Vol. 75/No. 37      October 17, 2011

No physical evidence linked him to the killing. Seven of nine nonpolice witnesses subsequently recanted or changed their testimony, many saying they were pressured by cops to finger Davis.

“There is no doubt in my mind that the state of Georgia and this country … murdered an innocent man,” Ed Dubose, president of the Georgia National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, told attendees.

The line for the service wrapped around the building. Horace Johnson of Douglasville came on one of two buses from Atlanta. “It was a very sad occasion and he was a young man, but I was so glad to be able to be part of this today,” he said.

Speakers included Davis’s nephew, Antoné DéJuan Davis-Correia; Ben Jealous, president of the NAACP; Rev. Raphael Warnock, pastor of the Ebenezer Baptist Church; Larry Cox, executive director of Amnesty International; and Davis’s attorney Jason Ewart.

Afterward hundreds attended a repast at the hall of the International Longshoremen’s Association Local 1414.

Several speakers referred to a statement Davis made to his supporters in 2008 and to his brief final words. “No matter what happens in the days and weeks to come,” Davis said in 2008, “this movement to end the death penalty, to seek true justice, to expose a system that fails to protect the innocent must be accelerated. There are so many more Troy Davises.” Among Davis’s final words he asked his friends and family to “continue to fight this fight.”  
 
 
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