NAACP Fights to Save Troy Davis As Time Runs Out

Troy Davis has been at death's door before. On Georgia's death row for nearly 18 years now for the murder of a police officer, the former sports coach has received several stays of execution -- including one last fall just an hour before he was scheduled to die. Now, despite the fact that there was no physical evidence linking him to Mark Allen MacPhail's death; despite the fact that seven of nine witnesses have recanted or contradicted their original testimony; and, despite the fact that the NAACP, former president Jimmy Carter, Pope Benedict XVI, Nobel Laureate archbishop Desmond Tutu; conservative former Georgia congressman Bob Barr, and former FBI director William Sessions have all have called for a new trial, Davis may have finally run out of options.

A motion before the Supreme Court to reopen the case due to new evidence was to have been heard today, but chances that the justices will grant the necessary writ of Habeas Corpus aren't great. The high court has not granted a writ of Habeas Corpus since 1925. Should the Court deny the motion, the countdown to Davis' death begins again, and his execution date could be set within weeks.

Scroll Down To Find Out Who Can Save Davis' Life

Exonerated by DNA

Byron Halsey
Halsey spent more than two decades in state prison before being exonerated by DNA testing for the brutal rape and murder of two New Jersey children. Now he's filing a federal civil rights suit.

AP / The Star-Ledger

Alton Logan
Logan spent 26 years in prison for fatally shooting a security guard in 1983. In 2007, an attorney for another man who admitted that he had committed the crime came forward with the truth. He was officially declared innocent in April 2009.

Antonio Beaver
He served more than a decade in prison because blood found on an attack victim was not presented in his trial. Once testing proved him not guilty, all charges were dropped in 2007. Unfortunately, he landed back in jailafter crashing his car while drunk.

Innocence Project

Calvin Johnson
DNA from a rape kit did not match Johnson's. He was set free in 1999 after nearly 16 years in prison. He later wrote a book about his ordeal.

John Bazemore / AP

Darryl Hunt
Darryl Hunt was convicted twice of a 1984 North Carolina murder. After DNA results proved his innocence in 1994, it still took 10 years of legal appeals to exonerate him.

Innocence Project

Donte Booker
After serving 15 years on a rape conviction, Booker was exonerated on Feb. 9, 2005, after DNA evidence on the victim's clothing pointed to someone else. In 2007 he was accused of a second rape, of which he was found not guilty by a jury in 2008.

Innocence Project

Floyd Brown
Brown was freed in 2007 after 14 years behind bars. Authorities locked up the mentally disabled man without a trial in 1993 and lost or destroyed key criminal evidence that could have freed him years ago.

Innocence Project

Herman Atkins
Atkins was convicted in 1988 of robbery, rape, forcible oral copulation and for using a handgun. After test results were returned, Atkins was released from prison in February 2000, after spending 12 years in prison. He has since gone to college, married, and dedicated his life to helping those who have been wrongly convicted.

Innocence Project

James Lee Woodard
Woodard spent more time in prison than any other wrongfully convicted inmate in U.S. history -- 27 years. DNA testing in the murder and rape of his girlfriend ultimately overturned his conviction in 2008.

James Waller
In 2006, 23 years after his conviction of rape, DNA from a rape kit that had never been presented was found not to belong to Waller. He was pardoned by Texas governor Rick Perry in 2007.

Innocence Project / AP

Calling this case "the most compelling case of innocence in decades," NAACP president Benjamin Todd Jealous has waged a no-holds-barred media campaign to get the condemned man a new trial. Many of the witnesses now say they were pressured by police or prosecutors to finger Davis, and several have identified another witness, Sylvester "Redd" Coles, as the true culprit. Meanwhile, Davis has reportedly been a model prisoner.

Said Jealous in a recent essay:

I met with Troy a few weeks ago. I watched the eyes of the guards who are clearly touched by Troy's plight, the stony masks that guards are supposed to wear crack as Troy told his story. I met a woman in the parking lot who said her next door neighbor, a former guard, quit rather than have to oversee Troy's march to the death chamber.

I was moved talking with his sister, diagnosed with breast cancer and given months to live in 2001. I had a chance to hug her son – who I had met almost a decade ago as a NAACP youth member -who visits Troy once a week and looks to him as a mentor.
Source: The Grio

The NAACP, which filed a friend-of-the-court brief in the case, is urging Georgia governor Sonny Perdue to intervene. Larry Chisolm, the new African American district attorney for Savannah, also has the power to reopen the case. With the clock ticking, the NAACP is also calling on us to appeal to these men to spare Davis' life.

Will you help? It's as easy as visiting IAMTROY.com.

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