The Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles made its decision less than three hours before Samuel David Crowe, 47, was to be executed, according to a spokeswoman for the state’s prisons.
“After careful and exhaustive consideration of the requests, the board voted to grant clemency. The board voted to commute the sentence to life without parole,” the parole board said.
…
In March 1988, Crowe killed store manager Joseph Pala during a robbery at the lumber company in Douglas County, west of Atlanta. Crowe, who had previously worked at the store, shot Pala three times with a pistol, beat him with a crowbar and a pot of paint.
Crowe pleaded guilty to armed robbery and murder and was sentenced to death the following year.
“David (Crowe) takes full responsibility for his crime and experiences profound remorse,” according to Georgians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, an advocacy group, who welcomed the board’s decision.
The BRAD BLOG last night, after the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles had denied clemency to a different prisoner:
In his last words, according to witnesses to the execution, Davis spoke to the family of Officer MacPhail in the front row, and told them again he was sorry for their loss, but that he was innocent, did not have a gun, and did not kill their “son, father, brother.”
Other than the confessed murderer being spared, and the man who maintained his innocence for 20 years being killed, I wonder if the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles saw any other significant differences between the cases of Samuel David Crowe and Troy Anthony Davis.
[Hat-tip @AngryBlackLady on Twitter.]
Of course they are not racists, they just like white folk more than other races.
It is Georgia after all.
I suspect that the Georgia Bureau of Pardons and Parole would have taken Davis’s assertions of innocence as a failure to take responsibility
Carlyle Moulton @2 wrote:
If that is true, it reflects an extraordinary myopia, especially since 7 of the 9 witnesses recanted their testimony, there is no physical evidence linking Troy Davis to the crime, and, even moments before what he knew would be his last conscious moments on Earth, Troy Davis expressed his innocence to the victim’s family.
There’s no getting around it. A legal system which purports to convict only when evidence of guilt is beyond a reasonable doubt, executed a man who, in all likelihood, was innocent.
This was a state sanctioned murder!
The parole board’s granting of clemency to Crowe goes beyond the obvious racism. It’s as though they are not only getting perverse pleasure in showing the world how powerful they are but, by this latest action, thumbing their noses at Troy Davis and all the activists et al who actually give a damn about human life. In 2011 America, compassion is scorned and authoritarianism, power and greed rewarded. Unspeakable.
Sam didn’t kill a cop. Where is the confessed white cop-killer who was spared by Georgia’s pardon board?
With 20 years behind bars why didn’t he earn his JD @ state expense and exonerate himself? Happens all the time on Lifetime.
It don’t matter if he killed a cop or not. It’s still all the same! He murdered someone , they had all the evidence in the world , he confessed , BUT HE WAS WHITE. Troy Davis maintained his innocence for years and all the way up until his death. There was so much doubt. So how can you give a man with lil evidence death and end up giving the other with evidence life instead of his death? Anyone with commonsense know damn well this ain’t right. This just goes to show that RACISM is still alive. But Troy Davis is now free and with the Lord. Those people who had a chance to stop this and didn’t I pray for them. Like Troy said I hope God have mercy on their souls and God bless their souls! But yeah, whats done in the dark shall come to light! I hope it backfires on those people.
Kill a BLACK man who maintained his innocence and the case had so much doubt
Save a WHITE man who confessed to killing another human (cop or not) murder is murder….
Yeah…. Racism is still alive!
Sad but true…
It the old trick, Divide and Conquer.
TPTB know how strongly ‘We the People’ feel about Troy Davis and they see how we are uniting in NYC and across the country… so they did this to divide us (OCCUPY WALL STREET protest).
The People United Will NEVER be defeated… Yes! NO more divide and conquer… UNITE!
Unity is TPTB’s fear because WE Outnumber Them, BIGTIME. They use race, religion and political party. TPTB divide us, any way they can and the own the media so they’ve been good at it. People better not fall for their tactics, stay peaceful or play into their hands… and expect more of this ‘pushing our buttons’ BS because Occupy Wall Street is spreading across America and the People are finally waking up – this is not a Democracy… it is an oligarchy.
We MUST stay Peaceful and WE can take our country back.
We can win if we stick together but we lose if we turn on one another. PEACE!
http://saynotocorporateamerica.blogspot.com/
I feel for the family of the officer that was killed. But,I hate the way the are feeling about this black man. there is no evidence that can prove that he was the shooter, maybe he was there. But where are the other people. In the eyes of white people all black men look the same. It is funny how the government showed no more remorse on this class. Mr. Davis did not ask to go home but to hear his class again.So he cann have a fair trail because he didn’t back then