Nine years ago today, the state of Georgia executed Troy Davis in the face of mounting evidence pointing to his innocence.
Troy Anthony Davis entering Chatham County Superior Court on Aug. 22, 1991, during his trial. (Image: AP Photo/Savannah Morning News)
Troy, a Black man, was convicted in 1991 for the murder of an off-duty police officer based largely on eyewitness testimony. But seven of the nine eyewitnesses recanted their testimony years after his conviction. Eyewitness misidentification is a key factor in wrongful convictions: three-quarters of cases overturned through DNA testing involved eyewitnesses who mistakenly identified the wrong person.
Unfortunately cases like Troy’s are not unique. The Death Penalty Information Center’s recent report, Enduring Injustice: the Persistence of Racial Discrimination in the U.S. Death Penalty, details how capital punishment is a direct descendant of slavery, lynching, and Jim Crow-segregation and explains how it perpetuates racial discrimination.
Disturbingly, the report explains, those convicted of killing white people are meaningfully more likely to face a death sentence than those convicted of killing Black people.
Right now, we’re seeing the racial disparities in death penalty cases play out in Tennessee. Pervis Payne is a Black man with an intellectual disability who is scheduled to be executed by the state of Tennessee on Dec. 3, 2020, even though executing a person with an intellectual disability is unconstitutional and there are compelling reasons to question his guilt.
Pervis was sentenced to death for the murder of a white woman. But for 33 years, he has consistently maintained his innocence. He had no history of violence or drug use, yet the prosecution relied on racist stereotypes to portray Pervis as a hypersexual drug user to convict him.
The Innocence Project exonerates the wrongly convicted through DNA testing and reforms the criminal justice system to prevent future injustice. www.innocenceproject.org
