A parade of nationally known activists and entertainers will be in Savannah, Ga., on Saturday for the funeral of Troy Davis, the Georgia death row inmate and murder convict who was executed last week amid global outcry.
NAACP president Benjamin Jealous and Amnesty International USA executive director Larry Cox will speak and Rev. Raphael Warnock, spiritual advisor to the Davis family and head of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, the church of Martin Luther King Jr., will deliver the eulogy.
Davis, 42, was convicted in 1991 of the 1989 shooting death of Savannah police officer Mark Allen MacPhail, who died while coming to the aid of a homeless man being attacked in a Burger King parking lot. Since Davis’ conviction, several witnesses have signed affidavits recanting their testimony, saying the police coerced them into implicating Davis. Several more have signed affidavits implicating another man in the crime. MacPhail’s family has said they trust the outcome of the initial trial and complained that as Davis’ appeals dragged out through the years, they had to relive the loss of their loved one, a husband and father.
Jealous and Warnock said they expect that Saturday’s service, slated for 11 a.m. ET at Jonesville Baptist Church, will not only serve as a remembrance for Davis, but also as a forum for activists opposed to the death penalty. Davis died by lethal injection on Sept. 21 at the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison in Jackson, Ga.
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article courtesy of USA Today.com
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