Click on the headline to link to The New York Times online account, dated September 22, 2011, of the execution of Troy Davis by the State of Georgia, September 21, 2011.
"Oh, but you who philosophize disgrace and criticize all fears
Bury the rag deep in your face
For now's the time for your tears."
last lines from The Lonseome Death Of Hattie Carroll- Bob Dylan
, 1963
Markin comment:
Look, after almost half a century of fighting every kind of progressive political struggle I have no Pollyanna-ish notion that in our fight for a “newer world” most of the time we are “tilting at windmills.” Even a cursory look at the history of our struggles brings that hard fact home. However some defeats in the class struggle, particularly the struggle to abolish the barbaric, racist death penalty in the United States, hit home harder than others. For some time now the fight to stop the execution of Troy Davis has galvanized this abolition movement into action. His callous execution by the State of Georgia, despite an international mobilization to stop the execution and grant him freedom, is such a defeat.
On the question of the death penalty, moreover, we do not grant the state the right to judicially murder the innocent or the guilty. But clearly Brother Davis was innocent. We will also not forget that hard fact. And we will not forget Brother Davis’ dignity and demeanor as he faced what he knew was a deck stacked against him. And, most importantly, we will not forgot to honor Brother Davis the best way we can by redoubling our efforts to abolition the racist, barbaric death penalty everywhere, for all time. Forward.
Showing posts with label Troy Davis. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Troy Davis. Show all posts
Thursday, September 22, 2011
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
From The Partisan Defense Committee-Execution Set For September 21-Stop The Legal Lynching Of Troy Davis-Stop The Execution! - Free Troy Davis! - Down With The Barbaric Death Penalty!
From The Partisan Defense Committee-Execution Set For September 21-Stop The Legal Lynching Of Troy Davis-Stop The Execution! - Free Troy Davis! - Down With The Barbaric Death Penalty!
Time is running out for Troy Davis, a 41-year-old black man facing execution despite substantial evidence of his innocence. On September 6, a Georgia Superior Court judge signed an execution warrant, and a date has been set for September 21. Davis, who faced three prior death warrants, has now exhausted all his appeals. In March, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to even consider the evidence exonerating Davis of the 1989 killing of a white off-duty police officer. Davis has a hearing before the Georgia Board of Pardons and Parole two days before the scheduled execution. Davis's supporters have called for a global day of solidarity on September 16, including a march in Atlanta. What's needed is a mass outpouring of protest. Opponents of the racist death penalty, defenders of civil liberties, trade-union militants and fighters for black rights must demand: Stop the execution! Free Troy Davis!
The impending execution is nothing short of a racist legal lynching. In 1991, Davis was sentenced to death after a frame-up conviction based on questionable "eyewitness" identifications, dubious accounts that he confessed and testimony coerced by the cops, without a shred of physical evidence linking him to the killing. Seven of the prosecution's nine witnesses have since recanted. The only holdouts are one man who may be the actual killer and another who initially denied being able to identify the shooter, only to pin the killing on Davis at trial two years later.
At a federal court hearing last year, some of the witnesses were finally able to tell how they were forced by the cops to falsely implicate Davis. But in upholding the conviction and death sentence, the judge sneered that this testimony was "smoke and mirrors" and declared the accounts of police/prosecution coercion —a regular feature of the capitalist justice system—were not credible.. .because the cops said it didn't happen that way! (See "Troy Davis Appeal Turned Down," WV No. 965, 24 September 2010.)
The impending legal lynching of Troy Davis exemplifies that for America's capitalist rulers the life of a black man on the bottom is worth nothing. In this decaying profit system, which was founded on black chattel slavery, the bourgeois rulers' impulse to genocide is seen in the death penalty, mass black incarceration, the elimination of welfare and rampant cop terror in the ghettos. Troy Davis is a victim of a bourgeois "justice" system premised on protecting capitalist rule and profits through organized terror against the working class, the black masses and other minorities.
We oppose the death penalty on principle—for the guilty as well as the innocent. We do not accord the state the right to decide who shall live and who shall die. Capital punishment is a barbaric legacy of medieval torture, a system of legal murder that reinforces the brutalization of society in all respects. And in racist America, black people are overwhelmingly the victims of state terror, whether this system is administered by the Republican or Democratic parties of capital. Davis was tried in a courtroom flying the Georgia state flag, which at the time included the battle flag of the slaveholding Confederacy. The lynching of black men—by racist mobs and by the august courts—is deeply embedded in this country's history, particularly but by no means exclusively in Southern states like Troy Davis's Georgia. Over 40 percent of those on death row in this country are black. Abolish the racist death penalty!
Through petitions and public statements, hundreds of thousands have opposed Davis's execution, including former president Jimmy Carter, former FBI director William Sessions, South Africa's Archbishop Desmond Tutu and the Pope. While this may have given Georgia's rulers some pause, it was only so they could gather additional judicial sanction to kill Davis. To put a final halt to the grisly workings of the U.S. rulers' machinery of death requires sweeping away the racist capitalist system through proletarian revolution.
Time is running out for Troy Davis, a 41-year-old black man facing execution despite substantial evidence of his innocence. On September 6, a Georgia Superior Court judge signed an execution warrant, and a date has been set for September 21. Davis, who faced three prior death warrants, has now exhausted all his appeals. In March, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to even consider the evidence exonerating Davis of the 1989 killing of a white off-duty police officer. Davis has a hearing before the Georgia Board of Pardons and Parole two days before the scheduled execution. Davis's supporters have called for a global day of solidarity on September 16, including a march in Atlanta. What's needed is a mass outpouring of protest. Opponents of the racist death penalty, defenders of civil liberties, trade-union militants and fighters for black rights must demand: Stop the execution! Free Troy Davis!
The impending execution is nothing short of a racist legal lynching. In 1991, Davis was sentenced to death after a frame-up conviction based on questionable "eyewitness" identifications, dubious accounts that he confessed and testimony coerced by the cops, without a shred of physical evidence linking him to the killing. Seven of the prosecution's nine witnesses have since recanted. The only holdouts are one man who may be the actual killer and another who initially denied being able to identify the shooter, only to pin the killing on Davis at trial two years later.
At a federal court hearing last year, some of the witnesses were finally able to tell how they were forced by the cops to falsely implicate Davis. But in upholding the conviction and death sentence, the judge sneered that this testimony was "smoke and mirrors" and declared the accounts of police/prosecution coercion —a regular feature of the capitalist justice system—were not credible.. .because the cops said it didn't happen that way! (See "Troy Davis Appeal Turned Down," WV No. 965, 24 September 2010.)
The impending legal lynching of Troy Davis exemplifies that for America's capitalist rulers the life of a black man on the bottom is worth nothing. In this decaying profit system, which was founded on black chattel slavery, the bourgeois rulers' impulse to genocide is seen in the death penalty, mass black incarceration, the elimination of welfare and rampant cop terror in the ghettos. Troy Davis is a victim of a bourgeois "justice" system premised on protecting capitalist rule and profits through organized terror against the working class, the black masses and other minorities.
We oppose the death penalty on principle—for the guilty as well as the innocent. We do not accord the state the right to decide who shall live and who shall die. Capital punishment is a barbaric legacy of medieval torture, a system of legal murder that reinforces the brutalization of society in all respects. And in racist America, black people are overwhelmingly the victims of state terror, whether this system is administered by the Republican or Democratic parties of capital. Davis was tried in a courtroom flying the Georgia state flag, which at the time included the battle flag of the slaveholding Confederacy. The lynching of black men—by racist mobs and by the august courts—is deeply embedded in this country's history, particularly but by no means exclusively in Southern states like Troy Davis's Georgia. Over 40 percent of those on death row in this country are black. Abolish the racist death penalty!
Through petitions and public statements, hundreds of thousands have opposed Davis's execution, including former president Jimmy Carter, former FBI director William Sessions, South Africa's Archbishop Desmond Tutu and the Pope. While this may have given Georgia's rulers some pause, it was only so they could gather additional judicial sanction to kill Davis. To put a final halt to the grisly workings of the U.S. rulers' machinery of death requires sweeping away the racist capitalist system through proletarian revolution.
Tuesday, September 20, 2011
From The Partisan Defense Committee-Execution Set For September 21-Stop The Legal Lynching Of Troy Davis-Stop The Execution! - Free Troy Davis! - Down With The Barbaric Death Penalty!
From The Partisan Defense Committee-Execution Set For September 21-Stop The Legal Lynching Of Troy Davis-Stop The Execution! - Free Troy Davis! - Down With The Barbaric Death Penalty!
Time is running out for Troy Davis, a 41-year-old black man facing execution despite substantial evidence of his innocence. On September 6, a Georgia Superior Court judge signed an execution warrant, and a date has been set for September 21. Davis, who faced three prior death warrants, has now exhausted all his appeals. In March, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to even consider the evidence exonerating Davis of the 1989 killing of a white off-duty police officer. Davis has a hearing before the Georgia Board of Pardons and Parole two days before the scheduled execution. Davis's supporters have called for a global day of solidarity on September 16, including a march in Atlanta. What's needed is a mass outpouring of protest. Opponents of the racist death penalty, defenders of civil liberties, trade-union militants and fighters for black rights must demand: Stop the execution! Free Troy Davis!
The impending execution is nothing short of a racist legal lynching. In 1991, Davis was sentenced to death after a frame-up conviction based on questionable "eyewitness" identifications, dubious accounts that he confessed and testimony coerced by the cops, without a shred of physical evidence linking him to the killing. Seven of the prosecution's nine witnesses have since recanted. The only holdouts are one man who may be the actual killer and another who initially denied being able to identify the shooter, only to pin the killing on Davis at trial two years later.
At a federal court hearing last year, some of the witnesses were finally able to tell how they were forced by the cops to falsely implicate Davis. But in upholding the conviction and death sentence, the judge sneered that this testimony was "smoke and mirrors" and declared the accounts of police/prosecution coercion —a regular feature of the capitalist justice system—were not credible.. .because the cops said it didn't happen that way! (See "Troy Davis Appeal Turned Down," WV No. 965, 24 September 2010.)
The impending legal lynching of Troy Davis exemplifies that for America's capitalist rulers the life of a black man on the bottom is worth nothing. In this decaying profit system, which was founded on black chattel slavery, the bourgeois rulers' impulse to genocide is seen in the death penalty, mass black incarceration, the elimination of welfare and rampant cop terror in the ghettos. Troy Davis is a victim of a bourgeois "justice" system premised on protecting capitalist rule and profits through organized terror against the working class, the black masses and other minorities.
We oppose the death penalty on principle—for the guilty as well as the innocent. We do not accord the state the right to decide who shall live and who shall die. Capital punishment is a barbaric legacy of medieval torture, a system of legal murder that reinforces the brutalization of society in all respects. And in racist America, black people are overwhelmingly the victims of state terror, whether this system is administered by the Republican or Democratic parties of capital. Davis was tried in a courtroom flying the Georgia state flag, which at the time included the battle flag of the slaveholding Confederacy. The lynching of black men—by racist mobs and by the august courts—is deeply embedded in this country's history, particularly but by no means exclusively in Southern states like Troy Davis's Georgia. Over 40 percent of those on death row in this country are black. Abolish the racist death penalty!
Through petitions and public statements, hundreds of thousands have opposed Davis's execution, including former president Jimmy Carter, former FBI director William Sessions, South Africa's Archbishop Desmond Tutu and the Pope. While this may have given Georgia's rulers some pause, it was only so they could gather additional judicial sanction to kill Davis. To put a final halt to the grisly workings of the U.S. rulers' machinery of death requires sweeping away the racist capitalist system through proletarian revolution.
Time is running out for Troy Davis, a 41-year-old black man facing execution despite substantial evidence of his innocence. On September 6, a Georgia Superior Court judge signed an execution warrant, and a date has been set for September 21. Davis, who faced three prior death warrants, has now exhausted all his appeals. In March, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to even consider the evidence exonerating Davis of the 1989 killing of a white off-duty police officer. Davis has a hearing before the Georgia Board of Pardons and Parole two days before the scheduled execution. Davis's supporters have called for a global day of solidarity on September 16, including a march in Atlanta. What's needed is a mass outpouring of protest. Opponents of the racist death penalty, defenders of civil liberties, trade-union militants and fighters for black rights must demand: Stop the execution! Free Troy Davis!
The impending execution is nothing short of a racist legal lynching. In 1991, Davis was sentenced to death after a frame-up conviction based on questionable "eyewitness" identifications, dubious accounts that he confessed and testimony coerced by the cops, without a shred of physical evidence linking him to the killing. Seven of the prosecution's nine witnesses have since recanted. The only holdouts are one man who may be the actual killer and another who initially denied being able to identify the shooter, only to pin the killing on Davis at trial two years later.
At a federal court hearing last year, some of the witnesses were finally able to tell how they were forced by the cops to falsely implicate Davis. But in upholding the conviction and death sentence, the judge sneered that this testimony was "smoke and mirrors" and declared the accounts of police/prosecution coercion —a regular feature of the capitalist justice system—were not credible.. .because the cops said it didn't happen that way! (See "Troy Davis Appeal Turned Down," WV No. 965, 24 September 2010.)
The impending legal lynching of Troy Davis exemplifies that for America's capitalist rulers the life of a black man on the bottom is worth nothing. In this decaying profit system, which was founded on black chattel slavery, the bourgeois rulers' impulse to genocide is seen in the death penalty, mass black incarceration, the elimination of welfare and rampant cop terror in the ghettos. Troy Davis is a victim of a bourgeois "justice" system premised on protecting capitalist rule and profits through organized terror against the working class, the black masses and other minorities.
We oppose the death penalty on principle—for the guilty as well as the innocent. We do not accord the state the right to decide who shall live and who shall die. Capital punishment is a barbaric legacy of medieval torture, a system of legal murder that reinforces the brutalization of society in all respects. And in racist America, black people are overwhelmingly the victims of state terror, whether this system is administered by the Republican or Democratic parties of capital. Davis was tried in a courtroom flying the Georgia state flag, which at the time included the battle flag of the slaveholding Confederacy. The lynching of black men—by racist mobs and by the august courts—is deeply embedded in this country's history, particularly but by no means exclusively in Southern states like Troy Davis's Georgia. Over 40 percent of those on death row in this country are black. Abolish the racist death penalty!
Through petitions and public statements, hundreds of thousands have opposed Davis's execution, including former president Jimmy Carter, former FBI director William Sessions, South Africa's Archbishop Desmond Tutu and the Pope. While this may have given Georgia's rulers some pause, it was only so they could gather additional judicial sanction to kill Davis. To put a final halt to the grisly workings of the U.S. rulers' machinery of death requires sweeping away the racist capitalist system through proletarian revolution.
Georgia Pardons Board Rejects Clemency For Troy Davis- Stop The Execution-Free Troy Davis!-Down With The Death Penalty !
Click on the headline to link to a AP news report, dated September 20, 2011 detailing the decision of the Georgia State Pardons Board to grant clemency in the case of Troy Davis.
Markin comment:
My headline today says all that needs to be said at this last minute in the Troy Davis case. Call, write, petition, vigil, read about- anything that you can do to publicize this case of severe injustice. Stop The Execution!-Free Troy Davis!-Down With The Barbaric Death Penalty!
Markin comment:
My headline today says all that needs to be said at this last minute in the Troy Davis case. Call, write, petition, vigil, read about- anything that you can do to publicize this case of severe injustice. Stop The Execution!-Free Troy Davis!-Down With The Barbaric Death Penalty!
Free Troy Davis! There’s No Justice in the Capitalist Courts! -From The "Liberation News Service" Via "Boston IndyMedia"- Stop The Execution! Free Troy Davis!-Down With The Barbaric Death Penalty!
Free Troy Davis! There’s No Justice in the Capitalist Courts! -From The "Liberation News Service" Via "Boston IndyMedia"- Stop The Execution! Free Troy Davis!-Down With The Barbaric Death Penalty!
Free Troy Davis! There’s No Justice in the Capitalist Courts!
by Steven Argue
(No verified email address) 19 Sep 2011
Troy Davis was sentenced to death in 1991 for the killing of an off-duty Savannah policeman. Davis was found “guilty” based on dubious accounts that he confessed to the killing and questionable “eyewitness” identifications that included false eyewitness testimony coerced by the cops. Seven of the prosecution’s nine “eyewitnesses” have since recanted. The only holdouts are one man who may be the actual killer and another who initially denied being able to identify the shooter only to pin it on Davis two years later. Three of the eyewitnesses say their testimony was coerced by the police. New eyewitnesses have come forth identifying another suspect.
Parole Board Delays Decision on Legal Lynching Set for Weds Sept. 21st
Free Troy Davis! Abolish the Racist Death Penalty!
There’s No Justice in the Capitalist Courts!
By Steven Argue
During slavery a slave named Dred Scott was taken by his master to what is now Minnesota and Illinois. Slavery was illegal in those territories so Dred Scott took his master to court to sue for his freedom. In 1857 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against Dred Scott saying that a Black man “has no legal rights that any white man was bound to respect”.
Since that time the Civil War has abolished chattel slavery and the heroic struggles of the Civil Rights and Black Liberation movements have abolished the most blatant forms of Jim Crow segregation. Yet, the death penalty, a hold-over of the class terror of slavery, continues. Likewise, racist injustice is alive and well in the American judicial system.
“Innocence is no Bar to Upholding a Jury Conviction”
In the tradition of Dred Scott, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the 1993 case of Herrara v Collins that the execution of an innocent man did not violate the Constitution. Judge Scalia stated of the case that "Innocence is no bar to upholding a jury conviction". As a result, strong new evidence that Leonel Herara was innocent was never allowed to be heard in a court of law. Instead, Leonel Herara was executed in 1993 in the state of Texas with his last words being, "I am innocent, innocent, innocent. I am an innocent man, and something very wrong is taking place tonight."
So a standard has been set where those who have been appointed to the highest court in the land don’t think that the execution of an innocent person is a violation of their constitutional rights. It is on this standard that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against Troy Davis on March 28, 2011, denying his appeal without comment.
Troy Davis was sentenced to death in 1991 for the killing of an off-duty Savannah policeman. Davis was found “guilty” based on dubious accounts that he confessed to the killing and questionable “eyewitness” identifications that included false eyewitness testimony coerced by the cops. Seven of the prosecution’s nine “eyewitnesses” have since recanted. The only holdouts are one man who may be the actual killer and another who initially denied being able to identify the shooter only to pin it on Davis two years later. Three of the eyewitnesses say their testimony was coerced by the police. New eyewitnesses have come forth identifying another suspect.
Amnesty International said of his case, "Troy Davis was convicted of murder in 1991. Nearly two decades later, Davis remains on death row — even though the case against him has fallen apart."
Now Troy Davis may be executed on Wednesday, September 21st of this week. On September 6th a Chatham County, Georgia Judge issued a death warrant for Troy Davis. The so-called “Department of Corrections” then set the date for the execution. This Monday, September 19th the Georgia parole board heard arguments for and against execution. That five person panel is given the power to issue a ruling on whether Troy Davis lives or is legally lynched. They pronounced no decision Monday and gave no indication on when they will.
How Bill Clinton Prevented the Evidence from Being Heard
For over a decade, state and federal courts refused to hear evidence that Troy Davis is innocent. This included a federal court ruling against Troy Davis on April 16, 2009. A dissenting federal judge said the execution of Davis “in the face of a significant amount of the proffered evidence that may establish his actual innocence” was “unconscionable.” Yet the majority decision cited Bill Clinton’s 1996 Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, an act which virtually eliminates the right of federal habeas corpus (i.e. federal review of state legal cases).
The right to federal habeas corpus was a gain of the Civil War passed in the Civil Rights Act of 1871. The act gave the federal government authority to intervene in cases of racial injustice. This included federal habeas corpus giving the federal courts authority to review state legal decisions. Federal habeas corpus was further expanded during the Civil Rights and Black Liberation struggles of the 1960s and 1970s.
Bill Clinton’s 1996 Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, on the other hand, virtually eliminated the right to federal habeas corpus. The act bars federal reconsideration of most factual and legal findings of the state courts. It also puts a six month statute of limitations on new evidence in death penalty cases (one year for other cases).
The same 1996 Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act that has been used against Troy Davis was also cited as cause against federal review of evidence of the innocence of Mumia Abu-Jamal.
Mumia Abu-Jamal is political activist, award winning journalist, and political prisoner on death row in the United States. Mumia was framed by the Philadelphia police and DA's Office. To convict Mumia they produced a crudely falsified “confession” which didn’t surface until two months after the killing; tampered with ballistics “evidence”; and produced “eyewitness” accounts that were secured through police manipulation, coercion, and blatant terror. During the trial the Philadelphia DA’s Office knowingly used perjured testimony and hid essential evidence to procure a conviction. That frame-up case was then presented in a court presided over by Judge Sabo who was heard by a court stenographer during the time of the trial saying, "Ill help you fry the nigger".
After investigation, Amnesty International stated of the trial, “Mumia Abu-Jamal was sentenced to death for the murder of a police officer in 1982 after a trial that failed to meet international standards." Yet, like in the racist frame-up case of Troy Davis, the federal courts have cited the 1996 Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act as pretext not to hear evidence of Mumia Abu-Jamal’s innocence.
As the historian Howard Zinn stated of Mumia Abu-Jamal in April 2009:
“To me, the Mumia Abu-Jamal case is another instance in the history of American injustice. Our judicial system is stacked against people of color, radicals, and people who are not wealthy, and Mumia fits all three categories.
“It is shameful that he has been in prison, and on death row, for such a large part of his life. He has shown immense courage in refusing to be beaten down by this cruel system.
“I hope that justice will be done in his case, but that will only happen if large numbers of Americans speak out loudly on his behalf, and on behalf of the principle — so much ignored — of equal justice before the law.”
A Continuing Pattern of Racist Injustice
Blacks have long faced political repression in the United States. For many decades the KKK, Democratic Party, and local police ruled over half of the country as a semi-fascist state where Blacks were denied the right to vote and murdered for speaking their minds. With victories won against that system the FBI orchestrated a reign of terror against the most radical Blacks who stood up against racism, class inequalities, and imperialism.
In the 1960’s and 70’s the U.S. government liquidated the Black Panther Party through the murders of 39 members, including the FBI organized police shooting of Fred Hampton in his sleep, and through political frame-ups such as that of Geronimo (Ji. Jaga) Pratt who was finally exonerated (i.e. found innocent) after 30 years in prison. Other framed Black Panthers still sit in prison and Black Panther Assata Shakur lives in exile, granted political asylum by Cuba, but with a one million dollar bounty put on her head by the New Jersey government. Mumia Abu-Jamal, a target of FBI surveillance from the time of his youth in the Black Panther Party, survived the FBI’s physical liquidation of his party, only to be framed-up in the 1980’s after exposing violent police repression against Black radicals in an organization called Move.
Similarly, the Lakota on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota who supported the culturally and politically nationalist American Indian Movement faced brutal counter-insurgency tactics complete with FBI-armed and -trained death squads that murdered 61 political activists and their children on the reservation between 1973 and 1976. As part of that terror war against America’s first nations, American Indian Movement member Leonard Peltier was framed by the FBI and remains in prison to this day. Many of Leonard Peltier’s supporters had hoped that Bill Clinton would pardon Leonard Peltier as he left office, but Clinton refused to do so.
Today, a world movement hopes that Troy Davis is not executed. In the last few days over 300 protests have been held for Troy Davis in cities around the world. Nearly a million petitions have been signed demanding Troy Davis not be executed. He is supported by many important organizations including the NAACP, Amnesty International, and the International Longshore Workers Union
Troy Davis has sat in prison for 20 years in a case that not only shows cause for reasonable doubt, the legal definition of innocence, but also shows the classic symptoms of a racist police frame-up including police coercion of witnesses. Whatever happens in the next couple days, justice in this case will not mean just stopping his execution, it will also mean freeing Troy Davis. Yet, we should be clear, the U.S. government is capable of the worst, it is capable of the murder of innocents, and it is even capable of producing legal arguments like "Innocence is no bar to upholding a jury conviction” to justify state sanctioned murder.
From Dred Scott to Troy Davis
In his May 1857 “Speech on the Dred Scott Decision” Frederick Douglass, a former slave and activist for the abolition of slavery, denounced the Supreme Court’s Dred Scott decision that a Black man “has no legal rights that any white man was bound to respect” by saying,
“If it were at all likely that the people of these free States would tamely submit to this demoniacal judgment, I might feel gloomy and sad over it, and possibly it might be necessary for my people to look for a home in some other country. But as the case stands, we have nothing to fear.
“In one point of view, we, the abolitionists and colored people, should meet this decision, unlooked for and monstrous as it appears, in a cheerful spirit. This very attempt to blot out forever the hopes of an enslaved people may be one necessary link in the chain of events preparatory to the downfall and complete overthrow of the whole slave system.”
The unpopular Dred Scott decision is widely seen as playing a role in bringing on the Civil War. It was the Civil War that completed the abolition of slavery, a task that had begun in the north with the American Revolution. With U.S. courts now openly ruling that it’s OK to murder innocent people, it is now time to prepare for a second American Revolution. It is with such radical conclusions we should confront government atrocities like what is being done to Troy Davis. In doing so, we make the government pay for its crimes.
By revolution I don’t mean blow things up or any other form of individual terrorism. A revolution is a change in who rules society. Presently the wealthy capitalists rule America through their ownership of the economy; through their political parties, the Democrats and Republicans; and through the repressive actions of their cops, courts, prisons, and military. That entire system must be swept away in a mass proletarian revolution.
Liberation News is dedicated to building a socialist party that has goals like eliminating the dictatorial control of our society by the wealthy, bringing about true workers democracy, ending imperialist wars, and bringing Black liberation through socialist revolution. While capitalism is leading us into an oblivion of economic decay, austerity, unemployment, ever more wars, and environmental catastrophe, a socialist economy can be geared for full employment, free health care, free education, housing for all, and better environmental protection because it will not be run for capitalist profit. A party that fights for such a socialist future also exposes and fights for immediate demands like freeing Troy Davis and abolishing the racist death penalty. In building such a movement that helps people draw the deeper radical conclusions of the injustices perpetrated by this system and the fight that is needed for liberation, we make the capitalist system pay for its crimes.
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Free Troy Davis! There’s No Justice in the Capitalist Courts!
by Steven Argue
(No verified email address) 19 Sep 2011
Troy Davis was sentenced to death in 1991 for the killing of an off-duty Savannah policeman. Davis was found “guilty” based on dubious accounts that he confessed to the killing and questionable “eyewitness” identifications that included false eyewitness testimony coerced by the cops. Seven of the prosecution’s nine “eyewitnesses” have since recanted. The only holdouts are one man who may be the actual killer and another who initially denied being able to identify the shooter only to pin it on Davis two years later. Three of the eyewitnesses say their testimony was coerced by the police. New eyewitnesses have come forth identifying another suspect.
Parole Board Delays Decision on Legal Lynching Set for Weds Sept. 21st
Free Troy Davis! Abolish the Racist Death Penalty!
There’s No Justice in the Capitalist Courts!
By Steven Argue
During slavery a slave named Dred Scott was taken by his master to what is now Minnesota and Illinois. Slavery was illegal in those territories so Dred Scott took his master to court to sue for his freedom. In 1857 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against Dred Scott saying that a Black man “has no legal rights that any white man was bound to respect”.
Since that time the Civil War has abolished chattel slavery and the heroic struggles of the Civil Rights and Black Liberation movements have abolished the most blatant forms of Jim Crow segregation. Yet, the death penalty, a hold-over of the class terror of slavery, continues. Likewise, racist injustice is alive and well in the American judicial system.
“Innocence is no Bar to Upholding a Jury Conviction”
In the tradition of Dred Scott, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the 1993 case of Herrara v Collins that the execution of an innocent man did not violate the Constitution. Judge Scalia stated of the case that "Innocence is no bar to upholding a jury conviction". As a result, strong new evidence that Leonel Herara was innocent was never allowed to be heard in a court of law. Instead, Leonel Herara was executed in 1993 in the state of Texas with his last words being, "I am innocent, innocent, innocent. I am an innocent man, and something very wrong is taking place tonight."
So a standard has been set where those who have been appointed to the highest court in the land don’t think that the execution of an innocent person is a violation of their constitutional rights. It is on this standard that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against Troy Davis on March 28, 2011, denying his appeal without comment.
Troy Davis was sentenced to death in 1991 for the killing of an off-duty Savannah policeman. Davis was found “guilty” based on dubious accounts that he confessed to the killing and questionable “eyewitness” identifications that included false eyewitness testimony coerced by the cops. Seven of the prosecution’s nine “eyewitnesses” have since recanted. The only holdouts are one man who may be the actual killer and another who initially denied being able to identify the shooter only to pin it on Davis two years later. Three of the eyewitnesses say their testimony was coerced by the police. New eyewitnesses have come forth identifying another suspect.
Amnesty International said of his case, "Troy Davis was convicted of murder in 1991. Nearly two decades later, Davis remains on death row — even though the case against him has fallen apart."
Now Troy Davis may be executed on Wednesday, September 21st of this week. On September 6th a Chatham County, Georgia Judge issued a death warrant for Troy Davis. The so-called “Department of Corrections” then set the date for the execution. This Monday, September 19th the Georgia parole board heard arguments for and against execution. That five person panel is given the power to issue a ruling on whether Troy Davis lives or is legally lynched. They pronounced no decision Monday and gave no indication on when they will.
How Bill Clinton Prevented the Evidence from Being Heard
For over a decade, state and federal courts refused to hear evidence that Troy Davis is innocent. This included a federal court ruling against Troy Davis on April 16, 2009. A dissenting federal judge said the execution of Davis “in the face of a significant amount of the proffered evidence that may establish his actual innocence” was “unconscionable.” Yet the majority decision cited Bill Clinton’s 1996 Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, an act which virtually eliminates the right of federal habeas corpus (i.e. federal review of state legal cases).
The right to federal habeas corpus was a gain of the Civil War passed in the Civil Rights Act of 1871. The act gave the federal government authority to intervene in cases of racial injustice. This included federal habeas corpus giving the federal courts authority to review state legal decisions. Federal habeas corpus was further expanded during the Civil Rights and Black Liberation struggles of the 1960s and 1970s.
Bill Clinton’s 1996 Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, on the other hand, virtually eliminated the right to federal habeas corpus. The act bars federal reconsideration of most factual and legal findings of the state courts. It also puts a six month statute of limitations on new evidence in death penalty cases (one year for other cases).
The same 1996 Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act that has been used against Troy Davis was also cited as cause against federal review of evidence of the innocence of Mumia Abu-Jamal.
Mumia Abu-Jamal is political activist, award winning journalist, and political prisoner on death row in the United States. Mumia was framed by the Philadelphia police and DA's Office. To convict Mumia they produced a crudely falsified “confession” which didn’t surface until two months after the killing; tampered with ballistics “evidence”; and produced “eyewitness” accounts that were secured through police manipulation, coercion, and blatant terror. During the trial the Philadelphia DA’s Office knowingly used perjured testimony and hid essential evidence to procure a conviction. That frame-up case was then presented in a court presided over by Judge Sabo who was heard by a court stenographer during the time of the trial saying, "Ill help you fry the nigger".
After investigation, Amnesty International stated of the trial, “Mumia Abu-Jamal was sentenced to death for the murder of a police officer in 1982 after a trial that failed to meet international standards." Yet, like in the racist frame-up case of Troy Davis, the federal courts have cited the 1996 Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act as pretext not to hear evidence of Mumia Abu-Jamal’s innocence.
As the historian Howard Zinn stated of Mumia Abu-Jamal in April 2009:
“To me, the Mumia Abu-Jamal case is another instance in the history of American injustice. Our judicial system is stacked against people of color, radicals, and people who are not wealthy, and Mumia fits all three categories.
“It is shameful that he has been in prison, and on death row, for such a large part of his life. He has shown immense courage in refusing to be beaten down by this cruel system.
“I hope that justice will be done in his case, but that will only happen if large numbers of Americans speak out loudly on his behalf, and on behalf of the principle — so much ignored — of equal justice before the law.”
A Continuing Pattern of Racist Injustice
Blacks have long faced political repression in the United States. For many decades the KKK, Democratic Party, and local police ruled over half of the country as a semi-fascist state where Blacks were denied the right to vote and murdered for speaking their minds. With victories won against that system the FBI orchestrated a reign of terror against the most radical Blacks who stood up against racism, class inequalities, and imperialism.
In the 1960’s and 70’s the U.S. government liquidated the Black Panther Party through the murders of 39 members, including the FBI organized police shooting of Fred Hampton in his sleep, and through political frame-ups such as that of Geronimo (Ji. Jaga) Pratt who was finally exonerated (i.e. found innocent) after 30 years in prison. Other framed Black Panthers still sit in prison and Black Panther Assata Shakur lives in exile, granted political asylum by Cuba, but with a one million dollar bounty put on her head by the New Jersey government. Mumia Abu-Jamal, a target of FBI surveillance from the time of his youth in the Black Panther Party, survived the FBI’s physical liquidation of his party, only to be framed-up in the 1980’s after exposing violent police repression against Black radicals in an organization called Move.
Similarly, the Lakota on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota who supported the culturally and politically nationalist American Indian Movement faced brutal counter-insurgency tactics complete with FBI-armed and -trained death squads that murdered 61 political activists and their children on the reservation between 1973 and 1976. As part of that terror war against America’s first nations, American Indian Movement member Leonard Peltier was framed by the FBI and remains in prison to this day. Many of Leonard Peltier’s supporters had hoped that Bill Clinton would pardon Leonard Peltier as he left office, but Clinton refused to do so.
Today, a world movement hopes that Troy Davis is not executed. In the last few days over 300 protests have been held for Troy Davis in cities around the world. Nearly a million petitions have been signed demanding Troy Davis not be executed. He is supported by many important organizations including the NAACP, Amnesty International, and the International Longshore Workers Union
Troy Davis has sat in prison for 20 years in a case that not only shows cause for reasonable doubt, the legal definition of innocence, but also shows the classic symptoms of a racist police frame-up including police coercion of witnesses. Whatever happens in the next couple days, justice in this case will not mean just stopping his execution, it will also mean freeing Troy Davis. Yet, we should be clear, the U.S. government is capable of the worst, it is capable of the murder of innocents, and it is even capable of producing legal arguments like "Innocence is no bar to upholding a jury conviction” to justify state sanctioned murder.
From Dred Scott to Troy Davis
In his May 1857 “Speech on the Dred Scott Decision” Frederick Douglass, a former slave and activist for the abolition of slavery, denounced the Supreme Court’s Dred Scott decision that a Black man “has no legal rights that any white man was bound to respect” by saying,
“If it were at all likely that the people of these free States would tamely submit to this demoniacal judgment, I might feel gloomy and sad over it, and possibly it might be necessary for my people to look for a home in some other country. But as the case stands, we have nothing to fear.
“In one point of view, we, the abolitionists and colored people, should meet this decision, unlooked for and monstrous as it appears, in a cheerful spirit. This very attempt to blot out forever the hopes of an enslaved people may be one necessary link in the chain of events preparatory to the downfall and complete overthrow of the whole slave system.”
The unpopular Dred Scott decision is widely seen as playing a role in bringing on the Civil War. It was the Civil War that completed the abolition of slavery, a task that had begun in the north with the American Revolution. With U.S. courts now openly ruling that it’s OK to murder innocent people, it is now time to prepare for a second American Revolution. It is with such radical conclusions we should confront government atrocities like what is being done to Troy Davis. In doing so, we make the government pay for its crimes.
By revolution I don’t mean blow things up or any other form of individual terrorism. A revolution is a change in who rules society. Presently the wealthy capitalists rule America through their ownership of the economy; through their political parties, the Democrats and Republicans; and through the repressive actions of their cops, courts, prisons, and military. That entire system must be swept away in a mass proletarian revolution.
Liberation News is dedicated to building a socialist party that has goals like eliminating the dictatorial control of our society by the wealthy, bringing about true workers democracy, ending imperialist wars, and bringing Black liberation through socialist revolution. While capitalism is leading us into an oblivion of economic decay, austerity, unemployment, ever more wars, and environmental catastrophe, a socialist economy can be geared for full employment, free health care, free education, housing for all, and better environmental protection because it will not be run for capitalist profit. A party that fights for such a socialist future also exposes and fights for immediate demands like freeing Troy Davis and abolishing the racist death penalty. In building such a movement that helps people draw the deeper radical conclusions of the injustices perpetrated by this system and the fight that is needed for liberation, we make the capitalist system pay for its crimes.
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Photos From The Boston Rally To Stop The Execution Of Troy Davis In Georgia On September 21, 2011- Stop The Execution! Free Troy Davis!- Down With The Barbaric Death Penalty!
Click on the headline to link to a Boston Indymedia entry on a September 16, 2011 Boston rally to stop the Georgia execution of Troy Davis on September 21, 2011.
Markin comment:
My headline today says all that needs to be said at this last minute in the Troy Davis case. Call, write, petition, vigil, read about- anything that you can do to publicize this case of severe injustice. Stop The Execution!-Free Troy Davis!-Down With The Barbaric Death Penalty!
Markin comment:
My headline today says all that needs to be said at this last minute in the Troy Davis case. Call, write, petition, vigil, read about- anything that you can do to publicize this case of severe injustice. Stop The Execution!-Free Troy Davis!-Down With The Barbaric Death Penalty!
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