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My
Brother on Death Row
Troy Davis’ sister speaks
out
In These Times, 24 July 2009
By Alice Kim
For now, at
least, Georgia death row prisoner Troy Davis is safe from execution.
When the Supreme Court reconvenes in September, it will decide whether
to hear his request for habeas corpus. Davis, an African-American, was
convicted of the 1989 shooting and killing of white off-duty police
officer Mark Allen MacPhail in a Burger King parking lot in Savannah,
Ga. The conviction was based solely on the testimony of nine
eyewitnesses seven of whom have now recanted or contradicted their
original statements. Some have even signed affidavits saying that police
coerced them into pointing the finger at Davis. The primary witness,
Sylvester Coles, is now suspected of committing the murder himself.
Martina Correia, Davis’ sister, has led an international campaign to
save her brother’s life and prove his innocence. South African
Archbishop Desmond Tutu and former President Jimmy Carter have publicly
expressed their support for Davis.
Even as Correia faces her own personal battle with breast cancer, she
continues to fight to win justice for Davis.
You are calling on Chatham County District Attorney Larry Chisolm to
reopen Troy’s case. What are the grounds for a new trial?
Some of the original trial witnesses have recanted, and nine new
witnesses have said they either witnessed the murder or heard one of the
original eyewitnesses confess to the murder. The prosecution’s whole
case against Troy has fallen apart. They have one primary eyewitness
left, Steve Sanders, who on the night of the crime couldn’t identify the
shooter and two weeks later, two months later, couldn’t identify the
shooter. But he came to court and identified Troy. There’s no blood, no
physical evidence, no DNA. We can’t kill this man because everything we
used to convict him doesn’t exist.
Why has Troy’s case garnered such widespread attention and support?
You have people on both sides of the death penalty debate on the same
side for a change, saying that we cannot execute the innocent. These
people are willing to put their name on a document and say we need to
stop, rewind and give this man a new trial, because this is not a case
about black and white. This is a case about the truth. It does not make
any sense to deny Troy a hearing based on the evidence, when this state
has got millions of dollars to try to kill Troy with no actual evidence.
Rep. Bob Barr (R-Ga.) says that the Anti-Terrorism and Effective
Death Penalty Act of 1996, a piece of legislation he helped to write
when he was in the House of Representatives, has been misinterpreted by
the courts. What role did this act have on Troy’s case?
It says you have one year from conviction to bring forth information
about your actual innocence. The law was enacted in 1996, but President
Bill Clinton made it retroactive 10 years, which is against
international human rights law.
Troy didn’t have a lawyer from 1991 to 1996. When he was able to obtain
a lawyer through the Georgia Resource Center, they didn’t have the funds
to properly defend him. When they were getting their witnesses’
statements in the late 1990s and early 2000s, they realized, “We
actually have an innocent person here.” They went to the courts and
after every affidavit they got, the courts said, “Oh, we don’t have to
listen to that, because you should have brought it up in 1992.” Well, we
couldn’t bring it up, and why should that law apply if it wasn’t in
effect until 1996?
What were the factors that led to Troy’s conviction? Was there
prosecutorial or police misconduct?
Both were involved, and there was a media frenzy to hang Troy. We have
one newspaper in the city and three television stations, and all the
stations promoted were the prosecution’s statements from court.
The police terrify that black community ride around with shotguns and
everything else. So nobody knew what was going on. The prosecutor didn’t
have anything. The police didn’t have anything until [Sylvester] Coles
went in. Coles was the only one who testified he had heard the shot.
Troy never had a weapon. Coles threw his weapon away and they never made
him produce it. The ballistics report from 1989 said that it was
negative for Troy’s fingerprints, negative for everything. Yet the
prosecutors said in open court that they had a ballistics report that
linked Troy to the crime.
Do you think Obama will pardon Troy?
No. Because he only pardons at the federal level, so there is no
jurisdiction there. But that doesn’t mean that Obama doesn’t have
influence. I wish he would intervene. We have been sending letters and
sending letters, but Obama hasn’t said anything about Troy’s case. And I
can’t believe he doesn’t know about it.
You’ve worked with Amnesty International and other anti-death penalty
organizations. How have you been able to build such widespread support
for Troy?
I was persistent. People thought I was lying or biased because I was
Troy’s sister. But I kept showing people court transcripts and
documents, and I was able convince the Amnesty International Secretary
General to do a special report on the case. I had Troy’s lawyer send
over his court transcripts to a special investigator in the U.K., and
this legal expert took about three months to go over Troy’s case line by
line, item by item. They wrote a 35-page report, and when the report hit
the Internet in February of 2007, everything hit the fan. People could
not believe that they were trying to kill Troy with this kind of
evidence. If we had the power of Internet 10 years ago, my brother would
probably be free right now.
What other factors have been critical in building a loud and vocal
movement to save Troy’s life?
Grassroots efforts. Getting the message to the people not to all the
big organizations, but talking to the people who care about human
rights, human kindness and dignity, and educating them about the whole
system. Then people were willing to spread the knowledge and tell Troy’s
story. I challenged them: “Go find the information for yourself.” And
that’s what people did.
You have faced a personal battle with breast cancer. It’s not unusual
for you to be in chemo one day and flying across the country to speak at
a conference the next day. How do you keep going?
I have a strong faith in God and in family. If I have to sacrifice
myself or my health to make sure that my brother is free, then I’m
willing to do that.
And I live in a place where we don’t just have racism, we have classism
and all other kinds of -isms. People tell me all the time, “Oh, Savannah
is such a beautiful place.” But you don’t have to live here in my skin.
As long as you don’t cross certain lines, everything is fine. People
think Savannah has evolved. But those same trees with the moss on them
that are so beautiful to look at if those trees could talk they would
tell you a whole different story.
It doesn’t make any sense for me to see little black and Hispanic boys,
lined up on a street corner with people searching their pockets just
because they’re standing there. When police cars pull up in the park,
little boys are so afraid that they just take off running. Then when
they shoot one of those boys in the back, it’s always justified.
I’m standing up for a whole lot of Troy Davises. Not just people on
Death Row, but people who cannot fight the system, because those are the
people that they target. They target people who don’t have power to
fight back.
What kind of transformation have you seen in Troy over the last 18
years, and how has he been able to maintain his spirit and his strength?
Troy has always been a good person, a good spirit, a good aura. When you
walk into a room with Troy and he smiles, it just lights up your spirit.
He has no hatred toward anybody because he believes that in order for
God to help him, he can’t harbor ill will toward the people who wrong
him.
Troy has a strong sense of family. He has a lot of friends, people from
all faiths and religions visiting him, prisoners and guards giving him
encouragement. Yet he still knows there’s an underlying thing that the
state of Georgia wants to kill him. But you know what, we can’t live in
fear. And so we have to keep fighting, keep pushing and keep doing
whatever we can. Troy through his letters and cards and pictures that
people send him from all around the world is able to travel in his
imagination. That’s a powerful thing, for people who have never met you
and who you may never see to stand up for you.
Alice
Kim serves on the
board of directors for the Campaign to End the Death Penalty and is
co-editor of its national newsletter, The New Abolitionist. She
is also the director of The Public Square at the Illinois Humanities
Council.
http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/4554/my_brother_on_death_row/
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