Help save Troy Davis

I received this e-mail from Amnesty asking for support for Troy Davis on death row in the USA.  Please support.

Dear Friend,


Troy Davis has one last chance to save his own life.

He has faced 3 execution dates, despite the fact that most witnesses have recanted their testimony since he was convicted of murder 19 years ago.


On Wednesday, June 23, a U.S. Supreme Court-ordered evidentiary hearing will be held in Savannah, Georgia.

Stand with Amnesty. Demand justice for Troy Davis.

Troy was sentenced to death for the murder of a police officer in Savannah, a crime he maintains he did not commit. There was no physical evidence against him and the weapon used in the murder was never found.

The case against him consisted entirely of witness testimony. Since his trial, all but two of the nine state's non-police witnesses have recanted or contradicted their testimony, many alleging that police coerced their original statements.

But for years, appellate judges declined to let these witnesses appear in court, citing procedural rules and technicalities. Finally, last August, the U.S. Supreme Court ordered a new evidentiary hearing for Troy, deciding that he should have one last chance to prove his innocence before the state of Georgia tries again to put him to death.

However, at the hearing Troy must "clearly establish his innocence," which is an incredibly high legal standard.

Wednesday, June 23, Troy's life is on the line.

Join Amnesty. Denounce the death penalty for Troy Davis.

Regardless of the hearing's outcome, no execution should ever take place when there are so many doubts about guilt.

Georgia cannot afford to make such a mistake, and Amnesty International is urging state officials to do everything in their power to prevent injustice from taking place.

Thank you for taking action on behalf of Troy Davis.

In Solidarity,

Laura Moye
Death Penalty Abolition Campaign Director, Amnesty International USA

Mumia Abu-Jamal & the death penalty - Petition to President Obama

From Robert R. Bryan, lead attorney for Mumia Abu-Jamal:

Today I put online a petition for President Barack Obama regarding Mumia & the death penalty. I ask that you & your colleagues sign it as soon as possible.

Signers within the first few hours include Günter Grass, Nobel Prize winner in literature, Madame Danielle Mitterrand, former First Lady of France, Fatima Bhutto, Noam Chomsky, Ed Asner, etc.

I expect a decision next week from the U.S. Supreme Court on the question of the death penalty. Mumia & I are very concerned, because earlier this week the court denied relief in a similar case, Smith v. Spisak. Either we get a green light to proceed with the new jury trial we previously won on the question of death or life, or we are closer to an execution.

Robert R. Bryan
Law Offices of Robert R. Bryan
2088 Union Street, Suite 4
San Francisco, CA 94123-4117

Please sign this petition now



Details of Mumia's case online here

One thousand deaths too many

Siddique Abdullah Hasan is one of the Lucasville Five--a group of men railroaded onto death row in Ohio after a 1993 prison rebellion in which inmates at the Lucasville prison rose up against the abuses and arbitrary rules of prison guards and officials. In the article below, published originally on SocialistWorker.org Below, he writes about the July 21 execution of Marvallous Kenne--the 1,000th prisoner to be executed by lethal injection in the U.S. since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976.


IN SPITE of the milestone we have made with the election of the first African American president, it is sad that we have to witness, in the 21st century, in such an industrialized nation, that we've come to the point that we have executed the 1,000th person by way of lethal injection.

Is it really just a coincidence that Marvallous Keene in Ohio, the victim of this 1000th lethal injection, was a Black man?

As if lethal injection is a sanitized way of killing someone! The reality is that regardless of how the execution is being carried out, it still amounts to murder. Another murder that this society doesn't need to make society safe.


There are too many injustices and too much unfairness to support lethal injection or any other form of execution in this country. Too many minorities are being victimized by it. And you have veterinarians not willing to use some of the elements of the lethal injection on animals, yet this government is willing to use it on human beings. They are saying that animal life is more important to them than human life.


But it's hard to tell Ohio authorities, considering that they just killed two people last week--and that, between now and February 4, they have seven more executions scheduled.


What has really touched a nerve with me is that one of these people scheduled for execution on January 7 is a very good friend and dear Muslim brother of mine. Not only is he a dear friend of mine, but I'm also trying to see to it that he gets a proper Islamic burial.


What we need is for concerned citizens in Ohio and elsewhere to show some collective responsibility. We need a national movement to put this issue on the table so that Barack Obama's administration must turn their attention toward the criminal injustice system.

Should we wait on them? No! We should unify our efforts in the anti-death penalty movement and demand that Barack Obama's administration do something about it. We must come with an agenda and submit this agenda to Barack Obama and the Justice Department.


It is my hope and prayer that the soldiers in the abolitionist movement will step up to the plate and use every resource available at our disposal to not only fight the injustice of capital punishment in Texas, Georgia and Ohio, but work toward abolishing it on a national scale.



Imam Siddique Abdullah Hasan, from Ohio's Death Row
You can write to him at Siddique Abdullah Hasan, R130-559, Ohio State Penitentiary, 878 Coitsville-Hubbard Road, Youngstown, OH 44505.
His Web site is at http://www.freehasan.org/


Staughton Lynd's definitive account Lucasville: The Untold Story of a Prison Uprising is one of the best accounts I have read of the dynamics of prison and provides both a good account of the uprising and equally important how the criminal justice system's response was itself a perversion of justice. I really recommend it as a must read of prison literature. The Introduction can be downloaded for free from here.