Actions! Plus Bob Barr Re: Troy Davis: "...nothing in the statute

nofurylike

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Fri Jun-12-09 09:44 AM
Original message

Actions! Plus Bob Barr Re: Troy Davis: "...nothing in the statute

Edited on Fri Jun-12-09 10:22 AM by nofurylike

should have left the courts with the impression that they were barred from hearing claims of actual innocence like Troy Davis'."

from article cited down below this multi-action alert:

Barr helped write the federal law governing death-penalty appeals when he was a member of Congress. He recently wrote that the Supreme Court should grant Davis an "original writ of habeas corpus" and order a federal trial court to hear from witnesses in the case - most of whom have recanted or changed their original testimony.

In a column published last week by The New York Times, Barr said the courts "misread" the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act.

As a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, Barr - a former federal prosecutor - helped craft the act. It was intended, Barr wrote in the Times, "to stop the unfounded and abusive delays in capital cases that tend to undermine our criminal justice system." He added, however, that "nothing in the statute should have left the courts with the impression that they were barred from hearing claims of actual innocence like Troy Davis'."

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ACTION ALERT! :

along with this action recently posted on DU:

Sign the petition and join the NAACP, Amnesty International USA, Georgians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty (GFADP), and other partners in demanding justice for Troy Davis! :

http://www.iamtroy.com/

Troy Anthony Davis is an African American man who has spent the last 18 years on death row for a murder he did not commit. There is no physical evidence tying him to the crime and seven out of nine witnesses have recanted. New evidence and new testimony have been presented to the Georgia courts, but the justice system refuses to consider this evidence, which would prove Troy Davis� innocence once and for all.

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please also take this action:

Friends,

The folks at Amnesty have put out a new online action for Troy Davis. This link will take you to a sample letter which you can automatically send asking Chatham County DA Larry Chisolm to re-open Troy's case. Mr. Chisolm has already been somewhat receptive to Troy's supporters in not seeking an execution warrant until all the appeals are exhausted, so this is one more way we can reach him and urge him to work for fairness in Troy's case. These emails will be collected by Amnesty and delivered in huge batches to Mr. Chisolm's office by prominent leaders in Savannah, so please click the link and participate!

http://takeaction.amnestyusa.org/siteapps/advocacy/index.aspx?c=jhKPIXPCIoE&b=2590179&template=x.ascx&action=12361

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and these:
Friends,

We have multiple efforts underway to advance the justice campaign for Troy Davis. Here is a summary of activities that we need your help with this month:

1) Sign and promote the petition to District Attorney Chisolm to re-open the case
electronic: http://www.amnestyusa.org/troydavis
hard copy: http://www.amnestyusa.org/uploads/troydavispetition-chisolm.pdf

2) Sign and promote petition to allow media access to Troy:
http://org2.democracyinaction.org/o/2446/t/4676/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=1616

3) Promote the �Week of Witness� (June 19-26)
http://www.amnestyusa.org/uploads/file/TroyWoWSavetheDate.pdf

4) Make a handprint cloth petition (due July 3)
http://www.amnestyusa.org/uploads/file/handprintpetitioninstructions(2).pdf

5) join our weekend Savannah canvassing effort
coordinator: mailto:[email protected]

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good article (above Barr quote is from this), Florida:

Death Case Merits Review
June 11, 2009

http://www.theledger.com/article/20090611/NEWS/906115012?Title=Death-Case-Merits-Review

-snip-

However, (Judge Barkett) made three critical points: The case "This case highlights the difficulties in navigating thicket of procedural brambles." The execution could come even though "no court has ever conducted a hearing to assess the reliability of the score of affidavits that, if reliable, would satisfy the 'threshold showing' for 'a truly persuasive demonstration of actual innocence'" that would entitle the defendant to additional review. And finally, the act "cannot possibly be applied when to do so would offend the Constitution and the fundamental concept of justice that an innocent man should not be executed. In this case, the circumstances do not fit neatly into the narrow procedural confines" of the act. In other words, the act has created such impediments to judicial discretion that an appeals court appears unable to justify intervention when the stakes are so high.

-snip-

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Also, Cynthia Tucker wrote an excellent Op-Ed for AJC (Atlanta)
To be fair, review the Davis case
June 07, 2009
http://www.ajc.com/opinion/content/opinion/tucker /

-snip-

But even jurors' unanimity does not guarantee justice. The death penalty is arbitrary and capricious, subject to common prejudices and casual errors, influenced by race and class, gender and geography. Those are among the reasons that the U.S. Supreme Court should give Troy Davis, sentenced to death for the August 1989 murder of Savannah police officer Mark Allen MacPhail, the chance to be heard in federal court.

Since the trial, several key witnesses have recanted or contradicted their testimony, claiming they were pressured by the police to implicate Davis or intimidated by another man who may be guilty of the crime. Most chilling is the recollection of Tonya Johnson, who says she didn't tell police all she knew back then. She now says that she saw a man running from the direction of the shooting that night and that she saw him hide two guns behind the screen door of an abandoned apartment next door.

According to Davis' attorneys, that man was Nathaniel Sylvester Coles, a small-time thug whom they believe Johnson feared too much to tell the truth. It was Coles who first fingered Davis, coolly strolling into a police station hours after the murder, accompanied by a lawyer, to identify Davis as the shooter. And it was atop that dubious testimony that police mounted their case.

It's now apparent that case deserves more thorough review. In May, 27 former jurists and federal prosecutors filed a petition asking the nation's highest court to send the case back to a lower court, where Davis can show "new, never reviewed evidence that strongly points to his innocence." The former prosecutors include Republicans Bob Barr and Larry Thompson, who also served as a deputy attorney general in the administration of George W. Bush.

-snip-

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mailto:[email protected]

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Please act!!

Thank you!

peace and solidarity!

*edit for more info in subject line