More than 1,000 family members and supporters have gathered in Georgia to say farewell to Troy Davis, who insisted even until his execution that he was innocent.
The Saturday funeral at Jonesville Baptist Church in Savannah opened with a slideshow of photos of Davis in his blue-trimmed prison uniform with his mother, sister and other family members. The service was still going on as it closed in on the three-hour mark.
Blue and white roses were placed on his casket because of his love for the Dallas Cowboys.
Speakers at the service included Davis' nephew and the Rev. Raphael Warnock of Atlanta, who served as a spiritual adviser to Davis on death row. Leaders from the NAACP and Amnesty International also attended.
After four years of extraordinary appeals, every court that examined Davis' case ultimately upheld his conviction and death sentence for the 1989 slaying of Savannah police officer Mark MacPhail, who was shot twice while trying to help a homeless man being attacked outside a bus station. MacPhail's family and prosecutors say they're still confident Davis was guilty.
Regardless, questions raised by Davis and his lawyers garnered support from thousands worldwide, including dignitaries such as former President Jimmy Carter and Pope Benedict XVI. The night Davis was executed, protests were held from Georgia to Washington, from Paris to Ghana.
During a call-and-response litany at the funeral, the congregation chanted in unison: "We pray to the Lord for our souls and the soul of Troy Davis, martyr and foot soldier."
"He transformed a prison sentence into a pulpit," the Rev. Raphael Warnock, pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, said in his eulogy Saturday. "He turned death row into a sanctuary."
Other than expressions of outrage at Davis' execution, there was little doom and gloom at his funeral. Warnock's congregation at Ebenezer, the church where Martin Luther King Jr. once preached, helped raise money for the 3 ½ hour service, which carried more than a hint of celebrity sheen.
Davis' closed casket was piled with a spray of blue and white flowers — a color scheme decoded by a close friend who mentioned his love of the Dallas Cowboys. Attendees each got a glossy, 22-page program filled with a scrapbook's worth of photos, many of Davis in his white prison garb posing with family members during weekend visits.
A song by the Billboard-charting gospel singer Dietrick Haddon got the crowd so excited that ushers walked the aisles stopping people from taking video and photos with their cell phones.
And the comedian and activist Dick Gregory, who joined the others in an impassioned call to end the death penalty, first brought people to their feet in laughter.
Gregory said he needed to apologize to Davis' family after the way he handled a recent phone call from a bill collector. "He said, 'Are you Dick Gregory?' And I said, 'I am Troy Davis!'"
He recalled Davis, the uncle who had been in prison his entire life, spending long hours with him on the phone helping with homework, particularly math. Davis-Correia, whose mother is Davis' older sister, said the family always knew when he had tests in school because Davis wrote them all down on his calendar, the same calendar he filled with the birthdays of all his friends and supporters. And he said his uncle would have wanted a note of celebration at his funeral.
"You really shouldn't be sad all the time, you should be happy and be positive," Davis-Correia said. "That's the attitude my uncle instilled in me."
Amnesty International, which worked for years to exonerate Davis, urged its supporters worldwide to remember him Saturday by wearing black armbands and "I am Troy Davis."
The advocacy group's U.S. director, Larry Cox, spoke from the dais behind Davis' casket Saturday urging those who fought to spare his life not to give up until America ends its use of the death penalty.
"If you thought you saw us fighting to save Troy Davis, now that we've been inspired by Troy Davis, you ain't seen nothing yet," Cox said.
Troy Anthony Davis, October 9, 1968 – September 21, 2011 was an American man convicted of and executed for the August 19, 1989, murder of police officer Mark MacPhail in Savannah, Georgia. MacPhail was working as a security guard at a Burger King restaurant when he intervened to defend a man being assaulted in a nearby parking lot. During Davis's 1991 trial, seven witnesses testified they had seen Davis shoot MacPhail, and two others testified that Davis had confessed the murder to them among 34 witnesses that testified for the prosecution, and six others for the defense, including Davis. Although the murder weapon was not recovered, ballistic evidence presented at trial linked bullets recovered at or near the scene to those at another shooting in which Davis was also charged. He was convicted of murder and various lesser charges, including the earlier shooting, and was sentenced to death in August 1991.
Davis maintained his innocence until his execution. In the 20 years between his conviction and execution, Davis and his defenders secured support from the public, celebrities, and human rights groups. Amnesty International and other groups such as National Association for the Advancement of Colored People took up Davis's cause. Prominent politicians and leaders, including former President Jimmy Carter, Rev. Al Sharpton, Pope Benedict XVI, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, former U.S. Congressman from Georgia and presidential candidate Bob Barr, and former FBI Director and judge William S. Sessions called upon the courts to grant Davis a new trial or evidentiary hearing. In July 2007, September 2008, and October 2008, execution dates were scheduled, but each execution was stayed shortly before it was to take place.
In 2009, the Supreme Court of the United States ordered the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Georgia to consider whether new evidence "that could not have been obtained at the time of trial clearly establishes Davis's innocence". The evidentiary hearing was held in June 2010. The defense presented affidavits from seven of the nine trial witnesses whose original testimony had identified Davis as the murderer, but who it contended had changed or recanted their previous testimony. Some of these writings disavowed parts of prior testimony, or implicated Sylvester "Redd" Coles, whom Davis contended was the actual triggerman. The state presented witnesses, including the police investigators and original prosecutors, who described a careful investigation of the crime, without any coercion. Davis did not call some of the witnesses who had supposedly recanted, despite their presence in the courthouse; accordingly their affidavits were given little weight by the judge. Evidence that Coles had confessed to the killing was excluded as hearsay because Coles was not subpoenaed by the defense to rebut it. In an August 2010 decision, the conviction was upheld. The court described defense efforts to upset the conviction as "largely smoke and mirrors" and found that several of the proffered affidavits were not recantations at all. Subsequent appeals, including to the Supreme Court, were rejected, and a fourth execution date was set for September 21, 2011. Nearly one million people signed petitions urging the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles to grant clemency. The Board denied clemency and, on September 21, it refused to reconsider its decision. After a last minute appeal to the United States Supreme Court was denied, the sentence was carried out through lethal injection on September 21, 2011.
Crime
The charges against Troy Davis arose from the shooting of Michael Cooper, the beating of Larry Young and the murder of Officer Mark MacPhail on August 18-19, 1989.
On the evening of August 18,1989,Davis attended a pool party in the Cloverdale neighborhood of Savannah, Georgia. As he left the party with his friend Daryl Collins, the occupants of a passing car yelled obscenities. A bullet was fired at the car and Michael Cooper, a passenger, was struck in the jaw. Later that evening, Davis and Collins proceeded to the parking lot of a Burger King restaurant in the Yamacraw Village section of Savannah. There they encountered Sylvester "Redd" Coles arguing with a homeless man, Larry Young, over alcohol.
At about 1:15am on August 19, 1989, Mark MacPhail, an off-duty police officer working as a security guard, attempted to intervene in the pistol-whipping of Young.MacPhail was shot twice: once through the heart and once in the face. He did not draw his gun. Bullets and shell casings which were determined to have come from a .38-caliber pistol were retrieved from the crime scene. Witnesses to the shooting agreed that a man in a white shirt had struck Young and then shot MacPhail.
On August 19, Coles told Savannah Police he had seen Davis with a .38-caliber gun, and that Davis had assaulted Young. The same evening, Davis drove to Atlanta with his sister. In the early morning of August 20, 1989, Savannah Police searched the Davis home and seized a pair of Davis's shorts which were found in a clothes dryer. Davis's family began negotiating with police, motivated by concerns about his safety; local drug dealers were making death threats because the police dragnet seeking Davis had disrupted their business. On August 23, 1989, Davis returned to Savannah, surrendered himself to police and was charged with MacPhail's murder.
Background and summary of proceedings
Troy Anthony Davis (October 9, 1968 – September 21, 2011) was an American man convicted of and executed for the August 19, 1989, murder of police officer Mark MacPhail in Savannah, Georgia.
During Davis's 1991 trial, seven witnesses testified they had seen Davis shoot MacPhail, and two others testified that Davis had confessed the murder to them among 34 witnesses that testified for the prosecution, and six others for the defense, including Davis. Although the murder weapon was not recovered, ballistic evidence presented at trial linked bullets recovered at or near the scene to those at another shooting in which Davis was also charged. He was convicted of murder and various lesser charges, including the earlier shooting, and was sentenced to death in August 1991.
Davis maintained his innocence until his execution. In the 20 years between his conviction and execution, Davis and his defenders secured support from the public, celebrities, and human rights groups. Amnesty International and other groups such as National Association for the Advancement of Colored People took up Davis's cause. Prominent politicians and leaders, including former President Jimmy Carter, Rev. Al Sharpton, Pope Benedict XVI, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, former U.S. Congressman from Georgia and presidential candidate Bob Barr, and former FBI Director and judge William S. Sessions called upon the courts to grant Davis a new trial or evidentiary hearing. In July 2007, September 2008, and October 2008, execution dates were scheduled, but each execution was stayed shortly before it was to take place.
In 2009, the Supreme Court of the United States ordered the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Georgia to consider whether new evidence "that could not have been obtained at the time of trial clearly establishes [Davis's] innocence". The evidentiary hearing was held in June 2010. The defense presented affidavits from seven of the nine trial witnesses whose original testimony had identified Davis as the murderer, but who it contended had changed or recanted their previous testimony. Some of these writings disavowed parts of prior testimony, or implicated Sylvester "Redd" Coles, whom Davis contended was the actual triggerman. The state presented witnesses, including the police investigators and original prosecutors, who described a careful investigation of the crime, without any coercion. Davis did not call some of the witnesses who had supposedly recanted, despite their presence in the courthouse; accordingly their affidavits were given little weight by the judge. Evidence that Coles had confessed to the killing was excluded as hearsay because Coles was not subpoenaed by the defense to rebut it. In an August 2010 decision, the conviction was upheld. The court described defense efforts to upset the conviction as "largely smoke and mirrors" and found that several of the proffered affidavits were not recantations at all. Subsequent appeals, including to the Supreme Court, were rejected, and a fourth execution date was set for September 21, 2011. Nearly one million people signed petitions urging the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles to grant clemency.The Board denied clemency and, on September 21, it refused to reconsider its decision. After a last minute appeal to the United States Supreme Court was denied, the sentence was carried out through lethal injection on September 21, 2011.
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