Troy Davis
American convicted murderer (1968–2011)
Troy Anthony Davis (October 9, 1968 – September 21, 2011) was a man convicted of and executed for the August 19, 1989, murder of police officer Mark MacPhail in Savannah, Georgia. MacPhail was working as a security guard at a Burger King restaurant and was intervening to defend a man being assaulted in a nearby parking lot when he was murdered. At Davis's 1991 trial, seven witnesses testified that they had seen him shoot MacPhail, and two others testified that Davis had confessed the murder to them. There were 34 witnesses who testified for the prosecution, and six others for the defense, including Davis. Although the murder weapon was not recovered, ballistic evidence presented at trial linked bullets recovered at or near the scene to those at another shooting in which Davis was also charged. He was convicted of murder and various lesser charges, including the earlier shooting, and was sentenced to death in August 1991.
Davis maintained his innocence up to his death. In the twenty years between his conviction and execution, Davis and his defenders secured support from the public, celebrities, and human rights groups. Amnesty International and other groups such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) took up Davis's cause. Prominent politicians and leaders, including former President Jimmy Carter, Rev.
“Troy Davis” enters the record as american convicted murderer (1968–2011). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Troy, Davis and American can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 14, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q469892. VIAF identifies the subject as 172433429. The Library of Congress control number is nb2011019118. 3 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1968, 2011, 1989 and 1991.
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This entry incorporates text from “Troy Davis” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.