Troy Davis and the Meaning of ‘Actual Innocence’

By Amy Goodman

Sitting on death row in Georgia, Troy Davis has won a key victory against his own execution. On Aug. 17, the U.S. Supreme Court instructed a federal court in Georgia to consider, for the first time in a formal court proceeding, significant evidence of Davis’ innocence that surfaced after his conviction. This is the first such order from the U.S. Supreme Court in almost 50 years. Remarkably, the Supreme Court has never ruled on whether it is unconstitutional to execute an innocent person.

The order read, in part, “The District Court should receive testimony and make findings of fact as to whether evidence that could not have been obtained at the time of trial clearly establishes petitioner’s innocence.” Behind the order lay a stunning array of recantations from those who originally testified as eyewitnesses to the murder of off-duty Savannah police officer Mark Allen MacPhail on Aug. 19, 1989. Seven of the nine non-police witnesses who originally identified Davis as the murderer of MacPhail have since recanted, some alleging police coercion and intimidation in obtaining their testimony. Of the remaining two witnesses, one, Sylvester “Redd” Coles, is accused by others as the shooter and identified Davis as the perpetrator probably to save himself from arrest.

On the night of the murder, MacPhail was off duty, working as a security guard at a Burger King. A homeless man was being beaten in the parking lot. The altercation drew Davis and others to the scene, along with MacPhail. MacPhail intervened, and was shot fatally with a .38-caliber gun. Later, Coles arrived at the police station, accompanied by a lawyer, and identified Davis as the shooter. The police engaged in a high-profile manhunt, with Davis’ picture splayed across the newspapers and television stations. Davis turned himself in. With no physical evidence linking him to the crime, Davis was convicted and sentenced to death.

Jeffrey Sapp is typical of those in the case who recanted their eyewitness testimony. He said in an affidavit:

“The police ... put a lot of pressure on me to say ‘Troy said this’ or ‘Troy said that.’ They wanted me to tell them that Troy confessed to me about killing that officer ... they made it clear that the only way they would leave me alone is if I told them what they wanted to hear.”

Despite the seven recantations, Georgia’s parole commission has refused to commute Davis’ sentence. Courts have refused to hear the evidence, mostly on procedural grounds. Conservatives like former Georgia Congressman and prosecutor Bob Barr and former FBI Director William Sessions have called for justice in his case, along with Pope Benedict XVI, President Jimmy Carter, the NAACP and Amnesty International.

Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens wrote for the majority, “The substantial risk of putting an innocent man to death clearly provides an adequate justification for holding an evidentiary hearing.” Yet conservative Justice Antonin Scalia dissented (with Justice Clarence Thomas), writing that Davis’ case “is a sure loser,” and “[t]his Court has never held that the Constitution forbids the execution of a convicted defendant who has had a full and fair trial but is later able to convince a habeas court that he is ‘actually’ innocent.”

Davis has had three execution dates, and in one instance was within two hours of lethal injection. Now he will finally have his day in court. With the courageous support of his sister, Martina Correia (who has been fighting for his life as well as her own—she has stage 4 breast cancer), and his nephew, Antone De’Jaun Correia, who at 15 is a budding human rights activist, Davis may yet defy death. That could lead to a long-overdue precedent in U.S. law: It is unconstitutional to execute an innocent person.

Denis Moynihan contributed research to this column.

Amy Goodman is the host of “Democracy Now!” a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on more than 750 stations in North America. She is the co-author of “Standing Up to the Madness: Ordinary Heroes in Extraordinary Times,” recently released in paperback.

http://www.democracynow.org/blog/2009/8/19/troy_davis_and_the_meaning_of_actual_innocence

A Coup for Lobbyists at the White House

By Amy Goodman

Honduran President Manuel Zelaya, ousted in the middle of the night just over a month ago, enjoys global support for his return, with the exception of the Obama White House. Though Barack Obama first called the Honduran military’s removal of Zelaya a coup, his administration has backpedaled. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called Zelaya’s attempt to cross the Nicaraguan border into Honduras “reckless.” Could well-placed lobbyists in Washington be forging U.S. foreign policy?

Lanny Davis was special counsel to President Bill Clinton from 1996 to 1998, functioning as lawyer, crisis manager and spokesman through Clinton’s various scandals. Davis has developed a lucrative specialty as a partner at Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe, offering a “unique ‘Legal Crisis Communications’ practice,” helping people embroiled in investigations or scandal. According to recent congressional filings, Davis is lobbying for the Honduran chapter of the Latin American Business Council. Zelaya had recently increased the Honduran minimum wage.

Davis testified before Congress on July 10, saying his clients “believe the best chance for a solution is the dialogue between Mr. Zelaya and President [Roberto] Micheletti, mediated by President [Oscar] Arias, that is now ongoing in Costa Rica.” That is, until the Arias sessions resulted in a call for the return of Zelaya. Coup spokesman Cesar Caceres said, “The mediation has been declared a failure.”

Davis continued before Congress, “No one wants bloodshed, and nobody should be inciting violence.” Yet a number of Zelaya supporters have been killed, and there has been a crackdown on independent media, making information hard to obtain.

I reached Zelaya by phone in Nicaragua, near the Honduran border, and asked about Obama’s reluctance to use the word coup. He told me, “Everyone in the world—governments, international organizations, all the lawyers and judges in the world—have called the fact of capturing a president at 5 a.m. without trying him, shooting arms, that’s a coup d’etat. No one doubts that that’s a coup d’etat.”

Bennett Ratcliff, another Clinton White House connection, was a key adviser to the coup leader, Micheletti, during the Costa Rica negotiations. According to Ratcliff’s firm’s bio, he “created TV and radio advertisements for President Bill Clinton’s 1992 and 1996 Presidential campaigns.” Firm partner Melissa Ratcliff “worked as communications strategist for The White House during the Clinton Administration.” Their firm promises “access to key decision makers and influencers.”

With similar anti-Zelaya goals comes lobbyist Roger Noriega, George W. Bush’s assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs and former staff member of Sen. Jesse Helms. Noriega is lobbying on behalf of the Honduran Association of Maquiladoras, owners of low-wage factories that export goods, principally to the U.S.

Both Noriega and Davis represent business interests that benefit from “free trade” with the U.S. Zelaya, elected originally with the support of the Honduran business community, has shifted to more populist policies. He recently joined the emerging Latin American trade bloc ALBA, organized by countries like Venezuela and Bolivia to counter the economic dominance of the United States.

During Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, Davis repeated the charge that Obama would not be capable of handling a crisis “call at 3 a.m.”

In his recent visit to Africa, Obama declared the importance of democracy. Yet here in his own backyard is a genuine coup d’etat that his administration has done little to reverse. Obama will be in Mexico to meet President Felipe Calderon and Prime Minister Stephen Harper of Canada on Aug. 9. Honduras is expected to be on the agenda. The 3 a.m. call has come—who will have Obama’s ear? Democracy, or the special interests’ hired guns, against whom Obama promised change?

Denis Moynihan contributed research to this column.

Amy Goodman is the host of “Democracy Now!,” a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on more than 750 stations in North America. She is the co-author of “Standing Up to the Madness: Ordinary Heroes in Extraordinary Times,” recently released in paperback.

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/a_coup_for_lobbyists_at_the_white_house/

Obama’s Military Is Spying on U.S. Peace Groups

By Amy Goodman

Anti-war activists in Olympia, Wash., have exposed Army spying and infiltration of their groups, as well as intelligence gathering by the Air Force, the federal Capitol Police and the Coast Guard.

The infiltration appears to be in direct violation of the Posse Comitatus Act preventing U.S. military deployment for domestic law enforcement and may strengthen congressional demands for a full-scale investigation of U.S. intelligence activities, like the Church Committee hearings of the 1970s.

Brendan Maslauskas Dunn asked the city of Olympia for documents or e-mails about communications between the Olympia police and the military relating to anarchists, Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) or the Industrial Workers of the World (Dunn’s union). Dunn received hundreds of documents. One e-mail contained reference to a “John J. Towery II,” who activists discovered was the same person as their fellow activist “John Jacob.”

Dunn told me: “John Jacob was actually a close friend of mine, so this week has been pretty difficult for me. He said he was an anarchist. He was really interested in SDS. He got involved with Port Militarization Resistance (PMR), with Iraq Vets Against the War. He was a kind person. He was a generous person. So it was really just a shock for me.”

“Jacob” told the activists he was a civilian employed at Fort Lewis Army Base and would share information about base activities that could help the PMR organize rallies and protests against public ports being used for troop and Stryker military vehicle deployment to Iraq and Afghanistan. Since 2006, PMR activists have occasionally engaged in civil disobedience, blocking access to the port.

Larry Hildes, an attorney representing Washington activists, says the U.S. attorney prosecuting the cases against them, Brian Kipnis, specifically instructed the Army not to hand over any information about its intelligence-gathering activities, despite a court order to do so.

Which is why Dunn’s request to Olympia and the documents he obtained are so important.

The military is supposed to be barred from deploying on U.S. soil, or from spying on citizens. Christopher Pyle, now a professor of politics at Mount Holyoke College, was a military intelligence officer. He recalled: “In the 1960s, Army intelligence had 1,500 plainclothes agents [and some would watch] every demonstration of 20 people or more. They had a giant warehouse in Baltimore full of information on the law-abiding activities of American citizens, mainly protest politics.” Pyle later investigated the spying for two congressional committees: “As a result of those investigations, the entire U.S. Army Intelligence Command was abolished, and all of its files were burned. Then the Senate Intelligence Committee wrote the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 to stop the warrantless surveillance of electronic communications.”

Reps. Barbara Lee, D-Calif., Rush Holt, D-N.J., and others are pushing for a new, comprehensive investigation of all U.S. intelligence activities, of the scale of the Church Committee hearings, which exposed widespread spying on and disruption of legal domestic groups, attempts at assassination of foreign heads of state, and more.

Demands mount for information on and accountability for Vice President Dick Cheney’s alleged secret assassination squad, President George W. Bush’s warrantless wiretapping program, and the CIA’s alleged misleading of Congress. But the spying in Olympia occurred well into the Obama administration (and may continue today). President Barack Obama supports retroactive immunity for telecom companies involved in the wiretapping, and has maintained Bush-era reliance on the state secrets privilege. Lee and Holt should take the information uncovered by Brendan Dunn and the Olympia activists and get the investigations started now.

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20090728_obamas_military_is_spying_on_us_peace_groups/