On Wednesday 21 September, as he lay strapped to a gurney in the death chamber of the Georgia Diagnostics and Classification Prison, Troy Davis turned to the family of Mark MacPhail and for the final time pronounced his innocence. “I did not personally kill your son, father and brother,” Davis said “I am innocent.” He then called on the MacPhail family to keep searching for the truth. Quickly losing consciousness following the lethal injection, he died fourteen minutes later at 11.08 pm EDT.

The execution of Troy Davis was supposed to end in a simple statistic of the thirty-fourth man to be executed in the USA this year. His case, however, is unique due to a number of factors. Davis had faced his execution three times before; each of which resulted in a stay of execution, twice requested by the Supreme Court of the United States. The evidence of the case had been under examination by the Supreme Court again while Davis was finally executed last Wednesday.

However, most significant for the United States now, post-execution, is the public outcry. Unlike most of the other thirty-three killed in 2011, Davis’s death galvanised a fierce opposition to the cruelty and often arbitrary nature of the American justice system in a way never before seen in recent times. His death has been called a watershed moment, and it is felt by those involved in his campaign and those sympathetic to it that Wednesday 21 was the beginning of a newly energised movement aimed at changing judicial practices in the US.

Davis was convicted and sentenced to death following the murder of police officer Mark MacPhail on 19 August 1989, who was shot and killed while coming to the aid of a homeless man. Witnesses linked him to the scene; this has never been in question. Nine witnesses identified him as the shooter and, following a trial in 1991, he was sentenced to death by a Georgian jury.

Davis’ case is different as it underlines what is seen as the reality of a system more interested in executing and disposing of convicted criminals rather than, like Davis asked of the MacPhail family, to search for the truth. Although no gun was found and no conclusive DNA evidence was ever discovered, Troy was executed on the word of nine people, of which seven retracted their statements following the trial, stating various degrees of police pressure on them to pick out Davis as the shooter.

The execution of a man whose guilt was so widely doubted makes a mockery of the justice system. The decision to follow through with the judgement despite significant protest has the potential to bring the debate over the role of capital punishment in the US back into public and political discourse. It will certainly become an issue in the next presidential election due to the advocacy of Republican contender Rick Perry for capital punishment and his pride in his judicial record as Governor of Texas.

However, what is of real interest is the response that this case has created around the US in campaigning organisations. The anti-capital punishment movement is limited there. Vocal campaigners like Amnesty USA, the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People are strong, yet they are not specifically focused on the death penalty and so are unable to muster the necessary leadership and strength to bring in real change. The only fully staffed, national group focused on the abolition of the capital punishment is the National Coalition to Abolish Death Penalty.
As a result of Wednesday’s actions, a vocal and influential minority have begun to place their support behind abolition or, at least, legal change and review. Former president Jimmy Carter called on Wednesday being a decisive step towards the total rejection of capital punishment, while his fellow ex-president Bill Clinton wants to see appeals processes slowed down to properly consider DNA evidence that could, in the case of Davis, have proved his innocence if administered. Even celebrities like Alec Baldwin, Kim Kardashian and Mia Farrow have publicly shown their opposition to the execution of Davis in particular, and to the death penalty in general.

America is a nation where justice is administered on a local and state-wide level. The failure of the protests to stop the execution is a testament to the support that such practices hold in the US. However, the execution of a man whose culpability was so much in doubt is drawing together a movement into an increasingly influential and energised force. The NAACP has stated it will step up its campaigns and others see this only as the beginning of a long and arduous battle that has caught the minds of the world. This is a battle that matters because as his supporters say, we are all Troy Davis, the powerless man or woman before a justice system that many no longer trust.