Sunday, August 19, 2012

I AM MARK MACPHAIL (END OF WATCH: AUGUST 19, 1989) PART 1

On this date, August 19, 1989, Officer Mark Macphail was murdered by Troy Davis. In memory of him, I write the title of this blog post as ‘I AM MARK MACPHAIL’, instead of wearing a T-shirt, ‘I AM TROY DAVIS’ to show the abolitionist that I am supporting the real victim of the case. I got the information about him from The Officer Down Memorial Page.







 

 

 

 

 

Officer

Mark Allen MacPhail, Sr.

Savannah Police Department, Georgia

End of Watch: Saturday, August 19, 1989

Bio & Incident Details

Age: 27
Tour: 3 years
Badge # 212
Military veteran
Cause: Gunfire
Incident Date: 8/19/1989
Weapon: Handgun
Suspect: Executed

Officer Mark MacPhail was shot and killed while working an off duty security job at a bus station.

He was shot when he responded to the cries of a homeless man who was being robbed and pistol-whipped. The robber shot Officer MacPhail underneath his vest and then again in the head as he fell.

The subject was sentenced to death and executed on September 21, 2011, twenty-two years after his conviction.

Officer MacPhail was a U.S. Army veteran and had served with the Savannah Police Department for three years. He is survived by his wife, 1-year-old daughter, infant son, mother, and siblings, and is buried in Hillcrest Abbey West Cemetery, Savannah, Georgia.



Events of August 18-23, 1989
The charges against Troy Davis arose from the shooting of Michael Cooper, the beating of Larry Young and the murder of Officer Mark MacPhail on August 18-19, 1989.

On the evening of August 18, 1989, Davis attended a pool party in the Cloverdale neighborhood of Savannah, Georgia. As he left the party with his friend Daryl Collins, the occupants of a passing car yelled obscenities. A bullet was fired at the passing car and Michael Cooper, a passenger, was struck in the jaw. Davis and Collins then went to a pool hall on Oglethorpe Avenue in the Yamacraw Village section of Savannah.

Later that evening, Davis and Collins proceeded to the parking lot of a Burger King restaurant on Oglethorpe Avenue, not far from the pool hall. There they encountered Sylvester "Redd" Coles arguing with a homeless man, Larry Young, over alcohol.

At about 1:15 am on August 19, 1989, Mark MacPhail, an off-duty police officer working as a security guard, attempted to intervene in the pistol-whipping of Young at the parking lot. MacPhail was shot twice: once through the heart and once in the face. He did not draw his gun. Bullets and shell casings which were determined to have come from a .38-caliber pistol were retrieved from the crime scene. Witnesses to the shooting agreed that a man in a white shirt had struck Young and then shot MacPhail.

On August 19, Coles told Savannah Police he had seen Davis with a .38-caliber gun, and that Davis had assaulted Young.  The same evening, Davis drove to Atlanta with his sister. In the early morning of August 20, 1989, Savannah Police searched the Davis home and seized a pair of Davis's shorts which were found in a clothes dryer. Davis's family began negotiating with police, motivated by concerns about his safety; local drug dealers were making death threats because the police dragnet seeking Davis had disrupted their business. On August 23, 1989, Davis returned to Savannah, surrendered himself to police and was charged with MacPhail's murder.

Check the video of Supporters gather for twentieth anniversary of Mark MacPhail's murder:



Van Brimmer: MacPhail family readies for next act in painful tragedy
Posted: September 19, 2011 - 12:12am | Updated: September 19, 2011 - 4:53pm

Sometime last night, the family of slain Savannah police officer Mark Allen MacPhail gathered to prepare. They cried. They prayed. They remembered.

More than anything, they steeled themselves for the drama that lies ahead this week.

Twenty-two years have passed since MacPhail was gunned down while aiding a homeless man being assaulted outside the downtown bus station. A jury would convict Troy Anthony Davis for the crime two years later.

The judge sentenced Davis, who was also convicted of an aggravated assault of another man using the same gun on the same day, to the death penalty.

Davis has claimed innocence since the shooting. So the family expected the series of appeals, hearings, stays and other delays — such as this summer’s moratorium on executions while the state switched from one lethal injection drug to another — that have prolonged Davis’ time on Earth.

The latest potential postponement is today. The Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles will consider a clemency request. The board has granted one stay, in 2007, but Davis and his attorneys have failed to convince state and federal courts he deserves a retrial in the years since.

Still, the MacPhail family knows to expect the unexpected leading up to Davis’ execution, scheduled for 7 p.m. Wednesday at the state prison in Jackson.

“We were inside the prison walls, outside of the car, walking, a stone’s throw from the door, in 2008 when they came out and told us to go home, that a stay had been granted,” said MacPhail’s son, Mark Jr. “It was over. Then it wasn’t. So we’ll be ready for anything.”


A heavy burden
Mark Jr. speaks for his family on the ordeal. He’s considered the best-suited to handle the responsibility but not because he’s the male head of the family. He’s the only one of the children who can handle it emotionally.

Mark Jr. was 2 months old when his father was killed. He has no memories of his dad.

“My sister can remember playing with my dad in the yard, running around with him and the family dog, Rebel,” said Mark Jr., who is almost two years younger than his sibling. “It’s so real for her that it’s too painful.”

Mark Jr. suffers, too. In far too many ways, his relationship with his father — and his life in general — is defined by the murder.

He moved away from Savannah with his mother and sister a decade ago, yet chose to return for college. He enrolled in Armstrong Atlantic State University as a biology major only to switch to criminal justice.

He carries with him a jump drive that includes all the details of his father’s case and Davis’ appeals. He’s gotten to know his father as much through relationships with police officers who served with his dad as through family stories and recollections.

“I love my dad; I know my dad,” Mark Jr. said. “It’s just I can’t pick up the phone to talk with him. I have to visit the cemetery.”

Even Mark Jr.’s understanding of hate stems from his father’s slaying.

He learned upon his return to Savannah in 2009 to introduce himself around town simply as Mark. He’s been “cussed out” and been called “every nasty name you can think of and some you can’t” by strangers when he gives his full name.

“That hurts,” Mark Jr. said. “It’s like my dad did something wrong that night. Or my family has done something wrong since.”


Peace and justice
The MacPhail family’s mistake, in the eyes of those who verbally abuse Mark Jr., is in wanting to see Davis executed.

The family, like the jury, is convinced beyond a reasonable doubt Davis shot officer MacPhail once in the chest. Then Davis stood over the wounded officer and delivered the coup de grace, a bullet to the face.

Yet Mark Jr.’s eyes don’t burn with fury when talking about his father’s executioner. What the MacPhails have been groping for over the past two decades, and will find only when Davis is dead, is peace.

Each delay in the execution has felt like a new stab to an almost healed wound. The MacPhails can live with the scar, but they are tired of stitching the gash shut.

“It’s not animosity or anger or rage that has kept us going; that’s not what my father would want,” Mark Jr. said. “It’s justice. The law is what he was all about. That’s what we have to uphold. We have to demonstrate that you kill a police officer, you face the ultimate punishment.”

Mark Jr. keeps something other than the file on his father’s case on his jump drive. He also tracks the deaths of other police officers killed in the line of duty. Nationwide this year, the number exceeds 100.

Davis’ execution won’t bring any of those cops back, but if it scares even one would-be cop-killer straight, MacPhail’s death will be more than an incomprehensible tragedy to his son.
“I have no visitation rights with my father. I can’t send him a Father’s Day card in jail. I can’t share my dreams and fears with him through a piece of Plexiglas,” Mark Jr. said. “But there’s other sons, other daughters, wives, fathers and mothers of police officers out there, and none should have to go through the pain my family has.

“We’ve suffered enough for everybody.”

To know more about the truth that Troy Davis is guilty, Please read the following links:

2. Read U.S Federal Judge, William Theodore Moore Jr.’s 172 page   ruling http://multimedia.savannahnow.com/media/pdfs/DavisRuling082410.pdf

Federal Judge William Theodore Moore Jr.

In August 2010, Moore ruled on the prominent Troy Davis case. Davis was a Georgia inmate on death row, accused and convicted of murdering a police officer in 1989. Davis's guilt has been questioned, due to the release of new information, including the complete or partial recantation of the testimonies of seven (out of nine total) prosecution victims. In his ruling, Moore stated that Davis and his legal team had failed to demonstrate his innocence, as the added information was "largely smoke and mirrors" and added only "minimal doubt"; Moore dismissed four recantations as not credible, and two of them as only partly credible, finding that only one was wholly credible. He did not consider the alleged confessions of Redd Cole, another suspect in the case, because of the failure of Davis's lawyers to subpoena Coles and give him opportunity for rebuttal, and suggested that Davis should appeal directly to the Supreme Court.

Davis was executed by lethal injection on September 21, 2011.

In response to the Supreme Court order, a two-day hearing was held in June 2010 in a federal district court in Savannah in front of Judge William Moore. Former prosecution witness Antoine Williams stated he did not know who had shot MacPhail, and that because he was illiterate he could not read the police statements he had signed in 1989. Other prosecution witnesses Jeffrey Sapp and Kevin MacQueen testified that Davis had not confessed to them as they had stated at the initial trial. Darrell Collins also recanted his previous evidence that he had seen Davis shoot Cooper and MacPhail. The witnesses variously described their previous testimony against Davis as being the result of feeling scared, of feeling frightened and pressured by police or to get revenge in a conflict with Davis. Anthony Hargrove testified that Redd Coles had admitted the killing to him. The state's lawyers described Hargrove's testimony as hearsay evidence; Judge William T. Moore permitted the evidence but stated that unless Coles appeared, he might give the evidence "no weight whatsoever." Another witness making a similar statement was heard, but a third was rejected by Judge Moore as the claims were inadmissible hearsay because Coles was not called as a witness and given the opportunity for rebuttal. Moore criticized the decision not to call Coles, saying that he was "one of the most critical witnesses to Davis's defense". One of Davis's lawyers stated that the day before they had been unsuccessful in serving a subpoena on Coles; Moore responded that the attempt had been made too late, given that the hearing date had been set months in advance.
State attorneys called current and former police officers and the two lead prosecutors, who testified that the investigation had been careful, and that no witnesses had been coerced or threatened. The lead detective testified that his investigation was "very meticulous and careful… I was in no rush just to pick the first guy we got our hands on. I wanted the right guy." He stated that witnesses gave "strikingly similar descriptions on how the shooter was dressed", mostly describing the shooter as wearing a white T-shirt and dark pants, which other witnesses said Davis was wearing that evening. A state attorney asserted that the testimony of at least five prosecution witnesses remained unchallenged, and the evidence of Davis's guilt was overwhelming. In July 2010, Davis's lawyers filed a motion asking Moore to reconsider his decision to exclude testimony from a witness to a confession by Coles, but in August 2010, Moore stood by his initial decision, stating that in not calling Coles, Davis's lawyers were seeking to implicate Coles without desiring his rebuttal.
Moore ruled that executing an innocent person would violate the Eighth Amendment. "However, Mr. Davis is not innocent." In his decision, Moore wrote: "while Mr. Davis's new evidence casts some additional, minimal doubt on his conviction, it is largely smoke and mirrors." Of the seven papers described as recantations by the defense, Moore found that only one was wholly credible and two were partly credible. He did not consider Coles' alleged confessions because of the failure of Davis's lawyers to subpoena Coles, and suggested that Davis should appeal directly to the Supreme Court. In November 2010, the federal appeals panel dismissed an appeal on the case, without ruling on its merits. They stated that Davis should appeal the case directly to the U.S. Supreme Court "because he had exhausted his other avenues of relief." Rosemary Barkett, one of the panel judges, later released a statement saying that although she agreed with the decision, she still believed that Davis should be given a new trial.

3. Charles Lane, journalist http://www.webcitation.org/61v86eswz

4. Alexander Baron, journalist http://digitaljournal.com/article/311881




Federal Judge William Theodore Moore Jr.

            I do show my utmost empathy and sympathy for the MacPhail children as they have to spend 22 years without a father. I thank God that finally justice has been served for them, as the cop killer, Troy Davis had paid with his life on 21 September 2011. They should thank the Federal Judge William Theodore Moore Jr. for his great research and for not giving in to the criminal rights activists.
Please click on this blog post to hear what the Macphail family has to say after the execution of Troy Davis. I will post an article on 21 September 2012 to mark the first anniversary of the execution of Troy Davis and Lawrence Brewer.

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