After the U.S. Supreme Court denied a last-minute stay of execution, the state of Georgia executed Troy Davis Wednesday night for the murder of an off-duty police officer, pronouncing him dead at 11:08 p.m.
Davis had convinced hundreds of thousands of people he was innocent, but no court was willing to overturn his conviction.
In his final moments, as Davis was strapped to a gurney in the death chamber, he nodded slightly to his attorney, and then made a statement saying he was not responsible for the 1989 slaying of Mark MacPhail. “I am innocent. The incident that happened that night is not my fault,” Davis said.
When CNN’s Anderson Cooper interviewed MacPhail after the execution, he asked her if it was possible to have peace now that Davis was gone.
The execution was delayed for more than four hours as the Supreme Court weighed last-minute arguments from Davis' legal team. When the court announced that Davis would still be executed, it did comment on its order.
About 10 counterdemonstrators were also outside the prison, to show support for the death penalty or for MacPhail’s family.
On Twitter, Davis’s supporters rallied around the hashtag #deargeorgia, sending messages to the state asking to stop his execution, some of them quoting Martin Luther King Jr., writing, “Dear Georgia: He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it.”
After the execution, supporters began to use the hashtag #RIPTroyDavis. One person wrote, “Dear Georgia, we don't know if Troy Davis killed a man. Neither do you. But we know you killed Troy Davis. RIP Troy Davis.”
This fight to end the death penalty is not won or lost through me but through our strength to move forward and save every innocent person in captivity around the globe.
Davis was convicted in 1991 of killing MacPhail, who was working as a security guard when he was shot while aiding a homeless person. Nine witnesses identified Davis as the shooter, and prosecutors said shell casings were linked to an earlier shooting for which Davis was convicted.Later, however, most of the witnesses said they changed their mind about Davis being the shooter, and no physical evidence was ever found to link Davis to the crime.
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