The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People's new President, Ben Jealous, asks for your signature on a petition to Georgia Gov. Perdue to commute Troy's sentence to life and/or give him a new trial to prove his innocence

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Petition is at  http://www.naacp.com/

Despite a strong claim of innocence, Troy Davis, an African-American man from Georgia, faces execution for purportedly killing a police officer.

Seven out of nine witnesses have recanted or contradicted their testimony, no murder weapon was found, and no physical evidence links Davis to the crime. The Georgia Board of Pardon and Paroles has voted to deny clemency, yet Governor Sonny Perdue can still exercise leadership to ensure that Troy Davis's death sentence is commuted.

Please sign the petition asking him to support clemency for Davis.  The Georgia State Conference of the NAACP, which has been a leader in the fight for Troy Davis, will deliver the petition to the governor to ensure your voice is heard.

The case of Troy Davis highlights the need for criminal justice reform in the United States. The NAACP, with its long and accomplished history of promoting civil rights, is on the forefront of a movement to revolutionize the criminal justice system.

More than 60% of the people in prison are people of color. For Black males in their twenties, 1 in every 8 is in prison or jail on any given day. These trends have been intensified by the disproportionate impact of the "war on drugs," in which three-fourths of all persons in prison for drug offenses are people of color. The most extreme end of the criminal justice system, the implementation of the death penalty, is no exception: currently, more than 41% of those on death row are Black. We must fight for change.

Please help us fight for the rights -- and life -- of Troy Davis today.

Here are some facts about Davis's case:

Davis was sentenced to death for the murder of Police Officer Mark Allen MacPhail at a Burger King in Savannah, Georgia, a murder he maintains he did not commit. There was no physical evidence against him and the weapon used in the crime was never found. The case against him consisted entirely of witness testimony which contained inconsistencies even at the time of the trial. Since then, all but two of the state's non-police witnesses from the trial have recanted or contradicted their testimony. Many of these witnesses have stated in sworn affidavits that they were pressured or coerced by police into testifying or signing statements against Troy Davis.

One of the two witnesses who has not recanted his testimony is Sylvester "Red" Coles -- the principle alternative suspect, according to the defense, against whom there is new evidence implicating him as the gunman. Nine individuals have signed affidavits implicating Sylvester Coles.

Please urge Georgia Gov. Perdue to commute Davis's sentence and bring justice to this case by signing our petition today.

Evidence in case points to innocence of Davis
Civil rights organization asks members and supporters to petition Governor for redress

Troy Anthony Davis, 40, is set to be executed in the state of Georgia despite his strong claim of innocence.   He was sentenced to death for the murder of Savannah, Georgia police officer Mark Allen MacPhail on questionable eyewitness testimony.  Seven out of nine witnesses have recanted or contradicted their testimony, no murder weapon was found, and no physical evidence links Davis to the crime. The NAACP is calling on members and supporters to send letters and emails through its website or individually to Georgia Governor Sonny Perdue asking him to commute Davis's sentence.   The courts are refusing to consider the new evidence despite the overwhelming amount of facts that indicate that Mr. Davis, an African American man, is innocent.

"Governor Perdue must act quickly and decisively to prevent Troy Anthony Davis, a young African American man, from being executed for a crime he did not commit," stated NAACP President and CEO Benjamin Todd Jealous.  "Georgia is no exception to the rest of the country.   All over the nation, we have witnessed scores of persons wrongfully sentenced to death.   And far too often, African American men are overrepresented in their ranks.  The preponderance of evidence in Troy Anthony Davis's case points to his innocence.  Justice requires that we not turn a blind eye to killing an innocent man - a travesty that can never be rectified.   We must join together to raise our voice in a clarion call to Georgia Governor Perdue to stop this injustice and save Troy Anthony Davis's life. " Jealous said.

Tuesday, May 19th is Global Troy Anthony Davis Day, coordinated by Amnesty International, during which people from around the world will press for the commutation of Davis's sentence.

Racism continues to characterize the use of the death penalty in the United States.  Nearly 60 percent of all inmates on federal death row are racial or ethnic minorities.  While whites represent approximately 50 percent of murder victims in the U.S., they represent a disproportionate 80 percent of the murder victims for which current death row inmates have been sentenced.  Critics say this raises the question of whether, in the aggregate, the judicial system places a higher value on the lives of white victims.  The United States is one of only a few countries – China, Iran and Saudi Arabia – that still sanctions the murder of its prisoners. 

"This practice of executing Americans is not only morally wrong but makes no common sense," states Jealous.  It costs millions of dollars more to execute someone than it does for them to spend life in prison.  This is money that could be better spent investigating homicide cases and solving crime.  We must end our country's barbaric practice that is now disfavored by most nations in the world," said Jealous.

Founded in 1909, the NAACP is the nation's oldest and largest civil rights organization.  Its members throughout the United States and the world are the premier advocates for civil rights in their communities, conducting voter mobilization and monitoring equal opportunity in the public and private sectors.

Individuals can send emails to Governor Perdue by visiting NAACP.org.

Contact:  Leila McDowell Lmcdowell@naacpnet.org  

(202) 463-2940 ext 1005

Submitter: Stephen Fox

Submitters Website: https://www.facebook.com/groups/592985284186083/

Submitters Bio:

Early in the 2016 Primary campaign, I started a Facebook group: Bernie Sanders: Advice and Strategies to Help Him Win! As the primary season advanced, we shifted the focus to advancing Bernie's legislation in the Senate, particularly the most critical one, to protect Oak Flat, sacred to the San Carlos Apaches, in the Tonto National Forest, from John McCain's efforts to privatize this national forest and turn it over to Rio Tinto Mining, an Australian mining company whose record by comparison makes Monsanto look like altar boys, to be developed as North America's largest copper mine. This is monstrous and despicable, and yet only Bernie's Save Oak Flat Act (S2242) stands in the way of this diabolical plan.

We added "2020" to the title.


I am an art gallery owner in Santa Fe since 1980 selling Native American painting and NM landscapes, specializing in modern Native Ledger Art.


I have always been intensely involved in politics, going back to the mid's 1970's, being a volunteer lobbyist in the US Senate for the Secretary General of the United Nations, then a "snowball-in-hell" campaign for US Senate in NM in the late 70's, and for the past 20 years have worked extensively to pressure the FDA to rescind its approval for aspartame, the neurotoxic artificial sweetener metabolized as formaldehyde. This may be becoming a reality to an extent in California, which, under Proposition 65, is considering requiring a mandatory Carcinogen label on all aspartame products, although all bureaucracies seem to stall under any kind of corporate pressure.


Bills to ban aspartame were in the State Senates of New Mexico and Hawaii, but were shut down by corporate lobbyists (particularly Monsanto lobbyists in Hawaii and Coca Cola lobbyists in New Mexico).


For several years, I was the editor of New Mexico Sun News, and my letters to the editor and op/eds in 2016 have appeared in NM, California, Wisconsin, New York, Maryland, the Christian Science Monitor, USA Today, and many international papers, on the subject of consumer protection. Our best issue was 10 days before Obama won in 2008, when we published a special early edition of the paper declaring that Obama Wins! This was the top story on CNN for many hours, way back then....


My highest accomplishments thus far are

1. a plan to create a UN Secretary General's Pandemic Board of Inquiry, a plan that is in the works and might be achieved even before the 75th UN General Assembly in September 2020.


2. Now history until the needs becomes clear to the powers who run the United Nations: a UN Resolution to create a new Undersecretary General for Nutrition and Consumer Protection, strongly supported ten years ago by India and 53 cosponsoring nations, but shut down by the US Mission to the UN in 2008. To read it, google UNITED NATIONS UNDERSECRETARY GENERAL FOR NUTRITION, please.


These are not easy battles, any of them, and they require a great deal of political and journalistic focus. OpEdNews is the perfect place for those who have a lot to say, so much that they exceed the limiting capacities of their local and regional newspapers. Trying to go beyond the regional papers seems to require some kind of "inside" credentials, as if you had to be in a club of corporate-accepted writers, and if not, you are "from somewhere else," a sad state of corporate induced xenophobia that should have no place in America in 2020!

This should be a goal for every author with something current to say: breaking through yet another glass ceiling, and get your say said in editorial pages all over America. Certainly, this was a tool that was essentially ignored in 2016, and cannot be ignored in the big elections of 2020.


In my capacity as Editor of the Santa Fe Sun News, Fox interviewed Mikhail Gorbachev: http://www.prlog.org/10064349-mikhail-gorbachev