Joy and Death

Two stories I have covered in the past came to resolution today. Both involved international campaigns that urged freedom for what supporters called unjust imprisonment.

One ended in decided joy; the other the opposite.

The first was the reunion on an Omani tarmac of two young American men held in Tehran’s Evil prison for more than two years. Iranian authorities finally released Josh Fattal and Shane Bauer. They ran down the steps of the jet that ferried them to freedom and into the arms of loved ones.

Go to CNN coverage

Among those anxiously waiting was Sarah Shourd, also arrested with Fattal and Bauer for crossing into Iranian territory when they were hiking in Iraq’s northern Kurdish region. Shourd, released on bail a year ago, is engaged to be married to Bauer.

She had not been able to savor her own freedom fully until this day. I know that from what she said about her ordeal on CNN last year.

Much closer to home, another drama unfolded. Authorities in my home state of Georgia put to death by lethal injection Troy Davis, who had been on death row for two decades for murdering an off-duty police officer, Mark MacPhail, in Savannah.

 

I first began writing about about the Davis case when it came before the clemency board three years ago. I spent time with his sister Martina Correia, who has fought from the very beginning for her brother’s release. Davis and his family have always argued that he was innocent and set up by the police to take the fall for MacPhail’s killing.

Later, I reported a deeper story with my colleague Sonji Jacobs about the murder. After reading hundreds of pages of trial transcripts and police records, I did not know what to think except that there was enough doubt in the case that a man’s life ought naught to be taken without further exam.

Here is part of that story that appeared in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution in November, 2007:

The police had nothing.

No fingerprints, tire tracks or murder weapon. The bullets extracted from MacPhail and empty shell casings found on the ground --- all from a .38-caliber pistol --- provided the only physical evidence.

Soon, though, police would tie the shooting of Michael Cooper at the pool party, where Davis and Collins had been earlier that night, to the killing of MacPhail. The weapon in both, they said, was a .38-caliber gun.

A cop was dead and "there was a lot of pressure to get somebody, " recalls Louis Tyson, who was on the Savannah police force and knew the Davis family.

Detectives began to interview people in the Burger King drive-through lane, in the parking lot by the bus station, across Oglethorpe Street at the Thunderbird Inn.

Their accounts of what happened varied. But one detail was critical: Witnesses agreed that one of the men gathered around Young wore a white shirt; the other, yellow. And it was the man in white, they said, who first struck Young with a handgun, then shot MacPhail.

At 7:55 p.m. that day, police got a break. Coles, accompanied by his lawyer, walked into the Criminal Investigation Bureau office in Savannah. Coles told police that he saw Davis with a .38-caliber gun at the pool hall and that he had used it to hit Young on the head.

Immediately, police focused their investigation on Davis. They added a color Polaroid of him to a photo lineup. In the next few days, they tracked down Davis' family and friends and searched the homes of his mother and sister.

News of the manhunt appeared on television and in newspaper articles. Davis' trial attorneys would describe it as the "most intensive investigation probably done in the history of this county."

They would also argue that police had fallen for Coles' statements "hook, line and sinker."

And another excerpt:

On Aug. 19, 1991, exactly two years after MacPhail's murder in a downtown Burger King parking lot, Davis went on trial at the Chatham County courthouse.

The prosecution put on the stand nine witnesses whose testimony, they said, proved beyond a doubt that Davis was the killer. 

Fairly consistently, witnesses said a man wearing a white T-shirt pistol-whipped a homeless man, Larry Young, and then shot MacPhail before fleeing the scene.

Perhaps most damning was the testimony of Young's girlfriend, Harriet Murray. She said a man wearing a white T-shirt pointed his gun at MacPhail and shot him before the police officer could pull his gun out of his holster. MacPhail was down on the ground when the man shot him two or three more times, Murray testified.

She pointed in court to Davis, identifying him as the person wearing the white shirt that night. "He had a little smile on his face, a little smirky-like smile, " she said.

Dorothy Ferrell, who was across the street from the Burger King, identified Davis in court and said: "I'm real sure, positive sure, that that is him, and you know, it's not a mistaken identity."

Antoine Williams, who had just arrived to work the graveyard shift at the restaurant, also identified Davis as the shooter. Davis' neighbor Jeffrey Sapp testified that Davis confessed to the killing just hours after MacPhail died.

When Coles took the stand, he admitted arguing with Young but said Davis hit the homeless man. He said he had already turned around to run from the parking lot when MacPhail was shot.

Questioned about why he sought out lawyer John Calhoun the day of the murder, Coles told the jury he had worked for Calhoun "off and on."

The attorney had accompanied Coles to the police station, where he told officers that he saw Davis with a .38-caliber gun just before the murder.

"Why didn't you just go straight to the police?" asked defense attorney Robert Falligant.

"I don't know, " Coles said. "That's what I chose to do."

What Coles had not told police was that he, too, owned a .38-caliber gun. He later would admit it and say he had stashed the gun in some bushes before going to the Burger King. Coles had been convicted of carrying a concealed weapon and could not legally carry a gun.

During the trial --- and since --- Davis' various attorneys have repeatedly asked why Coles and another man at the scene, Daryl "D.D." Collins, weren't ever considered suspects by police. Why wasn't Coles' house searched after they learned he was carrying a gun that night --- the same type as the murder weapon.

Police never recovered a murder weapon --- or Coles' gun or the one he said Davis owned. 

An expert on ballistics, however, testified that shell casings found near MacPhail's body matched those found in the subdivision where another man, Michael Cooper, had been shot earlier that night at a pool party. Davis was linked to both locations.

And later in the story:

Davis was convicted and sentenced to die. But as he aged on Death Row, witnesses changed their stories:

Murray said in a statement signed in 2002 that it was the man following Young who hit him and shot MacPhail.

Murray said: "The man following Larry started digging in his pants for a gun and slapped Larry in the side of the face with it . . . I saw the man who was arguing with Larry . . . and who slapped Larry shoot the police officer." Coles had testified that he was the person following and arguing with Young.

In 2000, Ferrell signed an affidavit saying that she was on parole in 1989 and feared she would be locked up again if she didn't tell police what they wanted to hear. "I don't know which of the guys did the shooting because I didn't see that part, " she said in her statement.

In his affidavit, Williams said: "I was totally unsure whether [Davis] was the person who shot the officer." And Sapp said: "I told them Troy confessed to me. None of it was true."

Three others --- Anthony Hargrove, Shirley Riley and Darold Taylor --- stepped forward after the trial and said Coles confessed to killing MacPhail. Hargrove said Coles admitted letting a man named Troy take the fall.

MacPhail’s family waited many years to see the man convicted of killing him brought to justice. They have lived with the agony of a case that has been left hanging year after year, their loss relived every time a legal proceeding brought Mark MacPhail’s name back into the headlines.

I cannot imagine that pain.

On the other hand, thousands of people worldwide had doubts about Davis’ guilt. Did he pull the trigger on that hot Savannah night? Or was it someone else? Perhaps we will never know the answer with absolute certainty.

But we will never be able to bring Davis back to life. He died from a lethal injection at 11:08 p.m. Wednesday.

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