local news
Davis
continued from page 1
changed their minds about his guilt. Still,
prosecutors and MacPhail’s family have
staunchly backed the verdict and state and
federal courts have repeatedly upheld his
conviction.
MacPhail was working security at a bus
station on Aug. 19, 1989, and rushed to the
aid of Larry Young, a homeless man who
prosecutors say Davis was bashing with a
handgun after asking him for a beer. When
MacPhail got there, they say Davis had a
smirk on his face as he shot the offi-
cer to death in a Burger King parking
lot. Others have claimed the man
with Davis that night has told people
he actually shot the officer.
No gun was ever found, but shell
casings were linked, prosecutors say,
to an earlier shooting for which
Davis was convicted. Witnesses
placed Davis at the crime scene and
identified him as the shooter.
However, no other physical evidence
was found, including blood or DNA, that
tied Davis to the crime.
As time ticked toward the execution, an
upbeat and prayerful Davis turned down an
offer for a special last meal and planned to
spend his final hours meeting with friends,
family and supporters. Meanwhile, two
attempts to prove his innocence were reject-
ed: a polygraph test and another hearing
before the pardons board.
His attorney Stephen Marsh said Davis
would only submit to a polygraph test if
pardons officials would take it seriously.
“He doesn’t want to spend three hours
away from his family on what could be the
last day of his life if it won’t make any dif-
ference,” Marsh said.
His lawyers, meanwhile, are trying the
legal avenues left to them, filing a motion
in a county court challenging the ballistics
evidence and eyewitness testimony. A judge
it was a state conviction, but could poten-
tially halt the execution by asking for an
investigation into a federal issue if one
exists, though that was unlikely, said
Richard Dieter, executive director of the
Death Penalty Information Center.
In Savannah, 16 Davis supporters gath-
ered at the Chatham County courthouse to
press District Attorney Larry Chisolm to
help stop Davis’ execution. They said
240,000 people had signed petitions urging
the state to spare Davis’ life, and
delivered them in three large boxes to
Chisolm’s courthouse office where
they were received by a member of
the prosecutor’s staff. Chisolm has
said he’s powerless to intervene, but
activists say they believe he has
enough influence as district attorney
to sway the outcome.
As for the new and changed
accounts by some witnesses, an
unmoved federal judge dismissed
them during a hearing set up by the U.S.
Supreme Court in 2010. He said while the
“new evidence casts some additional, mini-
mal doubt on his conviction, it is largely
smoke and mirrors.”
It was the first time in 50 years that jus-
tices had considered a request to grant a
new trial for a death row inmate. It set a
tough standard for Davis to exonerate him-
self, ruling his attorneys must “clearly
establish” Davis’ innocence - a higher bar
to meet than prosecutors having to prove
guilt.
Once the hearing judge made his ruling,
the justices didn’t take up the case.
Prosecutors say they have no doubt they
charged the right person, and MacPhail’s
family lobbied the pardons board Monday
to reject Davis’ clemency appeal. The board
refused to stop the execution a day later.
“He has had ample time to prove his inno-
cence,” said MacPhail’s widow, Joan
MacPhail-Harris. “And he is not innocent.”
In Europe, where the planned execution
has drawn widespread criticism, politicians
and activists were making a last-minute
appeal to the state of Georgia to refrain
from
executing
Davis.
Amnesty
International and other groups planned a
protest outside the U.S. Embassy in Paris
later Wednesday and Amnesty also called a
vigil outside the U.S. Embassy in London.
Parliamentarians and government minis-
ters from the Council of Europe, the conti-
nent’s human rights watchdog, called for
Davis’ sentence to be commuted. Renate
Wohlwend of the Council’s Parliamentary
Assembly said that “to carry out this irrev-
ocable act now would be a terrible mistake
which could lead to a tragic injustice.”
shop was so large it was impossible to get
near the table. The throng surged out as far
as the parking lot and promised to keep
flowing until the event shut down at 3 p.m.
Wednesday is the deadline for sending in
“interest cards,” each of which – if filled out
properly and submitted on time – will be
entered into a series of lotteries from which
a roster of “casual worker” hires will be
made.
These “casual workers,” who are non-
down there working with us and that’s why
we organized this on our own time.”
Prosecutors say they have no
doubt they charged the right
person, and MacPhail’s family
lobbied the pardons board to
reject Davis’ clemency appeal
could at least delay the execution, which
has happened three times before. Most
believe arguments on the merits of the case
have been exhausted, however.
The National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People, which has
helped lead the charge to stop the execu-
tion, said it was considering asking
President Barack Obama to intervene.
Obama cannot grant Davis clemency since
Read the rest of this story online at
www.theskanner.com
workers
continued from page 1
but this generation has been kept out of that
pool.”
unfair Practices
African Americans have filed lawsuits
and grievances alleging exclusion and
unfair hiring practices by longshoremen’s
unions down the stretch of the West Coast,
including the Portland waterfront.
A key legal decision in 1964 forced the
first desegregation of the International
Longshore Workers Union Local 8, allow-
ing 50 African American workers to be
hired.
In Portland, critics charge, unfair prac-
tices continued until a group of six casual
workers filed an Equal Employment
Opportunity Complaint charging racial dis-
crimination in 1995. Reforms were enacted
that eventually brought five of the six into
the union, but African American workers
have repeatedly charged that the PMA and
the ILWU continue to keep jobs away from
women and workers of color.
A groundbreaking series of articles in the
late 1990s by Seattle Times business
reporter Stanley Holmes uncovered ram-
pant problems; by 1997, eight discrimina-
tion lawsuits were pending against the
Seattle longshore workers’ union and the
PMA.
“Several Seattle and Tacoma port com-
missioners say they are concerned about
dockworker allegations of racial and gender
discrimination on the waterfront, but say
they have no jurisdiction over the
Longshoremen’s Union or the maritime
association that leases the docks from the
ports,” Holmes wrote.
In 1998, one of the Seattle-area suits
against the ILWU, the PMA and an array of
union locals – which, Holmes reported,
alleged Black and Hispanic workers were
“passed over for job assignments, subjected
to racial slurs and jokes, physically assault-
ed and, after the suit was filed 18 months
ago, victimized by retaliatory acts” —
was settled out of court.
By 2006 the African American
Longshore Coalition attempted
reforms from inside the union – but,
some say, without result.
application Technicalities
Bigger Picture
“The problem is that when you look at
that economic system in the breakdown of
this city, people are tending to get the jobs
that their fathers have taught them,” Raiford
said Tuesday at Reflections. “So without
that opportunity we know that we have a lot
of unemployed people, we have a lot of kids
that aren’t graduating from high
school, we have a lot of families that
are divided.
Raiford noted that most of the fami-
lies in Oregon today are descendants of
longshore workers who came to
Oregon at the beginning of World War
II.
“All of our families, including mine,
came to Portland with the longshore-
man jobs almost 100 years ago, so it
shouldn’t be this hard to get them into
these types of opportunities, but it is,” she
said. “They’re not being fair about having
access for everyone.
“And it seems like such a small thing
when you’re looking to get a job and the
only reason you’re not getting it is because
of an initial on your card or it’s the wrong
size,” Raiford said. “One of the complaints
that we just heard about was that the people
who were sending the cards out for people
to apply sent the wrong-sized cards.”
1998, a Seattle lawsuit
alleged Black and Hispanic
workers were “...subjected to
racial slurs and jokes,
physically assaulted and
victimized by retaliatory acts”
A spokesman for the Tuesday help
group kicked off the session with a
few words about the need for more
longshore workers of color, and the
need to fill out the cards exactly right —
without any errors.
“The reason we brought you here today is
– you don’t have any better opportunity
than anybody else, but you do have the
opportunity to fill out the card right and
make sure you’re in the drawing, and you
may possibly get a job as a longshoreman,”
he told the boisterous crowd.
the Skanner news was not able to identi-
fy the volunteer by press time because the
number of interested applicants at the coffee
union laborers without any medical benefits
or job perks, are the pool of workers from
which a Portland International Longshore
Workers Union Local 8 committee periodi-
cally selects new union members when
opportunities open up.
“There’s not many brothers with us down
there at the Port of Portland,” the volunteer
said. “So we have 500 longshoremen and
maybe 25-30 African American or mixed
race etcetera.
“So we’d like to see more of you guys
Strike
continued from page 1
ferences are reconciled and the school doors
reopen.”
The Tacoma Education Association, the
union for 1,900 teachers, is defying a court
order for them to return to work. Pierce
County Superior Court Judge Bryan
Chushcoff has said he’s considering giving
the district the option of replacing teachers
Gregoire orders new talks ‘until their differences
are reconciled and the school doors reopen’
who are on the picket line, and the next
State and local public employees, includ-
ing teachers, have no legally protected right
to strike, according to a 2006 state attorney
general’s opinion. But that opinion also
noted state law lacks specific penalties for
striking public employees.
court hearing is set for Tuesday.
September 21, 2011 The Seattle Skanner Page 3