On September 21, Troy Davis was executed at the state prison in Jackson, GA. Davis was arrested on suspicion of murder of a police officer, Mark MacPhail at a Burger King in Savannah, GA in 1989, and was sentenced to death in 1991.
However, he kept denying the crime of killing a police officer consistently for 22 years. According to The Guardian, British national daily newspaper interviewing with Thomas Ruffin, Davis’ lawyer, 7 out of 9 witnesses who pegged him as the criminal, changed their witnesses. Ruffle mentioned that one of the witnesses said the one who shot the police was not Davis, but a man named Sylvester Coles. Another witness witnessed that he heard Coles saying “I killed MacPhail, but Davis was accused wrongly” three times.
In this situation, Davis’ execution had delayed for three times. Millions of people signed on the petition, filed by Amnesty International to appeal for his innocence, and Pope Benedict XVI, Jimmy Carter, former U.S. President, and Archbishop Desmond Tutu, a Nobel Peace Prize winner campaigned to save his life. There were massive demonstrations as well, but the U.S. Supreme Court did not change their judgment.
Davis insisted on his innocence until before the poison injected. Also on the scaffold, he was sorry for the MacPhail family’s loss but said he was not personally responsible for the death of their son, father and brother. Also, Davis told the prison staff, "May God have mercy on your souls. May God bless your souls."
This execution has served as a momentum for abolishment of death penalty. After the execution, Michael Moore, a famous documentary director, declared the boycott against the state Georgia, and Amnesty International also supported abolishing the death penalty.
What do you think about the death penalty of Mr. Davis? Do you think that he deserved to be put to death? or was it just wrong?
Mark Davis was one of my examples for my paper on the death penalty. Are people really sure when they accuse a person of committing a harsh crime as this? They have to be sure on their facts when it comes to someone life. They might be innocent. Yes, they had witnesses saying that it was not Mark Davis who killed the police officer. If someone stays to their story after twenty two years would you not think that they might be telling the truth? Why would you play the role of God when it comes to this? I don’t get it. I personal y think Mark Davis was innocent!!!!
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