Who Was Troy Davis?

Who Was Troy Davis?

A sadistic murderer was executed on Wednesday. He deserved his execution for showing a blatant disregard for human life.

However, I’m not referring there to Troy Anthony Davis but to Lawrence Russell Brewer who dragged to death James Byrd, Jr. on a Texas road in June, 1998. He and Davis met the same fate of lethal injection, Brewer for using a pickup truck to kill, Davis for using a gun.

Both were very deserving and, in answer to the title question, Troy Davis was a murderer.

Brewer exhausted the usual appeals process although no one had protested the evils of capital punishment or contested the fairness of his trial on his behalf. He had no final statement other than a single tear.

Davis pulled out all stops enabling him to escape his just due for a decade longer than Brewer and had become a popular icon before he succumbed to the fatal brew of a barbiturate, paralytic agent, and potassium solution meant to send him blissfully to the Great Beyond. He declared his innocence to the bitter end.

If it means anything, Brewer was white, Davis was an African-American.

Based on all the blue tee shirts emblazoned with the words “I Am Troy Davis” outside Georgia courthouses, the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles and, ultimately, the Georgia State Prison near Reidsville, it would seem there were many Troy Davises but in actuality there was only one and he was a murderer as surely as was Lawrence Russell Brewer.

Davis was convicted on August 19th, 1989 by a jury of his peers on a number of charges including shooting and killimg police officer Mark MacPhail and he was executed 22 years later on September 21st, 2011, the same date as Brewer’s execution.

End of story? Not quite.

Davis’ case is reminiscent of that of Black Panther Mumia Abu-Jamal, another convicted cop killer who has been on Pennsylvania’s death row for almost a quarter century and who also became an international cause célèbre and for the same reasons: questions as to the equity of capital punishment, whether he received a fair trial, and whether he is guilty.

Mumia Abu-Jamal either has better lawyers or his supporters have been more vocal than Davis’ since Abu-Jamal is still alive–and writing books!–and Troy Davis isn’t.

Let’s just dispense with the death penalty controversy since executing convicted murderers has been upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court. As for the fairness of his trial and his guilt, those issues were settled long ago.

Prosecutors called thirty four witnesses, some eyewitnesses, to the stand, the defense called six. Davis’ jury consisted of seven blacks and only five whites. His conviction was upheld in various courts, even after SCOTUS, based on alleged new evidence, ordered an evidentiary hearing last year. Clemency appeals were rejected by both the state of Georgia and none other but his fellow African-American, President Barack Hussein Obama.

However, none of that matters when Big Guns . . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=5533.)