"Georgia Pardons Board Denies Clemency for Death Row Inmate," is the title of Kim Severson's post at the New York Times.
Troy Davis, whose death row case ignited an international campaign to save his life, has lost what appeared to be his last attempt to avoid death by lethal injection on Wednesday.
Rejecting pleas by Mr. Davis’s lawyers that shaky witness testimony and a lack of physical evidence presented enough doubt about his guilt to spare him death, the Georgia State Board of Pardons and Paroles ruled on Tuesday morning that Mr. Davis, 42, should die for killing Mark MacPhail, an off-duty police officer, in a Savannah parking lot in 1989.
“He has had ample time to prove his innocence, and he is not innocent,” said Mr. MacPhail’s widow, Joan MacPhail-Harris. “We have laws in this land so that there is not chaos. We are not killing Troy because we want to. We’re trying to execute him because he was punished.”
She, Mr. MacPhail’s mother and the couple’s two grown children were tearful after the hearing on Monday, pleading exhaustion.
“I’m not for blood. I’m for justice,” said his mother, Anneliese MacPhail. “We have been through hell, my family.”
The case has been a slow and convoluted exercise in legal maneuvering and death penalty politics. It has included last-minute stays and a rare Supreme Court decision.
Because Georgia’s governor has no power to stay executions, the parole board was the last hope for Mr. Davis.
“I don’t see any avenues to the Supreme Court,” said Anne S. Emanuel, a law professor at Georgia State University who has formally reviewed the case and found it too weak to merit the death penalty. “There’s nothing else apparent.”
The last-ditch effort to spare Mr. Davis’s life produced a widespread reaction among people who believe there was too much doubt to execute him.
More than 630,000 letters asking the board to stay the execution were delivered by Amnesty International last Friday. The list of people asking that the Georgia parole board offer clemency included President Jimmy Carter, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, 51 members of Congress, entertainment figures like Cee Lo Green and death penalty supporters, including William S. Sessions, a former F.B.I. director.
On Friday, more than 3,000 people gathered at the Ebenezer Baptist Church, in the heart of Martin Luther King Jr.’s former neighborhood, for a prayer vigil and protest.
Bill Rankin writes, "Parole board denies clemency for Troy Davis," for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
The state Board of Pardons and Paroles on Tuesday denied clemency for Troy Anthony Davis after hearing pleas for mercy from Davis' family and calls for his execution by surviving relatives of a murdered Savannah police officer.
"I am utterly shocked and disappointed at the failure of our justice system at all levels to correct a miscarriage of justice," Brian Kammer, one of Davis' attorneys, said Tuesday after the decision was announced.
Davis' case has already taken more unexpected turns than just about any death-penalty case in Georgia history and his innocence claims have attracted international attention. Its resolution was postponed once again when the parole board late Monday announced it would not be making an immediate decision as to whether Davis should live or die.
Davis, 42, is scheduled to be put to death by lethal injection on Wednesday at 7 p.m. at the state prison in Jackson. He was sentenced to death for the 1989 murder of off-duty Savannah Police Officer Mark Allen MacPhail.
On Monday, Davis' lawyers said they believed they'd made their case that there is too much doubt in the case. But members of MacPhail's family expressed confidence the board would deny clemency.
After Davis' lawyers made their three-hour presentation, attorney Stephen Marsh emerged from the hearing and said, "We believe we have established substantial doubt in this case."
Earlier coverage of Troy Davis' case begins at the link.
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