URGENT APPEAL for Troy Davis

Georgia death row inmate Troy Davis is facing the possibility of his fourth execution date in four years after the US Supreme Court dismissed his appeal on 28 March. Doubts persist about his guilt in the crime for which he was sentenced to death two decades ago.


Troy Davis was sentenced to death in 1991 for the murder of police officer Mark Allen MacPhail in Savannah, Georgia in 1989. No physical evidence directly links Davis to the murder – no murder weapon was ever found. The case against Davis primarily rested on witness testimony. Since his trial, seven of nine key witnesses have recanted or changed their testimony, some alleging police coercion.

In 2009, the US Supreme Court ordered a federal evidentiary hearing to review Troy Davis’ innocence claim.

At the hearing in June 2010, US District Court Judge William Moore addressed not whether the state could demonstrate a watertight case against Troy Davis, but whether Davis could show “by clear and convincing evidence that no reasonable juror would have convicted him in the light of the new evidence” that had emerged since his 1991 murder trial. Under this “extraordinarily high” standard, Judge Moore wrote, “Mr Davis is not innocent”. Elsewhere in his ruling, however, he acknowledged that the new evidence presented by Troy Davis cast “some additional, minimal” doubt on his conviction, and that the state’s case was not “ironclad”. In 1991, the jury had found Troy Davis guilty “beyond a reasonable doubt,” Judge Moore noted, “but not to a mathematical certainty”.

On 28 March, the US Supreme Court refused to take the Davis case, clearing the way for Georgia to set an execution date. Troy Davis was less than 24 hours from execution in 2007 when the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles issued a stay. The Board said in 2007 that it would not allow an execution to go ahead “unless and until its members are convinced that there is no doubt as to the guilt of the accused”. Since then Troy Davis has faced two more execution dates, both in 2008, which were stayed by the courts.
Since 2007, three states in the USA have legislated to abolish the death penalty. When signing the abolitionist bills into law the three state governors all pointed to the risk of irrevocable error as a reason to support abolition. Since Troy Davis has been on death row, more than 90 prisoners have been released from death rows around the country on grounds of innocence. In each case, at trial the defendant had been found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.


For more information about Troy Davis case, see here and here from Amnesty International.


RECOMMENDED ACTION: Please send appeals to arrive as quickly as possible:

-Acknowledging the seriousness of the crime for which Troy Davis was sentenced to death;
-Noting that doubts persist in the case even after the federal evidentiary hearing in 2010;
-Pointing out that the Board acts as a failsafe against irreversible error, and recalling its statement in 2007 that it would not allow any execution to proceed where there was any doubt about the guilt of the prisoner;
-Pointing to the substantial evidence of the fallibility of the capital justice system;
-Calling on the Board to grant clemency and to commute the death sentence of Troy Davis.

APPEALS TO:

State Board of Pardons and Paroles
2 Martin Luther King, Jr. Drive, SE
Suite 458, Balcony Level, East Tower
Atlanta, Georgia 30334-4909, USA

Salutation: Dear Board members

You can email us for more information about Troy Davis or advice on what you can do to help.
I also have some statistics about the reliability of witness testimony from studying psychology this year, which we might be able to quote to back up our arguments.

UK Bans Export of 3 More Lethal Injection Drugs To US

The Department for Business in the UK is introducing controls on the export of drugs to the US which are used in lethal injections.

The government will put in measures to prevent the export to the US of three drugs used in executions, following the previous emergency export control of sodium thiopental - the drug used to anaesthetise the condemned inmate in a lethal injection - which prisons in the US were buying from the UK to due to shortages of the drug.

The UK government now intends to control the export to the US of these drugs:
1. Pancuronium bromide - muscle relaxant which is the second drug in the three-drug sequence used by many states, and causes paralysis of the condemned inmate.
2. Potassium chloride - the third drug in the three-drug sequence, which stops the heart of the condemned inmate.
3. Sodium pentobarbital - this drug is often used to put down animals, but has recently been used in a number of executions in the US due to dwindling supplies of sodium thiopental.

The US are now turning to a Danish company, Lundbeck, for the drugs they need to carry out executions.

As a British citizen, I'm personally very glad to hear that my country has decided not to assist the US in committing legal murder. The UK fully abolished the death penalty in 1998, although the last execution was in 1964. The UK does not the support the death penalty, and as such we shouldn't be helping other countries to carry out executions. This is a positive step in the right direction, and will hopefully inspire other countries carrying out exports to the US of lethal drugs to do the same.

Reprimand For Texas Psychologist Who Approved Defendants For Execution

Psychologist Dr. George Denkowski was recently reprimanded and fined by the Texas State Board of Examiners of Psychologists. The psychologist had examined a number of death row inmates for intellecutal disabilities and found 16 to be suitable for execution, two of whom were subsequently put to death.

"There’s absolutely no scientific basis to his procedure,” said Marc J. Tassé, director of the Ohio State University Nisonger Center and an expert in developmental disabilities.


The unscientific methods used by Denkowski have been criticised by others in the field, and he has agreed not to conduct intellecutal disability evaluations in future criminal cases, on top of a $5,500 fine as part of a settlement.