Sept. 21
USA:
US death penalty opponents mark Davis anniversary
US death penalty opponents called for an investigation into "growing concerns"
about police and prosecutor misconduct on the one-year anniversary of the
controversial execution of Troy Davis.
Amnesty International and the National Association for the Advancement of
Colored People (NAACP) urged the Justice Department to investigate mounting
evidence of botched trials leading to capital punishment.
"Troy was executed despite a mountain of doubt about his conviction and
allegations that witnesses were coerced by police," Amnesty's executive
director Suzanne Nossel said in a statement Thursday.
"A year later, the stain of injustice continues to spread, with the death
penalty used despite substantial concerns over prosecutorial overreach,
wrongful conviction or misapplication of the law.
"The federal government must take action as case after case corrodes the
credibility of US criminal justice."
Davis was executed on September 21, 2011, for a 1991 murder conviction despite
a lack of physical evidence tying him to the crime and the resulting reliance
on eyewitness testimony, much of which was later changed or recanted.
Former US president Jimmy Carter, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Pope Benedict XVI
had all weighed in on his behalf in a racially charged case that spanned two
decades, becoming a cause celebre for death penalty opponents.
NAACP head Benjamin Todd Jealous said Davis's "memory lives on with us and
fuels our fight to abolish the death penalty."
Davis was convicted of killing policeman Mark MacPhail, who was shot in the
heart and the head as he intervened in an argument in a Burger King parking
lot. MacPhail's widow supported the execution and attended it in person.
But Kimberly Davis, Troy's sister, has called on Georgia to again examine the
case, saying that "justice has not been served."
According to Amnesty, 140 people have been released from death row since 1973
due to evidence of wrongful conviction.
Amnesty has recently sought to focus attention on the case of Reggie Clemons, a
black man on death row for the murder of two white women, who told a judge
Wednesday that he had been beaten by police during questioning.
Amnesty said the Clemons case bears "many striking similarities" to the Davis
case, with "serious concerns" raised about the fairness of his conviction.
(source: Agence France-Presse)
ARKANSAS:
Ex-Death Row Inmate Says How He Really Feels About The Death Penalty
One of the West Memphis 3 - a trio of men convicted of murders they say they
didn't commit - is speaking out about his experience as an innocent man on
death row.
Damien Echols took to Reddit Thursday to talk about getting out of prison after
receiving the death penalty on the website's popular Ask Me Anything threads.
He tweeted verification from his personal Twitter account that it was actually
him answering the questions.
He was of course asked how he feels about the death penalty, having narrowly
escaped it.
"When I hear people talk about it, I always wonder if women who have had an
abortion feel the same way whenever they hear people who have never had to go
through it expressing their opinions on the matter," Echols wrote. "It's not as
black and white or cut and dry as either side tries to portray it, but all in
all I would have to say that I'm against it."
But his most powerful answer came in response to a question about relationships
between death row inmates.
There is "a sense of solidarity on death row that you don't have anywhere else
in the prison just because you have a common enemy," Echols wrote on Reddit.
"You don't have time to fight amongst yourselves when you're fighting against
the people who are trying to put you to death."
(source: Business Insider)
GEORGIA:
Tracen Franklin death penalty jury reports 10-2 deadlock in Bobby Tillman case
Jurors deciding the verdict in a death penalty case told the judge they are
deadlocked 10-2 Friday morning. The judge has ordered them to keep
deliberating.
The jurors are deciding whether to send 20-year-old Tracen Franklin to
Georgia's death row. The same jury convicted Franklin last week for the murder
of 18-year-old Bobby Tillman. Franklin was 1 of 4 teens accused of beating
Tillman to death during a house party in Douglasville in November 2010.
The jury began deliberating late Tuesday, and talked for roughly 11 hours.
In a note sent to Superior Court Judge William McClain, the jury foreman cited
"mounting frustration" and said the jury was "unable to come to a unanimous
decision ... due to the effort to respect individual decisions."
McClain called the jury into the courtroom to read what he called a "modified
Allen charge" to the jury. The Allen charge is frequently read to deadlocked
juries deciding verdicts; it's an admonishment that the jury has a "duty" to
reach a decision.
However, in this case, the jury has to option to not decide; if the jury cannot
decide, it removes the death penalty as an option. The judge in the case would
decide between a sentence of life with the possibility of parole, or life
without parole.
Over the objections of defense attorney Bruce Harvey, McClain told jurors they
have an "obligation" to reach a decision "if you can." He said he would return
them to the jury room "for a reasonable time" to try to make a decision.
"If you can't, let me know," McClain told the jury.
(source: 11Alive News)
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