Anatomy of a Frame-up: The Shocking Case of Troy Davis

By Marlene Martin, International Socialist Review. Posted September 19, 2008.

Since this article was written, the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles denied Troy Davis clemency, giving the green light for his execution. Go here to help stop the execution.

AUGUST 18, 2008, marked a horrible milestone for Troy Davis. Nineteen years before, Savannah, Georgia, police officer Mark Allen McPhail was shot and killed -- a crime for which Troy would be accused, convicted and sent to death row.

McPhail was shot and killed in the early morning hours in a Burger King parking lot. In short order, twenty-five fellow officers were assigned to the case and began to scour the neighborhood for the perpetrator. The media sensationalized the case of a 27-year-old white father of two shot in the line of duty. One officer told a reporter, "There is a desire among the police to have the suspect locked away before McPhail is buried."

A few days later, police had their man in custody -- 20-year-old Troy Davis. Two years later, Troy, who is African American, was convicted and sentenced to death in a trial that lasted ten days.

The case against Troy is more than flimsy -- it appears to be totally fabricated.

The key to his conviction was testimony from nine witnesses, seven of whom have now come forward to recant. Among the two who haven't taken back their testimony is Sylvester Coles, initially a suspect himself until he went to the police saying that Troy Davis was the killer. The other witness remembers only the color of the shooter's clothes, and that he was left-handed. Troy is right-handed.

Several witnesses told police that Coles had a .38-caliber gun in his possession the night of the shooting. But once the police had arrested Troy, it was too hard for them to turn back when they learned this information. As attorney Jason Ewart told The South magazine,

At some point, there was an "Oh No" moment, when the police discovered that the person who may have fingered Davis had a caliber gun that had killed Officer McPhail the night of the shooting, [something] that was withheld from them [by Coles]. At that point, it was too late: Davis was the suspect. To go back and investigate someone else would have been politically tough to do…. [T]here was no investigating any other suspect. There was no [police] questioning; there was no searching for the murder weapon: there was no searching anyone else's house. His picture was the only one they showed in a photographic lineup.

Troy admits he was at the scene the night that McPhail was killed. But he says that he stepped in to help a homeless man who was being pistol-whipped by Coles. The girlfriend of the homeless man ran to get the police. When McPhail got to the scene, he was shot twice and died shortly thereafter.

No physical evidence, like his fingerprints on the murder weapon or gunpowder residue on his hands, ever connected Troy to the crime, and he never confessed. The only thing that convicted Troy was the testimony of witnesses, many of whom say police pressured them to identify Troy as the murderer.

One of the witnesses, Monty Holmes, stated in his affidavit, "In August of 1989, the police came to talk to me about the officer who was killed. … I told them I didn't know anything about who shot the officer, but they kept questioning me. I was real young at that time, and here they were questioning me about the murder of a police officer, like I was in trouble or something. I was scared. … It seemed like they wouldn't stop questioning me until I told them what they wanted to hear. So I did."

Another witness, Jeffrey Sapp, stated, "The police came and talked to me and put a lot of pressure on me to say, 'Troy said this' or 'Troy said that.' I got tired of them harassing me, and they made it clear that the only way they would leave me alone is if I told them what they wanted to hear. I told them that Troy told me he did it, but it wasn't true. Troy never said that or anything like it."

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Marlene Martin is the national director of the Campaign to End the Death Penalty.

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