Making Heroes Out of Killers. Troy Davis Killed Savannah Police Officer Mark Allen MacPhail in Cold Blood. The “Witness Recantations” Are Just The Usual Garbage Manufactured by Academicians Who Should Be Doing Their Jobs Instead.

Troy Davis.  Gone, Should Be Forgotten.

Ever notice how these pro-inmate cottage industries crying redemption or rehabilitation spring up only to defend the worst of the worst?  Such as Troy Davis, who gunned down Savannah Officer Mark Allen MacPhail in cold blood.  I’ve never seen these criminal groupies waste time on people who could really be rehabilitated.  Too boring.  You never get Innocence Project and Amnesty International dampening their Hermès or organizing undergraduates at Yale to spring some mere car thief who managed to keep his head down, get a GED in prison, actually learn something from incarceration, and really deserves a fresh start.

You see, these types of offenders and cases don’t attract the media.  And attracting media is what the Amnesty/Innocence narcissists really want to do.

Also, “witness recantations” are bullshit.  If you’re one of the recanting witnesses, care for a real discussion about it?  I will print exactly what you say, despite believing you are a lying slob.  You will have the final say over whether it gets printed or not.

Because I’m not a lying slob.

When the Innocence Project started, they stated that they would never do cases other than those involving DNA.  Ran out of those pretty quick.  Turns out, people in prison are guilty!  So they recanted on their promise and now use garbage non-evidence such as witness recantation (by fellow inmates, not crime victims) to keep the money rolling in.  I’m looking at you, Peter Neufeld and Barry Scheck.  What a pair of wealthy preening, wealthy liars.

  Peter Neufeld and Barry Scheck: Never Found a Serial Rapist-Killer They Couldn’t Love — and Exploit

Meanwhile, the same media either completely ignores the victims’ families or treats them like deranged furies.  For example, in the New York Times today, one Jamie Spencer of Des Peres, Missouri called Rory Kennedy “primitive” and “vengeful” simply because Ms. Kennedy does not want California to release Sirhan Sirhan, who murdered her father, presidential candidate Robert Kennedy, in 1968, when Ms. Kennedy was a baby in her mother’s womb.  Before she was even born, Rory Kennedy was present at her father’s murder.  When her mother, Ethel Kennedy, at her dying husband’s side, was handed a stethoscope to hear her husband’s last heartbeats, the yet-born Rory’s heart beat between the two of them.  Is that what you call “primitive,” Mr. Spencer?

Moving on.

Officer Mark Allen MacPhail, 27 when murdered by Troy Davis

This is Savannah Officer Mark Allen MacPhail.  MacPhail was a hero.  The young military veteran, police officer, husband, and father was coming to the defense of a homeless man being robbed and pistol-whipped when Troy Davis shot MacPhail twice, once under his vest and again in the head.

What sort of person knows to aim a bullet under an officer’s vest and another at his brain?  An experienced one.  Troy Davis was a piece of human garbage, but in death, he has been transformed by the usual suspects into a life-long, misunderstood, saintly victim of a cruel justice system.

Now Amnesty International has started up its putrid “I Am Troy Davis” campaign again.  No, sweetie, even though you have an internship at Amnesty, and you’re the product of several elite school that cost more than Mark Allen MacPhail paid to support his entire family while daddy is still paying for your $7 latte in Vienna because you don’t have a real job, you’re wrong .

Yet even you, the least deserving, you can walk the streets unmolested because of the Mark Allen MacPhails of the world.  Maybe your daddy could send his widow a latte.

Ex-Atlanta-Assistant Chief of Police (now there’s a nasty story) Lou Arcangeli has published an editorial with extensive legal documentation showing just how much Amnesty International and other such groups are lying about Troy Davis’ purported innocence.  Rather than rail about Remembrances of Lattes Undelivered, I am just going to let Lou speak for himself.

DO read the links.  The following is by Lou Archageli:

Savannah Police Officer Mark Allen MacPhail Sr was murdered while rushing to aid a robbery victim on August 19, 1989. Georgia executed his murderer ten years ago and I expect a wave of lies and deliberately manufactured false news stories for this anniversary.

You probably remember the foolish “I Am Troy Davis” meme that was popular a decade ago.

Defense attorneys legal malpractice and unethical reporting created a worldwide media frenzy that was based on lies, anti police sentiments, and fake news by death penalty opponents. A resurgence in emotional and non-factual reporting of the case has begun with this 10 year anniversary, so I am posting the letter I sent to the Savannah Morning Newspaper about the Troy Davis conviction and his pending execution. It was printed on September 22, 2011. Also included below are fact based letters by Blue Line Lawyer Lance Lorusso and Retired District Attorney Spencer Lawton.

No Injustice in Davis Case
By LOU ARCANGELI
Posted Sep 22, 2011 at 12:52 AM
https://www.savannahnow.com/article/20110922/OPINION/309229923

Despite the barrage of misinformation that has been spoon fed to an eager if somewhat lazy television media, there have been no “injustices” committed against Troy “RAH” Davis.
The “RAH” is short for “Rough as Hell” and was the street name used by Davis.
This case demonstrates that when a lie is unchallenged and repeated often enough it comes to be taken as fact, and truth is lost in the fog of time.

The facts of Officer Mark MacPhail’s murder, and the trial that convicted Davis with its legally admissible facts, have been lost in the blitz of social media and news media mis-information. I am grateful to Savannah police officers and the Fraternal Order of Police for posting the facts about the case online to dispute the lies of CNN and other television companies.

It is an inflammatory lie when Anderson Cooper on CNN states that there is no physical evidence against Davis. The court record states that after killing Officer MacPhail, Davis fled to Atlanta, blood was found on his clothes and numerous eyewitnesses repeatedly testified to his actions that night.

What you don’t hear in the news and from “Free Davis” advocates is that Davis was convicted and sentenced to 20 years in prison for shooting someone an hour earlier that night with the same pistol he used to kill Officer MacPhail. That crime resulted in additional physical ballistic evidence, as well as multiple eyewitnesses, placing the murder weapon in Davis’s hand an hour before he used it to kill Officer MacPhail.
Another fact omitted by Davis’ supporters is that in the year before he killed Officer MacPhail, Davis was convicted of “carrying a concealed weapon” and that weapon was a firearm with an altered serial number. These facts demonstrate a propensity for guns and violence, and speak volumes to me about Davis.

I wish that Davis’ supporters had met Davis years earlier and worked as hard to connect with and help the troubled young man before he started carrying guns and killed a policeman. I think they enjoy the camaraderie of their tweeting and demonstrations much more than the work and commitment it would take to make a safer society.

Unethical lawyers have repeatedly claimed racism in this case to support their cause and I find their actions disgusting. Troy Davis, in a statement that had to have been written by his lawyers, said: “Because of the Anti-Terrorism Bill, the blatant racism and bias in the U.S. Court System, I remain on death row in spite of a compelling case of my innocence.”

The best response to such lunacy was written by Tina Trent Ph.D., in 2002: “The cost of courtroom racial filibustering is also borne in subtle ways by the rest of us, who must endure the divisiveness sown by incessant and unanswerable charges of racism aimed at our public institutions and ourselves… the cost of the game is never borne by defendants or their counsel anyway; it’s borne in sharply painful ways by victims and their families who, ironically, comprise two classes of citizens excluded from juries with impunity by defense attorneys who assert that this type of exclusion is perfectly legal.”

It is unfortunate that Officer MacPhail’s family has been repeatedly re-victimized over the years.

In a similar case over 30 years ago, an Atlanta police officer was murdered. For 12 years we relived our loss and pain during a tumultuous appeal to the Supreme Court. Then-Gov. Zell Miller had the resolve to carry out the sentence. The murderer died in the electric chair.
Since then the friends and family of the murdered officer have not been barraged by the media for their response every time the killer sought parole, or a new trial, or wanted to make a statement about racism or their childhood.
Family and friends will always feel pain and a sense of loss that never heals after a violent death, but eventually life returns to a new, but sadder, normal.

I hope that someday the family of Officer MacPhail and his co-workers and friends can remember Mark fondly without news of his killer always in the spotlight.

They deserve to have their loved one literally rest in peace, and they deserve peace as well.

Lou Arcangeli is a retired deputy chief of police for the Atlanta Police Department.

Additional:
Lost in the worldwide media hysteria and lies surrounding this case is the memory of Savannah Police Officer Mark Allen MacPhail, Sr., the man murdered by Troy Davis. If you have any interest in the memory of Officer Mark Allen MacPhail Sr, or the fact-based legal processes involved in the trial and appeals, I recommend these 3 links:

1. In 2011, Attorney Lance LoRusso wrote an excellent summary of the tragic death of Savannah Police Officer Mark MacPhail Sr. , and the legal process that confirmed the murderer’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Equal Justice Under Law: The Oath Sworn By Officer Mark Allen MacPhail | Blue Line Lawyer ® (wordpress.com) https://bluelinelawyer.wordpress.com/2011/09/18/equal-justice-under-law-the-oath-sworn-by-officer-mark-allen-macphail/

2. Also recommended is the Officer Down Memorial Page: Reflections for Officer Mark Allen MacPhail, Sr., Savannah Police Department, Georgia (odmp.org) https://www.odmp.org/officer/reflections/8410-officer-mark-allen-macphail-sr

3. Retired District Attorney Spencer Lawton wrote a technical and legalistic record of the case and a chronology of the legal malpractice that created the myth of Troy Davis’ innocence. Link below. COLUMN: Spencer Lawton: Troy Davis fairly convicted, not ‘railroaded’ – Opinion – Savannah Morning News – Savannah, GA (savannahnow.com) https://www.savannahnow.com/article/20111006/OPINION/310069763

“We sleep safely at night because rough men stand ready to visit violence on those who would harm us.”

–Winston S. Churchill

Amen