Davis executed amid international outcry

The southern US state of Georgia executed Troy Davis yesterday despite doubts over his 1991 murder conviction that made him a poster child for the global movement to end the death penalty.

Former US president Jimmy Carter, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Pope Benedict XVI had all weighed in on his behalf in a racially-charged case that spanned two decades, becoming a cause celebre for death penalty opponents.

In dramatic scenes at the prison near Jackson, hundreds of protesters bearing placards thought Mr Davis had earned an 11th hour reprieve from the US Supreme Court and erupted in cheers only to have their hopes dashed. After an unusually long deliberation, which delayed proceedings by almost four hours, the highest court in the land issued a terse statement rejecting a stay of execution, snuffing out any last chance his life would be spared.

A lethal concoction of drugs began to be administered at 10.53 p.m. local time (0253 GMT Thursday) and Mr Davis was pronounced dead 15 minutes later.

His execution appeared to bring some relief to the family of slain policeman Mark MacPhail, but it incensed those who believed it was a miscarriage of justice. France and Germany led the international condemnation.

Mr Davis had escaped three previous dates with death during more than 20 years of legal wrangling. His last moments were described afterwards for the TV cameras by local radio journalist John Lewis, who witnessed the event.

“He was strapped to the gurney when we walked in and when the warden asked if he had to make a statement, he lifted his head up and looked directly at the front row, right where the MacPhail family and friends were sitting.

“He said that he did not have a gun. He said that he was not the one who took their son, father, brother and he said he was innocent,” Mr Lewis said.

Questions are bound to linger over the case due to the lack of physical evidence tying Mr Davis to the crime and the resulting reliance on eyewitness testimony, much of which was later changed or recanted.

But for the family of MarkMacPhail – who was shot in the heart and the head as he intervened in an argument in a Burger King parking lot in Savannah, Georgia on August 19, 1989 – it was justice served.

Whether Mr Davis was guilty or not, it was the perceived weakness of the case that brought an angry stream of reactions from European capitals.

“There are still serious doubts about his guilt,” said Germany’s junior minister for human rights Markus Loening. “An execution is irreversible – a judicial error can never be repaired.”

Larry Cox, executive director of rights group Amnesty International, said the US justice system had been “shaken to its core” as Georgia had executed a man “who may well be innocent.”