Ironies trailing executions of American murderers

Paul Arhewe, WITH AGENCY REPORTS
 Published 23/09/2011



Troy Davis



As US President Barack Obama, including other world leaders was busy with the United Nations General Assembly meetings in New York, at the wee hours of yesterday, executions of condemned murderers were enforced in two other American states.

The irony in these two murder cases has to do with differences in race, colour, and the personalities of the villians and the victims. One of the convicted persons was a white American who along other two whites killed an African-American, while the other case involved the murdering of a white police officer by a black American. While, the execution of Lawrence Russell Brewer in Texas neither went with any remorse from the murderer nor clamour to halt it, the other involving Troy Davis in Georgia, indeed, posed a tough task and challenging moments for the US judicial system.


Lawrence Russell Brewer



Davis not only reiterated his innocence, even at the point when the needle transmitting lethal fluid was fixed into his body, but the US judicial system went ahead to execute him despite protests from millions of people across the world because of doubts expressed in some quarters over whether he actually killed police officer Mark MacPhail in 1989. Prominent world figures like Pope Benedict XVI, former American President Jimmy Carter and a former FBI Director intervened but to no avail. This case, that drew international attentions, is one that is full of white spots and the decision in carrying out the execution order is termed as half-baked by some people. Troy Davis lifted his head and declared one last time that he did not kill a police officer before being executed yesterday, while outside the prison a crowd of more than 500 demonstrators cried, hugged, prayed and held candles. “I am innocent, all I can ask ... is that you look deeper into this case so that you really can finally see the truth.

I ask my family and friends to continue to fight this fight,” he said for the last time, according to journalists who witnessed the killing. “The incident that night was not my fault. I did not have a gun,” Davis said, according to Rhonda Cook of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution newspaper. I did not personally kill your son, father and brother. I am innocent,” Cook quoted Davis as telling members of MacPhail’s family who were present in the death chamber. Davis was put to death at 11:08 p.m. ET yesterday at a prison in central Georgia prisons, spokeswoman Kristen Stancil said.

The execution was delayed by more than four hours as the U.S. Supreme Court considered whether to issue a stay. Hundreds of protesters rallied outside Georgia Diagnostic and Classification prison earlier, chanting “I am Troy Davis” and other slogans and a cheer briefly went up when it was reported that the execution had been delayed. But the crowd dwindled as the evening wore on, and by the time the execution took place they were outnumbered by police in riot gear. Most of Davis’ supporters slipped away in silence as the execution was announced. MacPhail was shot and killed outside a Burger King restaurant in Savannah, Georgia, as he went to the aid of a homeless man who was being beaten. MacPhail’s family say Davis is guilty and his son witnessed the execution. Since Davis’s conviction, seven of nine witnesses have changed or recanted their testimony, some have said they were coerced by police to testify against him and some say another man committed the crime. No physical evidence linked Davis to the killing. Prosecutors and police officer Mark MacPhail’s family said justice had finally been served. “I’m kind of numb.

I can’t believe that it’s really happened,” MacPhail’s mother, Anneliese MacPhail, told agency reporter in a telephone interview from her home in Georgia. “All the feelings of relief and peace I’ve been waiting for all these years, they will come later. I certainly do want some peace.” She dismissed Davis’ claims of innocence. He’s been telling himself that for 22 years. You know how it is; he can talk himself into anything.” A majority of Americans support the death penalty and most executions attract little national attention, but the Davis case prompted a rash of protests as well as expressions of concern from Europe. France and the Council of Europe this week urged U.S. authorities to stay the execution. Defence attorney Thomas Ruffin put Davis’ death in a racial and class context, and pointed out that a disproportionate number of inmates in Georgia’s prisons and on death row are black men, as was Davis.

“This night the state of Georgia legally lynched a brave, a good and indeed an innocent man,” Ruffin told a news conference, in a reference to the lynching of blacks in Georgia and other southern states from after the Civil War through the 1960s. The Supreme Court took the rare step in 2009 of allowing the defence to present its case to an evidentiary hearing but a federal judge in Savannah said it cast “minimal doubt” on the conviction. Once a death warrant was signed, Davis’s best hope of avoiding execution had rested with the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles, but on Tuesday it denied him clemency following a one-day hearing. On Wednesday, his lawyers went through a series of manoeuvres in an attempt to stay the execution, finally reaching the Supreme Court. It took the court more than four hours to issue its onesentence order, an unusually long time in such cases.
The other execution of the white supremacist prison gang member, Brewer was enforced Wednesday evening for the horrific murder of James Byrd, Jr. an African- American from East Texas. Byrd, 49, was murdered by three white men in Jasper, Texas, on June 7, 1998 in one of the most notorious incidents in the history of lynching. The victim had accepted a ride from Shawn Berry (age 24), Lawrence Brewer (age 31), and John King (age 23), but instead of taking him home, the three men took Byrd to a remote county road out of town.
The trio beat him with anything they could find, urinated on his unconscious body, chained him by his ankles to their pickup truck dragging him for three miles. Brewer later claimed that Byrd’s throat had been slashed by Berry before he was dragged. However, forensic evidence suggests that Byrd had been attempting to keep his head up while being dragged, and an autopsy suggested that Byrd was alive during much of the dragging. Byrd died after his right arm and head were severed after his body hit a culvert. Berry, Brewer, and King dumped their victim’s mutilated remains in front of an African-American cemetery on Huff Creek Road; the three men then went to a barbecue. Along the area where Byrd was dragged, authorities found a wrench with “Berry” written on it. All three were tried and convicted for Byrd’s murder, with Brewer and King receiving the death penalty, while Berry was sentenced to life in prison. Brewer, 44, when asked if he had any final words, said, “No. I have no final statement.” He was pronounced dead at 6.21 pm, 10 minutes after the lethal injection.
A psychiatrist testified that Brewer did not appear repentant for his crimes. The day before his execution, Brewer told KHOU 11 News in Houston: “As far as any regrets, no, I have no regrets. No, I’d do it all over again, to tell you the truth. Hopefully, today’s execution of Brewer can remind all of us that racial hatred and prejudice leads to terrible consequence for the victim, the victim’s family, for the perpetrator and for the perpetrator’s family,” Clara Taylor, one of Byrd’s sisters, said. She called the punishment “a step in the right direction”. Brewer, prior to Byrd’s murder, had served a prison sentence for drug possession and burglary. He was paroled in 1991. After violating his parole conditions in 1994, Brewer was returned to prison.