There is none as Irish as Barry Obama?

In Ollie's Pub, Moneygall, Co. Offaly

Well Obama, came, saw and conquered in Ireland last weekend. The first American President to come to Ireland was John Fitzgerald Kennedy in 1963. His reception was rapturous both as the first Irish American President and first Catholic President of the United States. Since then 5 more Presidents have visited Ireland. Four of them have claimed Irish roots, each of them came on whistle-stop tours full of photo-ops for the folks back home, each of them came the year before an election and, while we must give Barack Obama the benefit of the doubt, none of them made a second trip.

Clinton and Regan had fairly obvious Irish roots but it may surprise you to know that Richard Nixon was also of Irish descent from the Quaker Milhous family from Co. Kildare. Indeed 16 of the 43 Presidents of the United States have been of Irish descent but it may also surprise you that the majority were of Ulster –Scots background. They were Andrew Jackson, James Knox Polk, James Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, Ulysses S. Grant, Chester A. Arthur, Grover Cleveland, Benjamin Harrison, William McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson.



So Barack made the pilgrimage to one of his ancestral homelands and the fact that Kenya is still waiting may reflect the small size of the Kenyan vote in America – over 40 million Americans claim Irish descent. So on Monday 23rd May 2011 the birthplace of the president's great-great-great-grandfather celebrated its brief moment of glory. A hundred flags of Ireland and the United States were raised this afternoon on the only street in Moneygall, Co. Offaly.

Unlike the Kenyan father he hardly knew Barack Obama’s Irish descent is on his remarkable mother, Ann Dunham’s side of the family. He is descended six generations on from Falmouth Kearney who was born about 1830 in Moneygall, Ireland and died 21 March 1878. He immigrated to the U.S. on the ship Marmion on 20 March 1850, along with his sister Margaret Cleary and her husband, William. Moneygall today is a small Sraidbhaile (Street village in Gaelic or one horse town in American) in Co. Offaly and like so many of the impoverished inhabitants of the time they were fleeing the famine or as it is called in Gaelic, An Gorta Mór – The Great Hunger.

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2010/07/gorta-mor-irelands-great-hunger.html

Two years after he settled in the US, Falmouth married Charlotte Holloway. In 1860 they were living in Deerfield, Ohio; the 1870 census has them in Tipton County, Indiana. Charlotte Kearney died in 1877, followed by her husband a little over a year later. They left three sons, and five daughters. One of those girls, Mary Anne, had a grandson called Stanley Armour Dunham. His daughter gave birth in August 1961 to a boy called Barack Hussein Obama.

Canon Stephen Neill from Cloughjordan, who carried out the initial research into President Barack Obama's links with Moneygall, was on hand for the flag raising ceremony and was no doubt gratified at both the visit and how the President introduced himself later when he made a speech in College Green in the centre of Dublin. "My name is Barack Obama, of the Moneygall Obamas and I've come home to find the apostrophe we lost somewhere along the way," he said.


Moneygall, Co. Offaly - centre of the world for 90 minutes

The Stars and Stripes flew beside the Irish flag where the President was met by huge cheers of "Obama, Obama" – on the same spot where President Bill Clinton wooed onlookers in 1995. It was good to see Barry O’Bama deliver his speech in front of the original Irish Parliament Building. It should be the future Irish Parliament building; maybe a bankrupt bank will sell it cheaply?

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2008/10/irish-parliament-building.html

In the speech Barack Obama last night drew upon the memory of John F Kennedy and Bill Clinton to deliver a powerful message of determination and hope. Capping a momentous day with an address to a crowd of 40,000 in Dublin, he said Ireland's best days are still to come. Speaking of the ties between Ireland and the United States, he said he had "come home".


Barack and Michelle Obama in College Green, Dublin

However, his visit was cut short when he flew on to London the same day to avoid an ash cloud from the latest Icelandic volcano eruption. There was genuine warmth and spontaneity in his speech in Dublin even if the introductory speech by the Irish Taoiseach Enda Kenny slightly betrayed the fact that his Irish host was more used to making speeches from the backs of trucks in Co. Mayo, which he represents in the Irish Parliament.


Obama (with a toilet plunger!) in the 2003 Chicago St. Patrick's Day Parade - He joked (?) during his speech in Ireland that they were so marginalised by the organisers that they were last in the parade, just ahead of the roadsweepers cleaning up

There is a strange irony that Barack Obama was coming to Ireland to claim his Irish roots so he would look less foreign in the eyes of America. And whilst his speech was infectious and appreciated by the home crowd it was not aimed at them. It was the first hustings for Barack Obama’s 2012 election campaign and this time Barack won’t need Joe Biden with him to connect with the Irish vote.

Nakba

Today marks the 63rd anniversary of the Nakba - the ethnic cleansing of Palestine. In human terms, 1948 saw the mass deportation of 700,000 Palestinians from their cities and villages, massacres of civilians, and the razing to the ground of hundreds of Palestinian villages. Mention of the word 'Nakba' in Israeli textbooks was banned by the Israeli Ministry of Education in 2009. The vast majority of Palestinian refugees, both those outside the 1949 armistice lines at the war's conclusion and those internally displaced, were barred by the newly declared state of Israel from returning to their homes or reclaiming their property. This dispossession and dispersal of the Palestinian people is known to them as al-Nakba, meaning "the catastrophe," or "the disaster.

The reporting of the continued suffering of the Palestinian people in the Prison of Gaza and in the Occupied West Bank riddled with illegal settlements occupied by Jewish racists from Brooklyn has been abysmal with absolutely no attempt at explanation and the usual photogenic IDF Spokesperson explaining that Israel only shot “very specific targets.” This of course in the occupied Golan Heights and in “Shabba Farms”, two villages equally illegally occupied by Israel when it withdrew from Lebanon.


Palestinian girl in a protest on Nakba Day 2010 in Hebron, West Bank. Her sign says "Surely we will return, Palestine." There are 788,108 Palestinian refugees registered with UNRWA in the West Bank, most of whom are the descendants of people whose families hail from areas incorporated into Israel in 1948.

Today, the UN reports that there are more than 4.75 million registered Palestinian refugees living in Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, the West Bank and Gaza. Of these, nearly 1.4 million live in 58 UN-operated refugee camps. The total number of Palestinian refugees worldwide is estimated to be 5.5 million—the largest population of refugees in the world. Yet Israel has consistently refused to recognize the Palestinians’ right of return, as expressed in UN General Assembly Resolution 194, Article 11. Moreover, Israel’s expulsion and internal displacement of Palestinians continues to this day, albeit on a much smaller scale than in 1948. In a very real sense, the Nakba never really ended.

I wrote last December in relation to the tragedy of Gaza;

“Let us not forget in our PC world why Gaza exists is two words never used in Israel; Ethnic Cleansing. Gaza exists because the Palestinians who lived in Ashkelon and the fields around it – Askalaan in Arabic – were dispossessed from their lands in 1948 when Israel was created and ended up on the beaches of Gaza. They – or their children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren – are among the one and a half million Palestinian refugees crammed into the cesspool of Gaza, 80 per cent of whose families once lived in what is now Israel. This, historically, is the real story: most of the people of Gaza don't come from Gaza.

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2010/12/free-gaza-free-palestine-free.html

The Wikileaks cables show the complete lack of concern by American diplomats for the people of Palestine, they confirm that America is acting in this region with no moral purpose when it come to the Palestinian people and that it is utterly uninterested in the so called “Two States Solution” allowing Israel to set 100% of the agenda to stop a Palestinian State being a reality. Better to withdraw its 1.1 Bn Dollar military aid to Israel which is totally contrary to the US’s strategic interests. Better to withdraw its $1. 0 Bn a year aid to Egypt which allows the Pharaoh Murbarak and the military elite to run a repressive farce pretending to be a democracy. Why, America will really be surprised when Egypt implodes and the US loses another great ally? Far better to cut both these payments by America’s hard pressed taxpayer and divert the resources to addressing the results and righting the wrongs of the 1948 ethnic cleansing and making the “Two Nation” solution a reality.

Malnourished children, restrictions on Gaza-fisherman, lacklustre sewage and water systems, and the confiscation of $4.5 billion in international aid will not improve Israel’s security in the long run. It will only increase the popularity of the Hamas Movement, decrease the effects of counterterrorism throughout the globe, and create the next generation of dangerous faith-based ideologues.”



Well the world has moved on since I wrote that. It may now be time for the State of Israel to start abiding by the concept of universal human rights. Not only would such activities have the symbolic effect of furthering international unity towards tolerance and respect (despite religion, ethnicity, or background), but may strengthen Israel’s right to exist by severely diminishing Arab hostility towards the Jewish people.



For there is only one Middle Eastern “rogue state” which has attacked each and every one of its neighbours including destroying the EU funded infrastructure of Gaza, dismembering Lebanon, occupying the sovereign territory of Syria, occupying East Jerusalem and the West Bank which it is illegaly settling and applying collective punishment to the civilian population (in defiance of the “quaint” Geneva Conventions), which has not signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation treaty and which has developed nuclear weapons. And did I mention that its previous Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, had personally led a terrorist massacre of women and children? During the raid on Qibya, Jordan in 1953, a total of 69 Palestinians were killed and forty-five houses, a school, and a mosque were blown-up. The act was condemned by the US State Department, the UN Security Council, and by Jewish communities worldwide. And the previous Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s father was Quartermaster of the Irgun terrorist organisation (you know the guys who killed both the British and UN Peace Envoys and hanged three British soldiers including a Jewish lad from the East End). Former Foreign Minister’s Tzipi Livni’s father was the leader of the Irgun group which carried out the King David Hotel massacre which killed 92 people including 17 Jews.




King David Hotel massacre

And did I mention that another previous Israeli Prime Minister, Menachim Begin, was the Irgun leader who gave the order? But less of rogue states with terrorist links whose support by the US is entirely contrary to America’s strategic interests. But perhaps Barack might suggest to Israel’s leadership that if it is to survive and prosper it will not do so by military means and it is now a time for change?

I am not anti- Jewish, indeed quite the opposite. I document elsewhere in this Blog the Jewish communities of Prague, Krakow, Marrakech and Kos and the killing machine of Auschwitz-Birkenau. I am not anti-Semitic and abhor racism in all its forms. I do not equate Zionism with racism and I would never support in any circumstances any boycott of Israel, no matter how it is dressed up. I would never support it because I understand the resonance in Jewish history of boycotts and recognise that Theodor Herzl’s advocacy of Zionism was a valid response to the bullying and suffering Jewish people were suffering in 19th Century Europe. After the events of The Shoah there is no way I could look a Jewish person in the eye and argue in favour of assimilation, even though 60% of world Jewry lives outside of Israel.



But you do not fight racism and oppression by yourselves becoming the racists and the oppressors. Israel must acknowledge its terrorist origins and the part played by massacres of the Palestinians in the exodus of Arabs from Palestine, acknowledge the evil of the Deir Yassin massacre: the murder of roughly 100 Palestinians villagers by Zionist paramilitaries on April 9, 1948, and the other indefensible events in that tragic period.

For the only way forward for Israel is a genuine Two State Solution reverting to the 1949 Line of Control and internationalising Jerusalem. There is no long term strategic interest for the United States in having Israel as its proxy military power in the Middle East and for Israel to rely on military might subsidised by a foreign power for its long term security. And for the United States perhaps when the sugar rush from the killing of Bin Laden has worn off perhaps it might reflect that the two greatest threats to its own security come from its own greed. It’s greed for oil which has made it dependant on the Saudi tyranny and its greed for cocaine which has created violent corrupt narco states in South America, in North America (Mexico) and in Afghanistan. Perhaps the greedy and incontinent consumer has to take some responsibility for the consequences of their own prolifigate greed? When considering Bin Laden perhaps the US and Israel should remember that before 1948 “Nakba” referred to the cynical partition of the Arab World into dependant statelets by France and Britain, two of the most enthusiastic interventionists in Libya. Not for nothing did Osama Bin Laden start his denunciations with the shameful Treaty of Sevres – a murderous medievalist he may have been but mindless he was not.



There is no going back; the Arab Spring will affect the Arab World, Israel and the children of the Nakba equally. Israel and Modern Judaism will have to reflect if a people who greet each other with “Shalom” and part with the words 'l'chayim' are really on a sustainable path to peace and security? And if the United States want to move on from the immoral and failed neo-colonial policy it has adopted to the Arab World and Islam then it should not despair because somebody called Thomas Jefferson has already come up with a better policy;

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed;”

Barack Obama: We cannot afford to waste money on things we don't need

"This is a moment of challenge for our country. But we've experienced great trials before. And with every test, each generation has found the capacity to not only endure, but to prosper -- to discover great opportunity in the midst of great crisis. That is what we can and must do today. And I am absolutely confident that is what we will do. I'm confident that at this defining moment, we will prove ourselves worthy of the sacrifice of those who came before us, and the promise of those who will come after." - President Barack Obama



From the day I took office, I knew that solving this crisis would not be easy, nor would it happen overnight. And we will continue to face difficult days in the months ahead. But I also believe that we will get through this – that if we act swiftly and boldly and responsibly, the United States of America will emerge stronger and more prosperous than it was before.

Of course, like every family going through hard times, our country must make tough choices. In order to pay for the things we need, we cannot waste money on the things we don't.

My administration inherited a $1.3 trillion budget deficit, the largest in history. And we've inherited a budgeting process as irresponsible as it is unsustainable. For years, as Wall Street used accounting tricks to conceal costs and avoid responsibility, Washington did, too. These kinds of irresponsible budgets – and inexcusable practices – are now in the past. For the first time in many years, my administration has produced a budget that represents an honest reckoning of where we are and where we need to go.

It's also a budget that begins to make the hard choices that we've avoided for far too long – a strategy that cuts where we must and invests where we need. That's why it includes $2trn in deficit reduction while making historic investments in America's future. That's why it reduces discretionary spending for non-defense programs as a share of the economy by more than 10 per cent over the next decade - to the lowest level since they began keeping these records nearly half a century ago. And that's why on Wednesday I signed a presidential memorandum to end unnecessary no-bid contracts and to dramatically reform the way contracts are awarded – reforms that will save the American people up to $40bn each year.
Finally, because we cannot bring our deficit down or grow our economy without tackling the skyrocketing cost of health care, I held a health care summit on Thursday to begin the long-overdue process of reform.

Our ideas and opinions about how to achieve this reform will vary, but our goal must be the same: quality, affordable health care for every American that no longer overwhelms the budgets of families, businesses and of our government.

Taken from the US President Barack Obama's weekly address to the nation
- 7th March 2009

Stay granted for Troy Davis!

Troy and his Mother

Just an hour and a half before Troy Davis' scheduled execution last night, the US Supreme Court stepped in and granted a stay until Monday September 29th! The court will decide whether or not to hear Davis' appeal on Monday.

Thank you to all who took action with us to stop this injustice. We hope the US Supreme Court makes the right decision next week. In the mean time, please continue to contact the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles as they can grant clemency at any time.

For updates, please visit http://www.amnestyusa.org/troy
Thanks for you support!

US Supreme Court Order

(ORDER LIST: 554 U.S.)
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 23, 2008
ORDER IN PENDING CASE
08-66 DAVIS, TROY A. V. GEORGIA
(O8A241)
The application for stay of execution of sentence of death
presented to Justice Thomas and by him referred to the Court is
granted pending the disposition of the petition for a writ of
certiorari. Should the petition for a writ of certiorari be
denied, this stay shall terminate automatically. In the event
the petition for a writ of certiorari is granted, the stay shall
terminate upon the issuance of the mandate of this Court.

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

'Where is the justice for me?'
The case of Troy Davis, facing execution in Georgia

I think this country would be much better off if we did not have capital punishment... I really think it's a very unfortunate part of our judicial system and I would feel much, much better if more states would really consider whether they think the benefits outweigh the very serious potential injustice, because in these cases the emotions are very, very high on both sides and to have stakes as high as you do in these cases, there is a special potential for error.

US Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens

Introduction

Troy Anthony Davis has been on death row in Georgia for more than 15 years for the murder of a police officer he maintains he did not commit. Given that all but three of the witnesses who testified against Troy Davis at his trial have since recanted or contradicted their testimony amidst allegations that some of it had been made under police duress, there are serious and as yet unanswered questions surrounding the reliability of his conviction and the state's conduct in obtaining it. As the case currently stands, the government's pursuit of the death penalty contravenes international safeguards which prohibit the execution of anyone whose guilt is not based on "clear and convincing evidence leaving no room for an alternative explanation of the facts".

Amnesty International does not know if Troy Davis is guilty or innocent of the crime for which he is facing execution. As an abolitionist organization, it opposes his death sentence either way. It nevertheless believes that this is one in a long line of cases in the USA that should give even ardent supporters of the death penalty pause for thought. For it provides further evidence of the danger, inherent in the death penalty, of irrevocable error. As the Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court wrote in 1993, "It is an unalterable fact that our judicial system, like the human beings who administer it, is fallible." Or as a US federal judge said in 2006, "The assessment of the death penalty, however well designed the system for doing so, remains a human endeavour with a consequent risk of error that may not be remediable."

The case of Troy Davis is a reminder of the legal hurdles that death row inmates must overcome in the USA in order to obtain remedies in the appeal courts. In this regard, Amnesty International fears that Troy Davis' avenues for judicial relief have been all but closed off. In particular, he is caught in a trap set by US Congress a decade ago when it withdrew funding from post-conviction defender organizations in 1995 and passed the Anti-terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act in 1996.


Troy and his Sisters


This report outlines the case of Troy Davis. Executive clemency will be his last hope if the courts prove unwilling or unable to provide a meaningful remedy. Time is running out.

The inescapable risk of error

A legal regime relying on the death penalty will inevitably execute innocent people -- not too often, one hopes, but undoubtedly sometimes. Mistakes will be made because it is simply not possible to do something this difficult perfectly, all the time. Any honest proponent of capital punishment must face this fact.

Thirty years after the USA resumed executions, any notion that the US capital justice system is free from error or inequity should by now have been dispelled. A landmark study published in 2000, for example, concluded that US death sentences are "persistently and systematically fraught with error". The study revealed that appeal courts had found serious errors -- those requiring a judicial remedy -- in 68 per cent of cases. The most common errors in US capital cases were "(1) egregiously incompetent defense lawyers who didn't even look for - and demonstrably missed - important evidence that the defendant was innocent or did not deserve to die; and (2) police or prosecutors who did discover that kind of evidence but suppressed it, again keeping it from the jury." The study expressed "grave doubt" as to whether the courts catch all such error.

In Troy Davis' case, his appeal lawyers have argued that his trial counsel failed to conduct an adequate investigation of the state's evidence, including allegations that some witnesses had been coerced by the police, or to present full and effective witness testimony of their own (the prosecution presented 30 witnesses in total, the defence presented six). They have also claimed that the state presented perjured testimony as well as evidence tainted by a police investigation which had used coercive tactics, including against children taken into custody for questioning. As shown below, alleged police coercion is a common theme that emerges from the affidavits that various witnesses have provided since the trial when recanting earlier statements.

Perhaps the starkest indicator of the fallibility of the US capital justice system is the fact that since the US Supreme Court approved new death penalty laws in 1976, more than 100 individuals have been released from death rows around the country on grounds of innocence. The cases of people like Anthony Porter -- who came 48 hours from execution in 1998 after more than 16 years on death row in Illinois before being proved innocent by a group of journalism students who happened to study his case -- stand as an indictment of a flawed system. In April 2002 in Illinois, the 14-member Commission appointed by the governor to examine that state's capital justice system in view of the number of wrongful convictions in capital cases there, reported that it was "unanimous in the belief that no system, given human nature and frailties, could ever be devised or constructed that would work perfectly and guarantee absolutely that no innocent person is ever again sentenced to death".


US Supreme Court

In similar vein, in January 2007, after a process in which it held five public hearings and took evidence from a wide range of witnesses, a Death Penalty Study Commission established by the New Jersey legislature recommended abolition of the death penalty in that state. The Commission had failed to find any compelling evidence that the death penalty served any legitimate penological purpose, and it concluded that only abolition could eliminate the risk of irreversible arbitrariness and error. New Jersey Death Penalty Study Commission Report, January 2007.

Yet still some maintain that exonerations of condemned inmates are a sign of the system working. Among those who have perpetuated this myth is US Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. Such exonerations, he has contended, demonstrate "not the failure of the system but its success". Justice Scalia added:

"Like other human institutions, courts and juries are not perfect. One cannot have a system of criminal punishment without accepting the possibility that someone will be punished mistakenly. That is a truism, not a revelation. But with regard to the punishment of death in the current American system, that possibility has been reduced to an insignificant minimum."

It is disturbing that anyone, let alone a Justice of the Supreme Court, should consider as "insignificant" the risk of wrongful convictions in capital cases given what is known about the repeated failures of the system. The risk was not insignificant to the more than 100 individuals sentenced to death since 1976 who spent, on average, more than nine years between conviction and exoneration.(11) Factors that contributed to these wrongful convictions include prosecutorial or police misconduct and inadequate legal representation.

Of particular relevance in Troy Davis's case is the question of the reliability of the witness testimony used by the state to send him to death row. The problem of unreliable witness testimony as a source of error in capital cases has long been recognized. For example, a major study published in 1987 found that:

"By far the most frequent cause of erroneous convictions in our catalogue of 350 cases was error by witnesses; more than half of the cases (193) involved errors of this sort. Sometimes such errors occurred in conjunction with other errors, but often they were the primary or even the sole cause of the wrongful conviction. In one-third of the cases (117), the erroneous witness testimony was in fact perjured."

In addition, "clear injustices perpetrated by the police compose nearly a quarter of the errors" identified in this study. The majority of the error attributable to the police came in the form of coerced statements, with the remainder accounted for by negligence and over-zealous police work. Such misconduct was a major contributor to the wrongful conviction of four Illinois death row inmates, who were pardoned by the state governor in 2003 on the basis that their confessions had been tortured out of them by the police. The final report of the New Jersey Death Penalty Study Commission, released on 2 January 2007, noted the fallibility of eyewitness testimony in reaching the conclusion that "the penological interest in executing a small number of persons guilty of murder is not sufficiently compelling to justify the risk of making an irreversible mistake". For these and other reasons, the Commission has recommended abolition of the death penalty in New Jersey.

The problem of unreliable witness testimony, some of it exacerbated or caused by police misconduct, has been illustrated in a number of the other cases of those released since 1976 from death rows in the USA on the grounds of innocence. For example:

Thomas Gladish, Richard Greer, Ronald Keine and Clarence Smith were exonerated in 1976 in New Mexico two years after being sentenced to death. A newspaper investigation uncovered perjury by the prosecution's key witness, perjured identification given under police pressure, and the use of poorly administered lie detector tests.


The way we were - Electric Chair at Sing Sing

Earl Charles was sentenced to death in Georgia in 1975 and was on death row for three years before being exonerated. At his trial, two eyewitnesses identified him as the murderer. However, it was later revealed that the police had used suggestive photo line-up techniques and not revealed that the eyewitnesses had pointed to others in the line-up as possible suspects.

Larry Hicks was acquitted at a retrial in 1980, two years after being sentenced to death in Indiana. At the retrial, evidence showed that eyewitness testimony that had been used against him at the original trial had been perjured.

Anthony Brown was acquitted at a retrial in Florida in 1986. Three years earlier he had been sentenced to death on the basis of evidence from a co-defendant who received a life sentence. At the retrial, the co-defendant admitted that his original testimony had been perjured.

Neil Ferber was released in 1986, almost four years after he was sentenced to death in Pennsylvania. The state declined to retry him after, among other things, it emerged that a jailhouse informant had given perjured testimony at the first trial.
Timothy Hennis was acquitted at a retrial in North Carolina in 1989, three years after being sentenced to death for murder. At the retrial, the defence discredited the witnesses who had testified at the original trial and pointed to a neighbour of Hennis who could have been responsible for the crime.

Charles Smith was acquitted in 1991 in Indiana, eight years after being sentenced to death. At the retrial, the defence presented evidence that witnesses at his original trial had given perjured testimony.

Federico Macias was sentenced to death in Texas in 1984 on the basis of the testimony of a co-defendant and jailhouse informants. His conviction was overturned, a grand jury refused to indict him again because of lack of evidence. He was released in 1993.

Walter McMillian was released in Alabama in 1993, six years after being sentenced to death. His conviction was overturned after it was shown that three of the state's witnesses had given perjured testimony.

Ronald Williamson was released in 1999. He was sentenced to death in Oklahoma in 1987. Among other things, his trial lawyer had failed to question the motive of a jailhouse informant who alleged that Williamson had confessed to the murder.
Steve Manning had charges against him dropped in 2000. He had been sentenced to death in Illinois in 1993 on the basis of the word of a jailhouse informant who testified that Manning had confessed to him in jail.

Charles Fain was released in August 2001 after charges against him were dropped. He had been sentenced to death in Idaho in 1983. The evidence against him included the word of two jailhouse informants, who said that Fain had confessed to the murder.
Joseph Amrine was released in Missouri in 2003, 17 years after being sentenced to death for murder on the basis of the testimony of fellow inmates, who later recanted their testimony.(16)

Alan Gell was acquitted in North Carolina in 2004, six years after being sentenced to death. At his retrial, the defence presented evidence that the state's two key witnesses had lied at the original trial.

Stop the imminent execution of Troy Davis!

Troy Davis is scheduled to be executed by the state of Georgia on September 23, even though his serious claims of innocence have never been heard in court.

Take action right now to stop this execution: http://takeaction.amnestyusa.org/site/lookup.asp?c=jhKPIXPCIoE&b=4466021

Troy Davis was convicted of murder solely on the basis of witness testimony, and seven of the nine non-police witnesses have since recanted or changed their testimony, several citing police coercion. Others have signed affidavits implicating one of the remaining two witnesses as the actual killer. But due to an increasingly restrictive appeals process, none of this new evidence has ever been heard in court.

Please take action right away to stop this injustice. And then FORWARD THIS ACTION TO YOUR FRIENDS!
We really need to get as many messages as we can to the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles to stop this travesty of justice.

As always, thanks for taking action.

-----------

More info on Troy's case: www.amnestyusa.org/troydavis

In July 2007 after a six-hour hearing that had been scheduled for just an hour, the George State Board of Pardons and Paroles late Monday announced a 90-day stay of execution for Troy Anthony Davis, a Georgia man who had been scheduled to die on Tuesday for the 1989 murder of a Savannah, Ga., police officer.

At the hearing, five witnesses gave significantly different evidence than they did in the 1991 trial that convicted Davis. In affidavits signed after the sentencing, multiple witnesses said police pressure forced them to wrongly implicate Davis.

Jason Ewart, Davis's lawyer, has long argued that the courts have ignored new developments in the case, including the fact that seven of nine main witnesses recanted their testimony. The Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA), a federal law passed in 1996 to limit appeals and expedite death sentences, forced federal courts to reject Davis's pleas on procedural grounds, said legal experts.


"People talk about one recantation and they're skeptical about it," Ewart said after the Board's announcement. "But when you get many and they're very similar, people start to have questions."

Davis, 38, a former coach in the Savannah Police Athletic League who had signed up for the Marines, was sentenced to die in 1991 after being convicted of killing Mark Allen MacPhail, an off-duty police officer, in a Savannah parking lot. His fight to overturn his conviction has been hampered by a cut by the federal government in state defender organizations' funding, as well as by the passage of the restrictive AEDPA.

On Friday, Georgia Superior Court Judge Penny Haas Freesemann rejected Davis's last-minute appeal, saying that the recanted testimony did not provide justification for a new trial. Georgia prosecutors have maintained that Davis has already had opportunities in court to present his evidence.

Ewart said the board's decision gives his defense team time to gather more evidence before likely making another appearance before the board, which can commute Davis' sentence to life in prison or allow the execution to proceed.

"Obviously it's way too early and we have to get to work, but we have some breathing room," Ewart said. He added that the overwhelming media attention kept several witnesses on Davis's behalf from testifying today.

Ewart lauded the testimony at the hearing of civil rights advocate U.S. Rep. John Lewis, the Georgia Democrat who was severely beaten during civil rights marches in the 1960s. "I do not know Troy Anthony Davis," Lewis said in testimony, according to prepared remarks. "I do not know if he is guilty of the charges of which he has been convicted. But I do know that nobody should be put to death based on the evidence we now have in this case."


Davis was speaking by telephone with his sister, Martina Correia, when she learned of the Board's decision. He had already been moved to the death chamber, Correia said. "He was so elated, so prayerful, and he was thanking everyone for what they were doing for him," Correia said. "He's so grateful they're not going to kill him tomorrow."
,
The slain officer's widow, Joan MacPhail, decried the ruling. "I believe they are setting a precedent for all criminals that it is perfectly fine to kill a cop and get away with it," she said. "By making us wait, it's another sock in the stomach. It's tearing us up."

Bush Tours America To Survey Damage Caused By His Disastrous Presidency

Bush Tours America To Survey Damage Caused By His Disastrous Presidency

Only 186 days to go and counting! Hang in there America!