The case of Troy Davis led to a global call to save his life. But in Savannah, Georgia, a legacy of racism and fear has kept people silent.
Editor's Note: Troy Anthony Davis faces execution on September 23rd. Go here to learn more.
Prison Boulevard begins on a lonely Georgia highway and sweeps across lush grounds and a serene lake populated with ducks. One might expect a sprawling ranch house at the end of this country road in Jackson, but there rises instead the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification prison, a mammoth institution whitewashed to a glare. To reach death row inmates, visitors traverse a series of yellow iron gates opened and shut in a chain reaction until they arrive at a guard holding open a heavy door. Inside the long, narrow cell waits Troy Anthony Davis -- a man condemned for the 1989 murder of a Savannah police officer, and an international cause -- wearing a prison-issue white and blue uniform, electric blue sneakers and a wide smile.
A smile alarmingly disarming, jarring even, amid the banging echoes from unknown corners. Davis, tall, broad and bald at age 39, settles on a stool and begins to speak with a Georgia drawl and gesticulate, and then he's drawing maps with his finger in the air and diagramming the August night two decades ago that landed him on death row.
Just a quick reminder that a Harper majority government would probably do what it could to return capital punishment to Canada. Tom
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