Troy Davis execution set to go ahead as judge rejects last-minute appeal

Georgia supreme court refuses to halt lethal injection despite overwhelming evidence that murder conviction is unreliable • Ten reasons why Troy Davis should not be executed • Ed Pilkington tweets from the prison in Jackson Death row inmate Troy Davis’s hopes of a last-minute reprieve were fading after Georgia courts refused to halt the execution scheduled for 7pm local time on Wednesday. The state’s supreme court rejected a last-ditch appeal by Davis’s lawyers over the 1989 murder of off-duty policeman Mark MacPhail, despite overwhelming evidence that the conviction is unreliable. Earlier, a Butts County superior court judge also declined to stop the execution. His attorneys had filed an appeal challenging ballistics evidence linking Davis to the crime, and eyewitness testimony identifying Davis as the killer. With less than an hour to go until the lethal injection is administered, Davis’s lawyers filed an appeal to the US supreme court, but few observers believe an intervention is likely. At the maximum security prison in Jackson where the execution is scheduled to take place, busloads of Troy Davis supporters from his home town of Savannah came in to register their anger and despair at what they all agree is the planned judicial killing of an innocent man. Edward Dubose, a leader of the Georgia branch of the NAACP, said it was not an execution, but a “murder”. The protest heard from Martina Correia, Davis’s eldest sister, who delivered a statement from about 20 family members gathered around her. She was heavily critical of what she described as the defiance of the state of Georgia and its inability to admit that it had made a mistake. She pointed out that the state’s parole board had vowed in 2007 that no execution would take place if there was any doubt. “Every year there is more and more doubt yet still the state pushes for an execution,” she said. Correia, who has cancer, struggled to her feet in honour of her brother, just a few hours from his probable death. But she exhorted people not to give up. “if you can get millions of people to stand up against this you can end the death penalty. We shouldn’t have to live in a state that executes people when there’s doubt.” Dubose gave an account of a 30-minute conversation he had with Davis on death row on Tuesday night. “Troy wanted me to let you know – keep the faith. The fight is bigger than him.” Dubose said that whether the execution went ahead or not, the fight would continue. He said Davis wants his case to set an example “that the death penalty in this country needs to end. They call it execution; we call it murder.” Hundreds of people gathered outside the prison many wearing t-shirts that said: “I am Troy Davis”. The activist Al Sharpton said: “What is facing execution tonight is not just the body of Troy Davis, but the spirit of due justice in the state of Georgia.” Larry Coz, the executive director of Amnesty in the US, that has led the international campaign for clemency, said demonstrations were happening outside US embassies in France, Mali, Hong Kong, Peru, Germany and the UK. “We will not stop fighting until we live in a world where no state thinks it can kill innocent people.” After winning three delays since 2007, Davis lost his most realistic chance at last-minute clemency this week when the Georgia pardons board denied his request despite serious doubts about his guilt. Some witnesses who testified against Davis at trial later recanted, and others who did not testify came forward to say another man did it. But a federal judge dismissed those accounts as “largely smoke and mirrors” after a hearing Davis was granted last year to argue for a new trial, which he did not win. Davis refused a last meal. He planned to spend his final hours meeting with friends, family and supporters. Davis has received support from hundreds of thousands of people, including a former FBI director, former president Jimmy Carter and Pope Benedict XVI. Some of his backers resorted to urging prison workers to strike or call in sick, and they considered a desperate appeal for White House intervention. And some of Davis’s supporters were considering whether to ask President Barack Obama to intervene, a move that legal experts said was unlikely. In Europe, where the planned execution has drawn widespread criticism, politicians and activists were making a last-minute appeal to the state of Georgia to refrain from executing Davis. Amnesty International and other groups planned a protest outside the US embassy in Paris later on Wednesday and Amnesty also called a vigil outside the embassy in London. Parliamentarians and government ministers from the Council of Europe, the EU’s human rights watchdog, called for Davis’s sentence to be commuted. Renate Wohlwend of the council’s parliamentary assembly said that “to carry out this irrevocable act now would be a terrible mistake which could lead to a tragic injustice”. The US supreme court gave him an unusual opportunity to prove his innocence last year, but his attorneys failed to convince a judge he didn’t do it. State and federal courts have repeatedly upheld his conviction. Prosecutors have no doubt they charged the right person, and MacPhail’s family lobbied the pardons board Monday to reject Davis’s clemency appeal. The board refused to stop the execution a day later. “He has had ample time to prove his innocence,” said MacPhail’s widow, Joan MacPhail-Harris. “And he is not innocent.” Spencer Lawton, the district attorney who secured Davis’s conviction in 1991, said he was embarrassed for the judicial system that the execution has taken so long. “What we have had is a manufactured appearance of doubt which has taken on the quality of legitimate doubt itself. And all of it is exquisitely unfair,” said Lawton, who retired as Chatham County’s head prosecutor in 2008. “The good news is we live in a civilized society where questions like this are decided based on fact in open and transparent courts of law, and not on street corners.” Davis supporters said they will push the pardons board to reconsider his case. They also asked Savannah prosecutors to block the execution, although Chatham County district attorney Larry Chisolm said in a statement he was powerless to withdraw an execution order for Davis issued by a state superior court judge. “We appreciate the outpouring of interest in this case; however, this matter is beyond our control,” Chisolm said. Troy Davis Georgia Capital punishment United States Human rights US supreme court Ed Pilkington guardian.co.uk

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