CONGRESSMAN HANK JOHNSON
Georgia's Fourth Congressional District

Reps. John Lewis and Hank Johnson to Visit Death Row Prisoner Troy Anthony Davis

May 28, 2009

LITHONIA,  -- Seeking a federal court to hear the evidence in the case of death-row inmate Troy Anthony Davis, Reps. John Lewis and Hank Johnson will visit Davis at the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison in Jackson, Georgia, tomorrow morning.  

Rep. Johnson has been involved in the Davis case for nearly two years, meeting with his sister Martina Correia and signing a letter Lewis and others wrote to the Attorney General seeking a new trial. Reps. Lewis and Johnson will release that letter to the media at the news conference outside the prison tomorrow.

In July 2007, Johnson wrote his own letter to the Georgia State Board of Pardons and Paroles asking to grant Davis clemency.

“Because of a number of well-documented problems with the case and the inability to have a proper appeal through the Federal system, Mr. Davis is due to be executed amid innumerable doubts and omissions,” Johnson wrote.

Davis – whose pleas of innocence have received international attention – was convicted of murdering an off-duty police officer in Savannah in 1989. Since Davis’ 1991 trial, seven of the nine state witnesses against him have reversed their testimony and other witnesses have implicated another man as the shooter.

The lack of evidence, Davis’ claims of innocence and the unreliable eyewitness testimony have all raised substantial questions in the case. Because of quirks in the legal system, the courts have refused to hear the new evidence.

As a former defense attorney and magistrate judge, Johnson has a keen interest in the case from a legal as well as human rights perspective.  

In the early 1980s fresh out of law school, Johnson won the freedom of a man on death row accused of capital murder. He was held in the same prison in Jackson as Davis.  

Making their final appeal on May 19, 2009, Davis’ attorney asked the U.S. Supreme Court to send his client’s case back to a federal judge to rule on his claims of innocence. A ruling on that could come as early as June. Johnson attended a rally organized by Amnesty International in Washington, D.C., on May 19 calling for the high court to take action in Davis’ case.

On Sept. 23, 2008, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a stay of execution for Davis, which came less than two hours before he was to be put to death by lethal injection.

But on April 16, 2009, a federal appeals court in Atlanta rejected Davis’ bid ruling that he could not establish “by clear and convincing evidence” a jury would not have found him guilty.

Lewis and Johnson are joined by 27 former judges, justices and prosecutors, who are asking the U.S. Supreme Court to allow Davis’ claims of innocence to be heard in federal court.

WHO:  Rep. John Lewis
              Rep. Hank Johnson
              Ben Jealous, President, NAACP
               Martina Correia, advocate and sister of Troy Anthony Davis
                Laura Moye, Deputy Director, Amnesty International USA, Facilitator

WHAT: Visit with Mr. Troy Anthony Davis on Death Row

WHEN: Friday May 29, 2009, at 10:30 a.m.

WHERE: Georgia Diagnostics and Classification Prison, Prison Boulevard, Jackson, Ga.

The news conference will take place immediately following the visit in front of the prison. Estimated start time of the news conference is between 1 and 1:30 p.m.
 

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