Afro-Netizen

GA deathrow inmate Troy Anthony Davis' life hangs in the balance

At 7:00pET, the State of Georgia is scheduled to execute 39-year old African American, Troy Anthony Davis, despite protestations from such ideologically disparate public figures as former President Jimmy Carter, Libertarian presidential candidate Bob Barr, and Pope Benedict XVI.

According to one Davis attorney (separate from his defense team), Carol Gray, the state has still not sought to find and interview perhaps the only eyewitness to the murder of a White police officer for which Mr. Davis has been convicted and sentenced to death.

Afro-Netizen has received a press release overnight from Ms. Davis that puts forth the an argument for why a stay of execution for Mr. Davis is imperative:

Attorney Carol Gray, who assisted the Troy Davis defense team by interviewing and taking statements from key witnesses, is urging that Davis’ Tuesday 7PM death sentence be stayed to allow time to interview a critical witness to the murder who has never been spoken to by the prosecution or defense.   

Gray had done extensive investigation of the Davis case including interviewing and taking a statement from a lead prosecution witness, Dorothy Ferrell, who claimed at trial that she saw Davis shoot Officer Mark Allen MacPhail in 1989.   Ferrell recanted this testimony to Gray and signed a statement admitting that she never saw who killed the officer but had been pressured to identify Davis by the police who were threatening to revoke her parole if she did not cooperate. 

In addition, Gray reports that “there is a critical witness who has never been spoken to by the prosecution or the defense.  I know this because I investigated this case in depth seven years ago assisting the defense team.”   

According to Gray, “Davis was convicted of killing Officer Timothy MacPhail in 1989.  The shooting happened in the parking lot of a Burger King across from a motel called The Thunderbird.  Two of the people in that parking lot were Troy Davis and Sylvester Coles.   Coles went to the police department the day after the shooting with a lawyer saying that Davis shot the officer.  In the decade that followed, Coles confessed to several people that it was he (Coles) who shot the officer.  In addition, 7 of the 9 witnesses from trial who testified against Davis have recanted their testimony.”

“But no one has spoken with perhaps the best witness of all:  the clerk at the motel right across from the Burger King parking.  According to another witness, the clerk screamed when the shooting happened.   Her office had a large window facing the parking lot, so she likely saw the shooting.  I searched at length for this witness, but was unable to find out who or where she was.  However there is a sure way to find her:  subpoena the tax records for that motel for the year Officer MacPhail was killed.  Both the state and federal tax records for the Thunderbird should have this woman listed as an employee, along with her social security number.  With her social security number, she could be located through various investigative databases.   

Gray reported that there was no record of any attempt to interview the Thunderbird clerk in any of the police reports in the Davis case. “Either the police were completely incompetent in missing this critical witness or they did speak to her but she did not help their case so no report was created.  The hiding of such information would be a grave constitutional violation that would likely result in a new trial.“ 

“It would be unconscionable for Troy Davis to be executed without making all efforts to interview this critical witness.  Tomorrow’s execution should be stayed and this critical witness should be found,” Gray concluded.

Gray, now in Amherst, MA, received her JD from Northeastern University School of Law and LLM from Georgetown University Law Center.  She has a decade of criminal defense experience as an attorney or investigator, including with the Massachusetts Committee for Public Counsel Services. 

Listen to Troy Davis' side of the story in his own words.

Unlike both major party candidates, Afro-Netizen opposes the death penalty -- even if it were ever to be administered in a non-discriminatory manner irrespective of defendants' race or class.

EMAIL ADDRESSES FOR THE FIVE MEMBERS OF THE GEORGIA STATE BOARD OF PARDONS & PAROLES:

Chairperson L. Gale Buckner

gale_buckner@pap.state.ga.us

Garland Hunt

garland_hunt@pap.state.ga.us

Robert Keller

robert_keller@pap.state.ga.us

Milton Nix

milton_nix@pap.state.ga.us

Garfield Hammonds

garfield_hammonds@pap.state.ga.us

FAX NUMBERS FOR THE GEORGIA STATE BOARD OF PARDONS & PAROLES:

(404) 651-8502

(404) 651-5282

(404) 463-6627

Indictment sought for police Taser death in Louisiana

H/T to AAPP/Tasered While Black for organizing today's "A Day of Blogging for Justice - Blogging Against Extra-Judicial Electrocution" with Tasers

By Howard Witt
Tribune correspondent
Chicago Tribune

HOUSTON - Seeking to defuse growing racial tensions in the small Louisiana town of Winnfield, the local district attorney announced Monday that he will seek an indictment against a white police officer for the death of a black man who was shocked nine times with a Taser device while handcuffed in police custody.

Winn Parish District Atty. Chris Nevils said he would convene a grand jury Aug. 12 to consider possible charges against the officer, Scott Nugent, 21, who was fired from the Winnfield Police Department following the death of Baron "Scooter" Pikes.The grand jury will also examine the conduct of two other officers who were present during the incident, Nevils said.

Pikes, 21, died Jan. 17 within 39 minutes of being arrested on a drug possession warrant. Winnfield police claimed Pikes told them he suffered from asthma and was high on crack cocaine and PCP, but the local coroner found that Pikes had been healthy and had no drugs in his system. He ruled the death a homicide.

"Now is the time to take this case to the grand jury for a determination about whether charges should be brought," Nevils said in a statement. "I know there are strong feelings on both sides of this matter. But my obligation, and that of the grand jury, is to objectively sort through the facts and make a decision that is in the best interest of justice. That is what we intend to do."

Nevils' decision came a little more than a week after the Tribune published the first full account of the case amid fears expressed by the victim's family and civil rights groups that the incident would be covered up in a town with a florid history of backroom dealings and political corruption.

Nevils' predecessor as district attorney committed suicide after he came under suspicion for skimming $200,000 from his office accounts and extorting bribes from criminal suspects. The former police chief, who was Nugent's father, also killed himself, after losing a bitterly-contested election campaign marred by fraud allegations. The current police chief is a convicted drug offender who was pardoned by former Louisiana Gov. Edwin Edwards, who is currently serving a federal prison sentence for corruption while in office.

In his own written report of the Pikes' incident, Nugent acknowledged that he had subdued and handcuffed Pikes after a foot chase and that Pikes had not struggled or resisted arrest. Instead, Nugent wrote, he began Tasering Pikes after the suspect did not respond quickly enough to Nugent's order to stand up and walk to a waiting police car.

Witnesses reported that Pikes had pleaded with Nugent and two other arresting officers to stop Tasering him.

Nugent's attorney has said the former officer acted according to police procedures. But the Winnfield Police Department's written Taser policy states that the device should only be used "where it is deemed reasonably necessary to control a dangerous or violent subject."

Dr. Randolph Williams, the Winn Parish coroner, determined after investigating the death that Nugent administered a total of nine 50,000-volt Taser shocks to Pikes over a 14-minute period-and that the last two jolts were delivered after Pikes had lost consciousness.

Nevils would not reveal the range of possible charges he will ask the grand jury to consider against Nugent and the other two officers.

Taser Death of Black man by White cop near Jean, Louisiana

Texas Justice in Black and White

By Dorothy Roberts
Guest Contributor

Last April, I watched Larry King interview seven mothers whose children had been taken in the raid on a Texas polygamous ranch. Militant slogans in their defense flashed on the screen beneath them:  Moms Speak Out!  Give Our Kids Back!  I felt for the mothers and their children.  I can imagine how terrified my toddler would be if he were ripped from me by strangers.  I agreed that Texas authorities had no right to snatch hundreds of children wholesale without proving that each one was at risk and without considering less harmful alternatives.  (The Texas Supreme Court ruled as such on May 29 and returned the traumatized children to their homes.)  But my main thought was, when will grieving Black mothers appear en masse on prime time TV to recount the pain of losing their children to foster care? Will Black women ever have a chance to air the wrongs they suffered when the state took their children on far less egregious charges? 

To listen to the media coverage, you would think this is the first and only case of wrongful child removal by state agents.  But there are more than half a million children in foster care and most are from families of color. Black children were virtually excluded from openly segregated child welfare services until the end of World War II.  As the child welfare system began to serve fewer White children and more Black children, state and federal governments spent much more money on foster care and less on in-home services to families. Today, Black children are grossly overrepresented in the child welfare system: they make up about one-third of the nation’s foster care population yet represent only 15 percent of the nation’s children.  A Black child is four times as likely as a White child to be in foster care.  In my home town, Chicago, almost all the children in foster care are Black.  Black children also spend more time in foster care and are less likely to ever be reunited with their parents than other children.  The Texas raid was extraordinary in part because it took so many White children from their homes; removing hundreds of children from Black neighborhoods is unremarkable because it is so common. 

The reason for the Texas round up was also unusual.  Most foster care placements result from parental neglect related to poverty, not physical or sexual abuse.  The child welfare system hides the systemic reasons for poor families’ hardships by attributing them to parental deficits that require coercive intervention instead of social change.  Foster care’s racial disparity helps to maintain the subordinated status of Black people in the United States and reinforces the quintessential racist stereotype: that Black people are incapable of governing themselves and need state supervision.

The media seem to have realized only now – when White children are at stake – that foster care has damaging effects. Reporters rarely notice that foster care routinely tears apart Black families, but they are startled when state agents haul off so many blond haired, blue eyed children. The glaring failure to value Black people’s relationships is precisely the main reason for the disproportionate placement of Black children in the first place.  When it comes to families of color, the media tend to report only on the death of children at the hands of their parents, which typically sets off a foster care panic.  Fearful of bad press, state agencies start removing children on flimsier grounds and needlessly separate thousands more children from their families while overloading the social workers charged with protecting them.  Hopefully, the public’s awakening to the plight of the Texas children will direct attention to the child welfare system’s deeper flaws that have harmed primarily children of color and that racism has long obscured.   

Dorothy Roberts is the Kirkland & Ellis Professor at Northwestern University School of Law and a faculty fellow at the Institute for Policy Research.  She is author of Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty and Shattered Bonds: The Color of Child Welfare.