Sounds like a strong case for the resurgance of the 'night riders', not only for the murdering slime but for a lot of other people that support him. Not many years in the past this slime ball, the lawyers and quite a few judges would not have been walking around. How long will it be before this becomes another of the necessary evils.
I'd like to write about this. After reading your post, I went looking around for other pictures of McPhail.
What comes up when you do a search are pictures of DAVIS.
This is an outrage!!!
This guy should have gotten his death penalty! The sentence that he deserves, and what the McPhail family deserves: closure!
Cao - Feel free to use any of the info in my post. The Savannah Morning News at www.savannahnow.com has some of the better pictures and links.
Okay, I have it up and sent a trackback.
This post is hilarious. No physical evidence ties Davis to the crime, 7 out of 9 of the witnesses have recanted, and you're reduced to arguing Davis is guilty because "he admitted to being at the scene of the crime"?
The suffering of the family is actually incidental to Davis' guilt. Their pain does not justify executing someone for a crime they did not commit, and while I am amused at your attempts to paint Davis supporters as "death penalty opponents" as though that changed the fact that no jury would convict him on the available evidence, were he to recieve a fair trial, you omitted in your post that even former FBI director William Sessions, a death penalty supporter, has argued that Davis execution would be a travesty of justice.
But you were busy indulging your irrational bloodlust. Pardon me for interrupting.
Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that someone else has confessed to killing McPhail. But that doesn't matter does it? just as long as someone gets killed in his name right?
Until what you're saying is proven in court, he's still a convicted cop killer.
The amnesty lobby will rely on rumor and hearsay, but that's all it is.
They can't find that guy who 'confessed', which I find really CONVENIENT.
Plus, the parole board doesn't have the power to "commute" his sentence, they only have the power to change it to Life Without Parole.
It's a waste of money to keep this man alive, in my opinion.
There are infinite benefits to putting to death convicts who have been sentence to death; it's a crime deterrent.
Death penalty opponents ("opponents") state that "Those who support the death penalty see it as a solution to violent crime." Opponents therein, present one of many fabrications. In reality, executions are seen as the appropriate punishment for certain criminals committing specific crimes. So says the U.S. Supreme Court and so say most death penalty supporters.
Great effort has been made in pretrial, trial, appeals, writ and clemency procedures to minimize the chance of an innocent being convicted, sentenced to death or executed. Since 1973, legal protections have been so extraordinary that 37% of all death row cases have been overturned for due process reasons or commuted. Indeed, inmates are six times more likely to get off death row by appeals than by execution. (“Capital Punishment 1995", BJS, 1996).
So we shouldn't necessarily fall for the people who are trying to demonize the death penalty or those who support it.
One more thing before I go...
Death penalty opponents spend millions of dollars and countless man hours fighting the legal execution of, at most, 56 of our worst human rights violators per year, when they do nothing to fight for the end of those inhumane parole and probation release policies which result in the needless injury and slaughter of the innocent.
"The U.S. Department of Justice estimates that convicted criminals free on parole and probation . . . commit ‘at least’ 84,800 violent crimes every year, including 13,200 murders, 12,900 rapes, and 49,500 robberies." American Guardian, May 1997, pg. 26.
Incredibly, this slaughter does not include violent crimes committed by repeat offenders who are released and who are not on "supervision". Where is the compassion in honoring the previous victim’s suffering and in protecting the human rights of future victims? Opponents’ actions show virtually no compassion for the victims of violent crime or concern for future victims, yet, they exhibit overwhelming support for those who violate our human rights and murder our loved ones.
Doesn't make sense to me, but it's a liberal ideology that defies reason, as most of the ideas do on that side.
From Death Penalty and Sentencing Information
That paper has some dated material, but overall, they seem to be universal truths.
Dear dNa - frankly you are just repeating the same tired talking points from Amnesty International.
Let's face facts here - Troy Davis was convicted by a jury of his peers. There has been ample opportunity for the witnesses to come forward with their changed testimony - almost 18 years - but something jogged their memories over the past year or so.
Were you at the trial? If so then you have no idea what evidence was presented other than what AI cherry picked to make their bleeding heart case.
NO ONE ELSE HAS CONFESSED TO KILLING OFFICER MCPHAIL! If you have any information to the contrary, I suggest you forward it the State Attorney General.
The time for justice has come and gone. Troy Davis is still a convicted cop-killer. And Officer McPhail and his family deserve the justice that the jury handed down.
Supposedly Sylvester ‘Red” Coles has confessed, but they can't find the guy.
And guess who else is involved, according to this article at Fox entitled "Convicted Cop Killer Granted Stay of Execution in Georgia"?
U.S. Representative John Lewis, what Fox called "an Atlanta Democrat and civil rights icon."
I think that's a part of your powerful lobby who's managing to turn this thing around, Robin.
Thanks for the mention. I think you're doing a wonderful job here.
Does the 'pro death penalty'/fiscal responsibility/moral side have a lobbying organization?
I'm trying to see if there is one.
Cao- If you can find a "pro death penalty/fiscal responsibility/moral lobbying organization, please let me know. I'd love to join it!
You're right about John Lewis. He's a "civil rights icon" and has his hand in anything that could turn with laying down the race card.
Cao, you can go on a rant about how wrong being anti-death penalty is, but the fact is no one actually posted anything about how the death penalty is wrong here. You're avoiding the issue.
Like dnA said, and who cares if some of it is talking points from Amnesty (they're good points!), is that the evidence against Davis has fallen apart and he could never be convicted if his trial were today.
What kind of justice would it be for McPhial to have someone who isn't responsible for his death executed?
Your response has been that since they managed to convict him on shoddy evidence that has since been disproven that it doesn't matter whether he actually did it.
"There are infinite benefits to putting to death convicts who have been sentence to death; it's a crime deterrent."
What kind of deterrent is it to execute someone who didn't actually commit a crime??? All it says to criminals is "Go ahead and commit crimes, chances are they'll just convict and execute some other dude in your place" You want justice and a detterent? Go find the real killer and let Davis keep his life.
No the parole board can't free Davis, but giving him LIFE instead of a death sentence is the first step to setting things right.
Don't respond to this with stuff about how we need the death penalty. I'm not arguing with you about that.
This is absolutely fantastic.
Were you at the trial? If so then you have no idea what evidence was presented other than what AI cherry picked to make their bleeding heart case.
I don't have to be present at the trial to know that 7 of the 9 witnesses recanted and there is no physical evidence linking him to the killing. A fact which you ignored in your post to argue for his execution, before directing people to read recanted testimony.
NO ONE ELSE HAS CONFESSED TO KILLING OFFICER MCPHAIL! If you have any information to the contrary, I suggest you forward it the State Attorney General.
Semantics. Several of the witnesses have signed affadavits that say another man who was also present that night, and who fingered Davis, was the killer. If you bothered to do your research, you would know that.
The time for justice has come and gone. Troy Davis is still a convicted cop-killer. And Officer McPhail and his family deserve the justice that the jury handed down.
There's a phrase for killing innocent people to appease certain emotions, it's called human sacrifice. Your disregard for the exculpatory evidence shows that you aren't as interested in finding justice for Officer McPhail as you are in making sure Troy Davis dies. Which, quite frankly, is sociopathic.
This isn't a debate about the death penalty, or the merits and failures thereof, its about a man who was unable to present mountains of exculpatory evidence during his appeals process and shouldn't be executed because there are extraordinary doubts, held as widely as former head of the FBI William Sessions and the Vatican, hardly the liberal interest groups you're describing.
But that's all in my post. Maybe you should try reading up on topics before you post mindless rants on them sometime.
dNa - blah blah blah... once again you are simply repeating the Amnesty International talking points. IF you would bother to read instead of just spewing forth you would know that this happened in my hometown - I know a helluva lot more about it than you could possibly know.
Like I said previously, if those witnesses are willing to take the stand and recant their testimony at the risk of perjury THEN I will put some value in their recantations. Until then it is nothing more than offering carrots to get people to say what you want them to say. Like I also said there was a heck of a lot more evidence presented at trial than just the 9 witnesses.
My opinion doesn't count - neither does yours. The only opinion that counted was the jury that had the benefit of seeing and hearing all the evidence and exhibits firsthand and they said GUILTY! All of the appeals were DENIED.
YOU don't know anything except what you've read in the media. When you read the court transcripts, come back here and we'll talk. Otherwise you are just blowing smoke.
So let me get this straight, you know more then us, but yet can't seem to present/cite any of this "heck of a lot more evidence" yet you know the evidence is there somehow.
I hate to tell you this, but people get convicted for the wrong reasons on shoddy evidence all the time, that doesn't make it ok, and sometimes it takes exactly the kind of pressure we're trying to put on in order to get the legal system to function properly.
What you claim to know because of your proximity to the event isn't actual information, it's the fact that this has deeply emotionally effected a lot of people. I can understand why that might give you a different perspective, but it certainly doesn't give you any more access to information on Davis than us. If you really knew a heck of a lot more than us, you'd present your knowledge. As the facts stand right now, it looks like the wrong man has been convicted.
awkward silence - how many savannah civil rights activists have come out against the case? Savannah is quite the hotbed of civil rights activists yet their silence is deafening. how many savh area lawmakers or government officials have called davis an innocent man? NONE. Believe me the Savh PD and the DA tiptoed their way through this case because of the intense scrutiny. It took the so-called exculpatory witnesses until 2001 to come forward? Give me a break. You are simply relying on cherry picked talking points from Amnesty International and really should read the transcripts of the case before you start calling a convicted cop killer an innocent man. But nice try to spin it to make it look like it is my responsibility to come up with the evidence - the jury made their decision. The appeals courts made their decision. Period - end of story.
You saying "believe me" isn't very comforting. The points aren't cherry picked either. There isn't a single piece of physical evidence on which Davis was convicted. The witness testimonies were key to his conviction and now nearly all of them have recanted. There's no spin going on here, the evidence against Davis has fallen apart and he doesn't deserve the death penalty, he could NEVER be convicted on the evidence that exists.
Moreover, reminding us of his status as a "convicted cop killer" is sort of missing the point isn't it? Clearly he's been convicted, the question at hand is whether he was fairly convicted.
Prove it.
Provide links.
I'd like to see the sources and the evidence you claim there is.
All you're making is sweeping generalizations - and I'm sorry, but I can't accept any of that as 'fact' just because you say-so.
Show me the Savannah civil rights people...and not people on the outside who are meddling with this case. Like U.S. Rep. John Lewis, from Atlanta!
Even the Vatican is involved now, which indicates to me there is a powerful lobby at work that is trying to sway public opinion.
Show the evidence and stop saying there is someone else that has claimed responsibility when they don't even know where Sylvester "Red" Coles is.
I think they're just trying to muddy the water so there is some kind of doubt.
If he was innocent, why did it take all these years for him to say it?
Why did the courts say he didn't prove his innocence, rather, what he was trying to say was the death penalty violated his 'civil rights'?
What about the 'rights' of McPhail and his wife and children to have him around while the kids were growing up and to be there for his family? What about them? Why is it that you're only concentrating on Davis as if he's the victim? When you read the court documents, he sounded like a hyped up gangbanger type who wanted to prove what a tough guy he was.
He certainly has gained notoriety, just like Tookie Williams did! And he seems to have no remorse for the crime because now he's even denying that he had anything to do with it.
Georgia courts generally do not favor granting retrials cases like these, the judge threw it out and now I guess they're appealing to the Georgia Supreme Court. The evidence presented by Davis' lawyers failed to meet strict standards required by state law....isn't that a shame?
Davis and his supporters may have dodged the bullet on this one for the time being, but I don't know how much longer they can get away with it.
Something really stinks here, and it's not only your comments...it's how strongly the anti-death penalty people are working on this thing - who have nothing whatsoever to do with the case and weren't involved with it 16 years ago. This crap has just come out the past 2 years, which makes all of this really smelly.
If he was innocent, he was always innocent, so why did he not proclaim it 16 years ago?
First off, your asking me to link to a LACK of something. Which is impossible. You link ME the physical evidence presented in the trial, which I'm sure would have been brought up by now if there actually was any. But hopefully a TIME magazine (I would love to hear you try to argue that TIME is a leftwing media outlet) article saying the same thing will work for you:
http://www.time.com/time/nation/...feed-cnn-
nation
"The murder weapon has never been found, and there is no physical evidence linking the crime to Davis, who has asserted his innocence throughout."
Which brings me to my second point, which is that Davis has maintained his innocence, he didn't "wait until now." I'm not gonna go into more details, because you actually know them yourself. That smell isn't left wing anti-death penalty lobbyists, it's bloodlust.
Awkward Silence - Are you just completely dense or unable to comprehend the facts? READ THE DAMNED TRANSCRIPTS and then come back with some type of cogent argument other than "davis says he's innocent" and "no physical evidence". There was physical evidence - no murder weapon but gee that 4 hour trip to atlanta wouldn't have anything to do with that... Meanwhile you are completely ignoring the FACT that he was convicted by a jury of his peers, the appeals have been exhausted and its time for his punishment. There is no bloodlust - only justice. If it was only about bloodlust, I would be advocating a posse take the killer out before the trial ever started. You need to grow up and stop drinking the anti-death penalty koolaid. But for now I am sick of dealing with ignorant spewers of talking points like you. Good bye.
Excuse me, Robin, while I spam your comments section.
Those of us who believe in the death penalty for some murders are told by opponents of the death penalty that if the state executes an innocent man, we have blood on our hands.
They are right. I, for one, readily acknowledge that as a proponent of the death penalty, my advocacy could result in the killing of an innocent person.
I have never, however, encountered any opponents of the death penalty who acknowledge that they have the blood of innocent men and women on their hands.
Yet they certainly do. Whereas the shedding of innocent blood that proponents of capital punishment are responsible for is thus far, thankfully, only theoretical, the shedding of innocent blood for which opponents of capital punishment are responsible is not theoretical at all. Thanks to their opposition to the death penalty, innocent men and women have been murdered by killers who would otherwise have been put to death.
Opponents of capital punishment give us names of innocents who would have been killed by the state had their convictions stood and they been actually executed, and a few executed convicts whom they believe might have been innocent. But proponents can name men and women who really were -- not might have been -- murdered by convicted murderers while in prison. The murdered include prison guards, fellow inmates, and innocent men and women outside of prison.
Perhaps the most infamous case of a death penalty opponent directly causing the murder of an innocent is that of novelist Norman Mailer. In 1981, Mailer utilized his influence to obtain parole for a bank robber and murderer named Jack Abbott on the grounds that Abbott was a talented writer. Six weeks after being paroled, Abbott murdered Richard Adan, a 22-year-old newlywed, aspiring actor and playwright who was waiting tables at his father's restaurant.
Mailer's reaction? "Culture is worth a little risk," he told the press. "I'm willing to gamble with a portion of society to save this man's talent."
That in a nutshell is the attitude of the abolitionists. They are "willing to gamble with a portion of society" -- such as the lives of additional innocent victims -- in order to save the life of every murderer.
Abolitionists are certain that they are morally superior to the rest of us. In their view, we who recoil at the thought that every murderer be allowed to keep his life are moral inferiors, barbarians essentially. But just as pacifists' views ensure that far more innocents will be killed, so do abolitionists' views ensure that more innocents will die.
There may be moral reasons to oppose taking the life of any murderer (though I cannot think of one), but saving the lives of innocents cannot be regarded as one of them.
Nevertheless, abolitionists will be happy to learn that Amnesty International has taken up the cause of ensuring that Clarence Ray Allen be spared execution. That is what the international com
Opponents of the Death Penalty Have Blood On Their Hands"
That's pretty much the way I feel about it, although that article was written by Dennis Prager. There are a lot of other examples of how innocent lives could have been saved if we stopped feeling so damned sorry for the monsters who appoint themselves judge, jury and executioner over unsuspecting men, women and children.
It's a disgusting moral relativism that turns a murderer into a victim so everyone can cry about his 'civil rights'.
Davis didn't care about the 'civil rights' of Mark Allan McPhail, or stop and consider what he was doing to Joan or her children.
Shame on the people who've taken this on as a cause! Their sensibilities are completely skewed!
We know leftists hate cops, that's the reason they complain about police brutality.
But McPhail was defending a HOMELESS MAN!
Davis told a friend he was in an argument at the Burger King and struck someone with a gun. He told the friend that when a police officer ran up, Davis shot him and that he went to the officer and "finished the job" because he knew the officer got a good look at his face when he shot him the first time. After his arrest, Davis told a cellmate a similar story. A shell casing that was found at the scene of the murder was linked to the Cloverdale Drive shooting.
A woman who was staying in a hotel across the street from where Mark MacPhail was murdered identified Troy Davis as the shooter after seeing a photograph of him. She also chose his photo from a 5-person lineup, as well as identified him at his trial. Numerous other eyewitnesses also identified Davis.
So tell me what the 'copiously documented' evidence that proves his evidence is, since the affadavits from the recanters were thrown out as 'inadmissable hearsay'.
To DNA :
DAVIS was convicted of killing ( executing )Ofc. McPhail by his PEERS. Take that garbage you speak of " insuffecient evidence " and witnesses recanting please sir. Davis was convicted and O.J. Simpson was found not guilty. Im sure the evidence was suffecient. I await for the decision on Davis's fate, as everyone will see that this cop killing menace to society will lose this appeal to. Its a waste of money, but its not like he hasn't drained the state system already.
the witnesses recanted because the family of Davis threatend them just like they tried to do Marks family.
"It's a waste of money to keep this man alive, in my opinion."
That's the real issue here isn't it - why bother finding who really took Officer McPhail's life - lets just pin it on this young black kid who PROBABLY did it.
My heart goes out to the family of Officer McPhail, who have been cheated from the truth about who took his life. Troy Davis may well be a criminal, he may well deserve to spend his life in prison, but if he is not the killer of Officer McPhail, which any reasonable person can see he isn't, the officers family deserve to see the real killer behind bars.
Love to the McPhail family - I hope you are presented with the truth one day.
One more thing - Cao you keep saying 'Stop being dense and read the court transcripts' - but what use are the court transcripts if the witness testimony in them is untrue? Now that most of the witnesses say that they were coerced into saying Davis did it - doensn't that make the court transcripts...inaccurate?
I think it's very sad that you're more concerned about seeing someone executed for the murder of Officer McPhail than about whether or not the person who is executed actually committed the crime.
Furthermore, what part of "Thou shalt not kill" don't you get?
I think the night rider comment at sums it up.
The Bible says to know good an not do it is sin. To know a man may be innocent and proceed as if he's guilty is sin.
The Bible says that God will go into the mountains, leaving 99 sheep, to save the one that might be lost. So much for fiscal responsibility linked with morality. You may lose the 99 if you go to save the 1 (it may cost you more), but Christ leaves the 99 and goes after the 1. Shouldn't we do the same? Oh, Jesus must have been a bleeding heart... more like a bleeding wrist liberal I guess.
Or, perhaps conservatism and Christianity aren't quite the match people pretend it is.
Troy davis is innocent and the suspicions on the murder of Mark MCPhail weigh on Sylvester Coles.
And Michael Cooper's murder same night with the same weapon???
The execution of Troy Davis will leave the doubt in mind of the family MC Phail and of his(her) friends which will never have rest because the inquiry was not seriously made. And if we prove the innocence of davis, this family will then be haunted by these two murders, always....
But would you want the real killer to go free?
Fucking assholes, the "eyewitness" who saw him "smiling" was in a hotel room on the other side of a highway with a row of trees in between and the lot was unlit. Many "witnesses" couldn't read or write and were intimidated by typical asshole cops into signing bullshit statements they couldn't read. Honor the dead man by finding his killer and then lock him away for a very long time. Shame on all of you.
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