The Real Democracy of US (1000s attend US funeral of executed man)

More than 1,000 family members, supporters and civil rights activists have attended the funeral of an African American man, widely believed to be falsely convicted of murder and executed in the US State of Georgia.

Troy Davis was accused in 1989 of killing a Georgia police officer and despite the lack of any concrete evidence linking him to the crime as well as the emergence of many holes in his case, the African American man was convicted and eventually executed by lethal injection on September 21.

Davis had been insisting until the moment of his execution that he did not commit the crime and was falsely framed.

Seven of the nine witnesses that testified against Davis changed or recanted their respective testimonies since his conviction. Some of the witnesses even admitted that they were coerced by police to testify against Davis.

It is a common practice in the American judicial system for local and federal prosecutors to build a criminal case, especially against African Americans and other minorities, by intimating other criminal suspects and even convicts to falsely testify against other crime suspects in ‘deals’ to reduce sentences against themselves.

Davis’s conviction and the plan to execute him sparked worldwide outrage and condemnation, though activists were unable to save him.

Greg Mathis, a senior American judge, has lambasted the decision of US judiciary officials in the state of Georgia to execute Davis.

“This was, without a doubt, a grave miscarriage of justice. We’ve long known our system of justice is broken. Davis’s execution shows us just how broken the system has become,” he said.

There have been numerous controversial executions of African Americans in the US, most of them involving the murder of white individuals or police officers. A number of such cases have been proven illegitimate in recent years through the performance of DNA tests. Although some of the DNA evidence have come in time to save executions of innocent ‘convicts,’ a few of them emerged after accused killers were already executed.