Troy Davis Execution: Supporters to Attend Ga. Inmate's Funeral
Anti-death penalty activists from across the U.S. and around the world will be in Georgia this weekend for Troy Davis' funeral in hopes of using the inmate's execution to highlight the fight against the death penalty.
Amnesty International has called for Saturday to be a "Day of Remembrance" for Davis, the Georgia man who was executed by lethal injection on Sept. 21 for the murder of off duty police officer Mark Macphail in 1989.
Amnesty International has asked anti-death penalty sympathizers to wear T-shirts reading "I Am Troy Davis" or black armbands reading "Not in my name," and to change their Facebook profile picture to the "I Am Troy Davis" image, circulated by the group on its website.
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Benjamin Jealous of the NAACP and the Rev. Raphael Warnock, spiritual adviser to the Davis family and head of the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, will deliver the eulogy.
The tremendous interest generated by the funeral is illustrative of the fervency behind the fight to eradicate the death penalty. It might also be owing to a suggestion by Kim Davis, the executed man's younger sister, who said, "Our family isn't only our physical blood relatives. It expands way beyond that," in an interview with The Associated Press.
This latter point might explain the sentiments of Warnock, who told USA Today, "I don't know the details of their financial situation but I know Troy Davis was in prison 22 years. I suspect he did not have life insurance, is my guess ... and many were surprised to discover that after the state executes you they turn you over to your family to be buried, so we are his extended family and we thought we should help."
Civil Rights leader the Rev. Al Sharpton of the National Action Network said he had been meeting with federal lawmakers to discuss proposed legislation that would block executions in state cases with an absence of physical evidence.
"Nowhere in America should an individual be executed again without any concrete physical evidence," said Sharpton in an op-ed article on The Huffington Post.
A march in Washington, scheduled for Oct. 15 and organized by National Action Network, will focus chiefly on jobs, but also on the Troy Davis case, Martin Luther King III said during an interview at the annual Congressional Black Caucus meetings in Washington last weekend.
