Girvies Davis was exe­cut­ed in Illinois in 1995 after a con­vic­tion based large­ly on his own con­fes­sion. Davis’ appel­late attor­ney was David A. Schwartz, who now serves as senior vice-pres­i­dent and base­ball legal coun­sel at CSMG Sports. Schwartz writes in the Chicago Tribune that Davis ​“con­fessed” to many crimes, most of which he indis­putably did not com­mit. Davis said that the only rea­son he con­fessed to the mur­der that sent him to death row was that the police threat­ened to kill him if he did not sign the con­fes­sion. Schwartz, who was an attor­ney with Jenner & Block at the time he rep­re­sent­ed Davis, laments the fact that Davis’ case had no DNA and that the times were dif­fer­ent from those that led to the clear­ing of Illinois’ death row by Gov. George Ryan in 2003:


I paused on Wednesday, as I do every May 17, to remem­ber a man who was exe­cut­ed for a mur­der I am cer­tain he did­n’t com­mit.

Timing is every­thing, of course, and for­mer Gov. George Ryan’s deci­sion in 2003 to emp­ty Illinois’ Death Row came too late to save my client and friend, Girvies Davis, who was put to death on May 17, 1995.

By the time I got involved in the case, 15 years after the tri­al and five months before the exe­cu­tion, noth­ing short of find­ing the real mur­der­er would have saved (Girvies) Davis’ life. Our crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem admits mis­takes only when it has to, and belat­ed attempts to cast doubt on a ver­dict are usu­al­ly swept aside, regard­less of mer­it, unless the defen­dant can actu­al­ly prove his inno­cence.

Proving a defen­dan­t’s inno­cence, though, is a tall task. Because there were no wit­ness­es against Davis, there were no state­ments to recant; because there was no foren­sic evi­dence, there were no DNA tests to run.

In December 1978, Charles Biebel was found shot to death in his mobile home near Belleville, an Illinois town out­side St. Louis. For 9 months the mur­der remained unsolved, and Davis was nev­er con­sid­ered a sus­pect.

Then, in the fall of 1979, 10 days after Davis was arrest­ed in an unre­lat­ed rob­bery, the police announced that he had con­fessed to 20 mur­ders and attempt­ed mur­ders.

Davis’ ​“con­fes­sion” to the Biebel mur­der was the only non-cir­cum­stan­tial evi­dence used against him at his tri­al.

Of the 20 crimes to which Davis sup­pos­ed­ly con­fessed, how­ev­er, it is now undis­put­ed that he had noth­ing to do with most of them. Other defen­dants were lat­er con­vict­ed, and pros­e­cu­tors stat­ed in court (in the oth­er cas­es) that Davis’ con­fes­sions were false.

Yet these same pros­e­cu­tors had no prob­lem using one of the false con­fes­sions to secure his death sen­tence.

According to Davis, here is why he signed the con­fes­sions: After he had spent 10 days in cus­tody, the police checked him out of jail at 10 p.m. (the logs at the jail con­firmed this) and drove him to a desert­ed road out­side of town.

The police, Davis said, took off his hand­cuffs and leg shack­les, drew their guns and pro­duced a stack of already writ­ten con­fes­sions. They told him if he did­n’t sign they would kill him and say he died try­ing to escape.

Davis signed every­thing they had.

​“You would have signed too,” he told me years lat­er, ​“if you had been on the side of that road instead of me.”

The police had their con­fes­sions, and Davis was back in jail by dawn.

Davis was cer­tain­ly not a sym­pa­thet­ic fig­ure, giv­en his long rap sheet, his his­to­ry as a drug addict and his fre­quent out­bursts in the court­room. To an all-white jury in Belleville in 1980, this rough-look­ing 20-year-old black kid from East St. Louis would have appeared guilty even before the lawyers deliv­ered open­ing state­ments.

A con­fes­sion sim­ply sealed the deal, even if there was nev­er an ade­quate expla­na­tion for the mid­dle-of-the-night out­ing that pre­cip­i­tat­ed it.

All of this hap­pened while I was in grade school. In 1994, fresh out of law school and 14 years removed from Davis’ tri­al, I joined a Chicago law firm and was assigned to work pro bono on a peti­tion seek­ing clemen­cy for Davis.

Working with a team of attor­neys, we found a teacher and a parole offi­cer who signed sworn affi­davits stat­ing that Davis was illit­er­ate when arrest­ed and could not pos­si­bly have under­stood what he was sign­ing.

We draft­ed a clemen­cy peti­tion to then-Gov. Jim Edgar, rais­ing these issues and dozens of oth­ers and urg­ing that Davis’ death sen­tence be com­mut­ed to life in prison with­out parole.

We lost.

It was the wrong time, and we had the wrong gov­er­nor. Our abil­i­ty to cast doubt on Davis’ guilt was not enough to spare his life, and we were nev­er able to prove his inno­cence. We were unable to recon­struct his where­abouts on the day of the mur­der to find an ali­bi. I was cer­tain that Davis was inno­cent but was nev­er able to prove it, a fact that still haunts me 11 years lat­er.

Davis did­n’t have the good for­tune of Anthony Porter, who came with­in 48 hours of exe­cu­tion but who ulti­mate­ly was exon­er­at­ed when a group of Northwestern University jour­nal­ism stu­dents and a pri­vate inves­ti­ga­tor found the real killer and, against all odds, per­suad­ed him to con­fess on video­tape.

The major­i­ty of exon­er­a­tions in recent years have come about because of advances in tech­nol­o­gy and DNA test­ing, but for many con­victs, includ­ing Davis, there are no tools to prove inno­cence because there is no foren­sic evi­dence to test. These unjust­ly impris­oned inmates will nev­er gain their free­dom.

Davis’ case illus­trates many of the inad­e­qua­cies of our crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem. His pub­lic defend­er had no expe­ri­ence in death penal­ty cas­es. Prosecutors used their peremp­to­ry chal­lenges to exclude every poten­tial black juror, a prac­tice that has since been out­lawed by the U.S. Supreme Court. And the appel­late courts were more con­cerned with pro­ce­dure than with dis­cov­er­ing the truth.

I am not a death penal­ty activist, and peo­ple can dis­agree about whether Davis’ actions – crimes he real­ly com­mit­ted, not what the police fab­ri­cat­ed against him – ulti­mate­ly war­rant­ed a death sen­tence.

To be sure, Davis took part in crimes where inno­cent peo­ple got killed, but he was nev­er the one who did the killing. He open­ly acknowl­edged this in the soft-spo­ken man­ner that char­ac­ter­ized the 36-year-old I knew – the man who learned to read in prison and became an ordained min­is­ter, not the rot­ten 20-year-old he was when con­vict­ed.

In the 5 months I spent on his case, Davis nev­er shied away from talk­ing about how much he regret­ted his bad deeds, includ­ing crimes the police nev­er knew he had com­mit­ted. But he was stead­fast in deny­ing any role in the mur­der that led to his exe­cu­tion.

In the begin­ning, I spent a lot of time try­ing to catch Davis in a lie – about any­thing – but I was nev­er able to do it. Over time, I slow­ly and grudg­ing­ly came to believe his sto­ry.

To be hon­est, I did­n’t want to believe him; his guilt cer­tain­ly would have made it eas­i­er on me in the days lead­ing to his exe­cu­tion, when it became clear there was noth­ing more I could do to save his life.

It would have made it eas­i­er in the hours before mid­night, when I had to say good­bye to Davis in his cell at Stateville prison, my client com­fort­ing me more than the oth­er way around.

So fre­quent­ly, and cer­tain­ly on the anniver­sary of his death, I pause to remem­ber that the State of Illinois exe­cut­ed Girvies Davis for a crime I am sure he did­n’t com­mit, and that I was pow­er­less to pre­vent it.

(Chicago Tribune, May 22, 2006) (pic­ture of Davis, IL Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty). See Innocence and New Voices.

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