Protests delay Troy Davis execution

Troy Davis

Sept. 23—Jubilant supporters of Troy Davis gathered tonight for a celebration on the steps of the Georgia State Capitol here.

They had been expecting to hold a death vigil for the Savannah man, believed innocent by many, who was convicted of killing a police officer in 1989.

Even though the U.S. Supreme Court had agreed to hear a motion of appeal on Sept. 29, the state of Georgia, in a highly irregular move, went ahead and issued an execution order for Sept. 23.

The Supreme Court intervened less than two hours before Davis was to be killed by lethal injection. However, if the Supreme Court justices decline to accept the case for review on Sept. 29, the stay will be lifted and Georgia will again set an execution date.

Nevertheless, Davis’s family, friends and death penalty opponents around the country savored the reprieve, sure that the hundreds of thousands of calls, letters and faxes to Georgia officials, as well as the many protests and rallies held not just in the U.S. but elsewhere in the world, had registered with the ruling political circles. The Davis case had become a lightning rod for mass discontent with the injustice system.

A growing number of well-known people—including former President Jimmy Carter, South African Bishop Desmond Tutu and Georgia Rep. John Lewis—made public statements condemning the death sentence given Davis. Meanwhile, grass-roots activists picketed Rainbow Medical Associates, the private company that provides the medical personnel who insert the intravenous lines for the lethal injection. Also, on what was scheduled to be Davis’s final day, mobile “die-ins” were staged at the State Office Building that houses the Georgia Pardons and Parole Board as well as at the State Capitol.

Numerous national media outlets have carried stories about the recanted testimony, the lack of any physical evidence, and the charges of police coercion and intimidation, all of which have made groups like Amnesty International express “overwhelming doubts” about the guilty verdict in the Davis case.

While joy was the prevailing emotion in Atlanta and for those gathered outside the prison in Jackson, Ga., everyone was all too aware that the struggle to save Troy Davis’s life and to abolish the racist and unfair death penalty continues.

For the latest information on how to help, go to www.gfadp.org.