1995: Girvies Davis, framed?

On this date in 1995, Illinois executed Girvies Davis for murdering 89-year-old Charles Biebel in Belleville, Ill.

A small-time African-American hood reared in an alcoholic home, Davis was not linked to the murder by any physical evidence, or even any eyewitnesses. There was only one piece of evidence against him: his signed confession.

Unfortunately, the source lacked all credibility.

Davis copped to some 20 crimes under police interrogation. Officially, he did this when he voluntarily wrote out a list of evildoings and spontaneously passed it to a guard, which would be hard to believe even if the guy weren’t nearly illiterate. (Even the official story later became that Davis must have dictated the confession to someone else, like a cellmate.)

According to Davis’s later account, he signed statements the police had prepared for him … at gunpoint. The police logs say that he was taken out for a drive that night (“for evidence”), and conveniently confessed in the small hours of the morning.

Even though our man’s involvement in most of these “admitted” crimes (anything outstanding in the area that was still unsolved, it seems) was disproven, he couldn’t get traction in the courts once his conviction by an all-white jury was secured. Paradoxically, because there was no other evidence in the case to discredit, that “a-ha!” exoneration moment became all but impossible to secure despite the other holes in the case.

More action was had in the court of public opinion, where the usual suspects enlisted any number of pro-death penalty prosecutors and Republicans with serious misgivings about the case.

Time magazine lodged a naive early entrant in the “wait, wrongful confessions happen?” genre. The New York Times also covered the Davis clemency campaign:*

“The public sees the Bundys and the Gacys executed and they cheer,” said Gary V. Johnson, a former Kane County, Ill., prosecutor, who sought the death penalty in the past but opposes the execution of Mr. Davis. “The public doesn’t see the Girvies Davises.”

What savvy pols like Illinois Gov. Jim Edgar could see was that in the 1990s, all the political upside was in denying clemencies. So that’s what he did.

Years later, Davis’s last appellate attorney still believes “that the State of Illinois executed Girvies Davis for a crime I am sure he didn’t commit.”

Northwestern University journalism professor David Protess was also convinced of Girvies Davis’s innocence, and led a team of students researching the case back before he was famous for doing exactly that sort of thing. His work did not yield success on this occasion, but to judge by his account (pdf) of a last conversation he and his students had hours before Davis was put to death, it helped lead to the school’s later headline-grabbing wrongful conviction exposes.

Protess put [Davis] on the speakerphone, and the group gathered around. “Try not to mourn for me,” Davis said. “Move on with your lives. Just try to help people like me who get caught up in the system.” …

Davis had a final request: He wanted Protess and the students to promise that this wouldn’t be their last crusade in a capital case.

The room fell silent. “Of all the guys you know on the Row, who do you think most deserves help?” Protess asked.

Buck Williams,” Davis answered without hesitation. “I’m certain he’s innocent.”

Protess … vowed that he and his next group of students would leave no stone unturned for Williams.

Protess was as good as his word.

In less than a year, Williams along with Verneal Jimerson, Willie Rainge and Kenneth Adams were free men after a generation in prison.** These men, known as the “Ford Heights Four”, would win the largest civil rights lawsuit payment in U.S. history for their wrongful imprisonment.

* Davis may also have been the first death-row prisoner in the U.S. with his own Internet site and online clemency petition, although these interesting artifcats have long since vanished into the digital oubliette. Gov. Edgar reportedly received 1,200 emails asking him to spare his prisoner’s life … testament even then to elected officials’ disregard for online advocacy.

** Williams and Jimerson were on death row; Rainge and Adams were serving life sentences.

On this day..

10 thoughts on “1995: Girvies Davis, framed?

  1. Someone researched this guy’s case. Apparently, Davis wasn’t just guilty, he was a serial killer. He’d long admitted to participating in two robbery-slayings and was guilty of more. This piece of shit would murder helpless elderly people and people in stores even when they complied, because killing witnesses was “easier” than just wearing a fucking mask.

    https://www.reddit.com/r/serialkillers/comments/riak17/a_mugshot_of_girvies_davis_one_of_the_lesser/

    Do not trust David Protess. He framed an innocent man, Alstory Simon, in order to free a guilty man, Anthony Porter. He is a morally bankrupt individual who had his own motives.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E2bX-2UoVgk

    I’m getting sick and tired of this bullshit. It only makes it harder for actual innocent people to get out of prison. I thought this guy was wrongfully executed but now I’m pissed at for being lied to.

  2. Someone researched this guy’s case. Apparently, he wasn’t just guilty, he was a serial killer. He’d admitted aiding in two robbery-slayings and was guilty of more. This piece of shit would murder helpless elderly people and people in stores even when they complied.

    https://www.reddit.com/r/serialkillers/comments/riak17/a_mugshot_of_girvies_davis_one_of_the_lesser/

    Do not trust David Protes. He framed an innocent man, Alstory Simon, in order to free a guilty man, Anthony Porter. He is a morally bankrupt individual who had his own motives.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E2bX-2UoVgk

    I’m getting sick and tired of this bullshit. It only makes it harder for actual innocent people to get out of prison. I thought this guy was wrongfully executed but now I’m pissed at for being lied to.

  3. of course he confessed, there was a gun to his head, and what kind of man is Gov. Edgar who even when a juror pleaded with him because of the mistake of not knowing Davis was unable to read or write refused clemancy

  4. From ’80 until now, Illinois is a political morass that has forfeited it’s right to apply capital justice to anybody. All the murders and major political crimes that take place in Chicago that go unpunished?

    And poor fools like Davis get executed to give the crooked pols something to point at when they want to appear all “law and oirder”. It’s a total travesty.

  5. Wow such harsh comments there. Maybe you should re update yourself on this case before you judge. He had an education of a 4th grader. He wasn’t fully competent at what he was doing!

  6. If you’re dumb enough to confess to a murder you didn’t commit, then you’re dumb enough to take the punishment for it.

  7. Pingback: ExecutedToday.com » Themed Set: Executions for Abolitionists

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