On Saturday September 26, Keane drummer Richard Hughes made a journey to Jackson, Georgia, with representatives from Amnesty to visit Troy Davis, a prisoner on Death Row. Troy, now 40, was convicted of murder in 1991 in spite of unreliable testimony and with a lack of physical evidence. He has faced the death penalty three times with three reprieves so far. Georgia is one of 37 American states still using implementing the death penalty.
Here Richard tells QTheMusic.com why this case is so important, and how the trip went.
"I first heard about Troy's case through Democracy Now, an American news
show, and I followed the case for a long time. I've always been against the
death penalty it¹s archaic and medieval and when it finally is banned
everywhere people will look back and think 'I can¹t believe we used to do
that'.
This campaign for me started off as something quite small and I just blogged
about the case and people responded to it and signed the petition. I've also
been a member of Amnesty for a long time, They do amazing work, they are
tireless. I have a friend who works for Amnesty and they put me in touch
with the people organising this trip.
I've been travelling with Alistair Carmichael, a Liberal Democrat MP and the
chairman of the anti-death penalty group. He works with other European Union
member states groups on stopping the death penalty anywhere in the world.
It's obviously been successfully abolished many years ago in the UK, and the
UK helps to make progress elsewhere. Troy was convicted with no physical
evidence, no fingerprints, no residue from firing a gun, it was purely eye
witness testimony. Alistair brings with him experience from a previous
career as a lawyer, prosecutor and defender in Scotland and seeing a lawyer
running down the case, it's a textbook story of how a case can go wrong.
We travelled to Atlanta from Washington DC where we'd had a couple of
meetings, one with congressman John Lewis who is a giant in the civil rights
movement. He worked alongside Martin Luther King in the 60s and helped bring
into action the Civil Rights Act. We also went to the British Embassy,
meeting with different people who were co-ordinating the various agencies
for this project. I was basically just learning, just sitting there are the
others went ahead and did their thing.
It was amazing to arrive in Atlanta, and to meet Troy's mother and his
sister. On Saturday morning we all got in a car and travelled for about an
hour to where the prison is.
I didn't know what the prison was going to be like, it seemed quite modern -
about 30 or 40 years old - but had no air-conditioning. It's swelteringly
hot in there, well into 30 degrees even at this time of year no fans
either. Troy is in a single cell. He has a steel bed with a half-inch thick
mattress on it. He¹s allowed seven books or magazines at a time and has to
fill out forms to the Prison library for these. Prioners are charged $5
every time they want to see a doctor. Troy has tremendous back pain and has
to see a doctor once a month; repeat prescription are $5 and he has to get
two of those a month. Phone calls are collect at something like $9 a minute
to receive a phone call. On a daily basis he can get between three and six
hours exercise with ten other people. You can't take anything in to
prisoners, you can only take in quarters to buy things from the vending
machines and pass them through grills in the doors. It's concrete everywhere
and completely dehumanising, but that's how it¹s meant to be. In context, if
a little bit of grass grows up between cracks in the concrete, prisoners
want to touch it because there is no natural surface. There are so many ways
that life is made that much more painful.
The most amazing thing was Troy. He has so much dignity and is incredibly
positive. We waited in a concrete room furnished with a table and chairs and
as soon as Troy walked in he gave everyone a hug, thanking everyone for
their work and we just chatted for a while - we were in there for four
hours, the maximum time allowed. It's over 20 years since he was arrested
and his number of visitors is pretty limited. This was the first time
Amnesty had been in to see him. We¹re very grateful to the British Consulate
for persuading the prison governor to let us go. Troy's got an incredible
family that support him, and that¹s the reason he¹s still alive. And he
gets mail from all over the world. It gives him enormous support, and he¹s
happy when he's only a month behind on correspondence.
During the visit, Troy had saved up two vouchers for a photo and a prison
guard came down to take it.
Troy has faced execution on three separate occasions and he's had three
reprieves one coming just within a couple of hours of proposed execution.
This experience was overwhelming in every way and it convinced me even more
that incarceration is punishment enough. To execute people is hideously
wrong. Troy could have been executed by now if it wasn¹t for pressure.
In the run-up to this, Keane just finished a tour of Canada and the USA and
we¹d mentioned it to a few people, every single person was incredibly
supportive. Everyone knows it's something I believe in very strongly and
this has been the first chance I¹ve had to do something about it.
Troy has a hearing around the start of November and it's unprecedented the
Supreme Court, his last hope, have organised an independent hearing in front
of just one judge to determine whether there is any evidence in this case
and to perhaps change the outcome of this trial. It's a chance to present
the recanted testimony, seven out of the nine prosecution witnesses have
said different things. When the date for that hearing is set, Amnesty will
be making some noise and making sure the eyes of the world are on this
event.
The more people that Amnesty can call upon to call the parole board, or the
governers' office, the Whitehouse or senators and congressmen from Georgia,
the more chance a stay of execution will be issued. We want as much
publicity round these cases as possible. If politicians think no-one¹s
watching they think they can get away with murder. It¹s important for people
in Georgia to know not only people in the state are watching, but people all
over the world. America needs to rethink what it¹s doing in regard to
capital punishment for where America leads, others follow.
Amnesty is great; sign up for alerts and you can find out what happening and
through that they can get 30 emails or faxes into a government office within
a couple of hours, things that make these people realise the outside world
is watching.
If things go right, Troy could be free at the end of the year."
Find out more at www.amnesty.org/en/death-penalty
View more photos from Richard Hughes' death row visit here.
-
Source
