The Party for Socialism and Liberation’s La Riva/Puryear Presidential Campaign condemns the U.S. Supreme Court’s cowardly refusal to hear the appeal of Troy Davis, an innocent Black man on Georgia’s death row. The Court’s ruling was the final seal of approval needed for Georgia to commit another racist legal lynching.
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Following the trial, seven of the original nine prosecution witnesses recanted their testimony. Many have said that the police forced them to testify against Davis. In addition, several new witnesses emerged who said Davis was not guilty.
None of this mattered to prosecutors or courts. Officials in Georgia have ignored all of the exonerating evidence and pursued Davis’s execution with great zeal.
Davis’s case is indicative of the racist nature of the criminal “justice” system and the death penalty in the United States. In Georgia, people are 4.5 times more likely to be sentenced to death for killing whites as those convicted of killing Black people. Nationally, the ratio is even higher.
The death penalty in the United States is racist to the core. The majority of people executed are poor and oppressed. Black people make up less than 14 percent of the U.S. population, yet over 30 percent of all individuals executed since 1976 were Black.
The legal system does not want to get to the truth. It routinely refuses to question itself, even when lives are at stake. There are no checks and balances, appointed judges have the final say, and prosecutors fight using the power of the state to ensure every execution is carried out.
The system is stacked against Davis and all working-class people, especially African Americans. There is little room for retrials on guilt or innocence. A simple hearing could lead to Davis’s exoneration, yet even the country’s highest court refused him that.
Both the Democratic and Republican parties and their presidential candidates have said that capital punishment is a “crime deterrent.” But, in essence, the death penalty is nothing more than legal lynching by the capitalist state. This is something they will never admit.
The La Riva/Puryear campaign demands that the death penalty be abolished now. Our campaign knows that Troy Davis is innocent. We demand an immediate reprieve and, ultimately, his freedom. Davis should be allowed to return to his life and family.
Thousands of people around the world have participated in the campaign to save Davis. The people won the stay that forced the Supreme Court to contemplate hearing his case. Despite the Court’s criminal act, the struggle is not over yet. We must not give up.
Davis’s supporters have intoned at rallies across the country, “Justice matters!” Justice can only be served when he is freed and his conviction overturned.
The La Riva/Puryear campaign calls on all progressive people to intensify the struggle to save Davis’s life. Justice must be served before it is too late.
Stop the racist execution now! Save Troy Davis!
