to attend, the attorneys said.
Chatham County District Attorney Spencer Lawton Jr. and his chief assistant, David Lock; MacPhail's widow, Joan; a group of family members, and retired Police Chief David Gellatly are expected to be in the afternoon group.
Also expected to appear in the afternoon session are the Savnnah-Chatham Metropolitan Police Department's Maj. Everette Ragan and Lt. Greg Ramsey.
Lawton and Lock prosecuted Davis; Ramsey was the lead detective.
What happened
MacPhail, working off-duty security at the Greyhound Bus Terminal at Oglethorpe Avenue and Fahm Street in 1989, was gunned down as he tried to help a man being pistol-whipped.
When the U.S. Supreme Court refused to review the case June 25, it seemingly ended Davis' appellate challenges.
But on Monday, attorneys for Davis filed an extraordinary motion for new trial and a motion to stay the execution in Superior Court.
The next day, local prosecutors challenged the filing as an unfounded, 11th-hour effort to delay the execution, and they were upheld.
The execution
If Troy Anthony Davis is executed Tuesday, he will be the 40th man executed in Georgia since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstituted the death penalty in 1973. He will be the 18th inmate put to death by lethal injection.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment