Troy Davis was convicted of and executed for the 1989 murder of Mark MacPhail, a police officer working at night as a private security guard. As Mark MacPhail intervened to help a homeless man who was being beaten in a car park, he was shot twice and killed. Davis admitted being at the scene of the shooting but declared he was innocence.
Although the jury was not shown any physical evidence and the murder weapon was never found, Troy Davis was found guilty and condemned to death. He spent nineteen years on death row and, after three set execution dates, was executed in 2011.
Given that almost all of the witnesses who testified against Troy Davis at his trial withdrew or contradicted their testimony, there were serious questions surrounding