Troy Davis Case Study

The murder of Mark MacPhail, an off duty cop, resulted in the conviction and execution of Troy Davis. He was convicted on the strength of eyewitness testimonies, but most of these witnesses came forward later to say they were either felt social pressure or were coerced by the police, but the jury 's decision was also a major problem in the case. The jury took two hours to vote guilty of murder, and it took seven hours to decide that Davis should receive the death penalty. There were twelve jury members, and it was made up of seven men and five women. Seven people were black, and five people were white. The real question is, were there biases in the decision making of Troy Anthony Davis? Before the case itself, Troy Davis ' face was on wanted posters, Savannah newspapers, and television for being wanted for the murder of Mark MacPhail. In an earlier chapter from the text, studies showed that when people are exposed to news coverage of a crime, people are more likely to presume the defendant is guilty (Kovera, 2002; Otto, Penrod, & Dexter, 1994). Due to this fact, it would be safe to say that this altered the jury 's decision-making in the trial. Although the deliberations are not available, it is safe to say the pretrial publicity had a huge role in his conviction because it …show more content…
Being that the testimonies of the witnesses were later recanted, and most of their testimonies were deemed inaccurate, it is safe to say that Troy Davis was wrongfully convicted. Also, the lineups were conducted by the lead investigator, and it is shown that the death penalty is sought out five times more when the victim is white, not black (Baldus et al., 1998). There was no physical evidence at the trial and since the testimonies were all they had, the jurors, who were of the Witt standard, had become desensitized to the imposition of the death penalty due to repeated exposure of the