Troy Davis: Murdered By Police

Troy Davis:

Troy Davis was accused of the killing of a police officer. As it often happens in cases like this, the police force, feeling personally involved, overstepped their positions as officers of the law. For Troy Davis, one of the most apparent ways in which the police failed was their treatment of the witnesses. During the trial in 2007, nine witnesses appeared before the court to testify that they had seen Davis assault a homeless man and murder a police officer. By 2011, seven of the nine recanted their testimonies. Many of the witnesses admitted that they had been threatened by the police, some saying they had been told that if they didn’t testify, they would be prosecuted themselves. One witness, named Jeffrey Sapp, said, “I was

Even though an eye-witness told police that the man who stabbed her was wearing a gray hoodie and a flannel, when police found DeLuna hiding under a car in a different outfit, they arrested him. Later, when the witness was asked whether he was sure it was DeLuna, he said he was “about 70 percent [sure] but then added that had the police not told him that they found DeLuna hiding under a truck two blocks away that he would have been only 50 percent certain” (Montana Innocence Project). Throughout his trial, DeLuna maintained that he hadn’t committed the crime, that it had been a man named Carlos Hernandez who did it. Hernandez had been arrested 39 times prior to this incident, but even when DeLuna continuously brought him up, the police didn't look for him. The prosecution eventually argued that Hernandez didn’t exist, that DeLuna had invented him, even though the man’s criminal record was readily accessible. On top of this, the police didn’t find any physical evidence that linked DeLuna to the crime scene, and they didn’t conduct any forensic analysis. These easily preventable mistakes made by the police force almost certainly wouldn’t have occurred if DeLuna had been a white man. He was sentenced to death simply for being a Hispanic man near the scene of a

A month earlier, a woman had been raped and murdered in her home, and police suspected that a neighbor named Kirk Eaton had done it. When they saw Allen walking a few blocks away from the crime scene, they originally thought he was Eaton, so they brought him in. Even when Detective Herbert Riley realized that he had arrested the wrong man, he didn’t let Allen go, instead interrogating him anyway. Allen was mentally ill and during questioning he admitted to being drunk. No matter how many times Allen protested that he was innocent, the detective didn’t let him go. He eventually convinced Allen that he was guilty and that the police had DNA evidence against him, and continued asking him leading questions in order to get answers that fit the crime. “In those few instances where the detective did not ask a leading question, Allen confesses to facts that conflict with the known facts of the crime” (The Innocence Project). The interrogator would blatantly ask Allen to change his answers in those cases. George Allen’s sentence of 95 years in prison was based largely on this highly unreliable confession. Although he did get out after 30 years, a large part of Allen’s life was spent in prison simply because the police refused to admit their mistake. A chance encounter with the wrong police officer led to so much lost