Witnesses Recant Testimonies
 
A brief summary of the stories of six witnesses who have changed or withdrawn their testimony in the case against Troy Davis.

Antoine Williams

Antoine Williams was an employee at the Burger King where Mark Allen McPhail was shot in August of 1989. As he pulled into the parking lot for the graveyard shift, he saw a police officer chasing someone, heard a gunshot, and saw an officer go down. Immediately after seeing the officer fall, Williams ducked down under the dashboard of his car, scared for his own life. He then heard several more shots. When it was all over, police officers at the scene asked him to describe the shooter:
 
“I kept telling them that I didn’t know. It was dark, my windows were tinted, and I was scared. It all happened so fast. Even today, I know that I could not honestly identify with any certainty who shot the officer that night.”
 
Despite his uncertainty, the police took his statement and he was called to testify in the trial. “After the officers talked to me, they gave me a statement and told me to sign it. I signed it. I did not read it because I cannot read.” When he had to identify Troy in the courtroom, Williams says that “I was totally unsure whether he was the person who shot the officer… I have no idea what the person who shot the officer looks like.”
 
Dorothy Ferrell
 
On the night of the shooting, Dorothy Ferrell was in a room at the nearby Thunderbird Motel. When she heard screaming and gunshots, she headed down the stairs to see what was the matter. By the time she got downstairs, the gunshots had stopped. She saw the victim lying on the ground, and a group of men running away. “I don’t know which of the guys did the shooting because I didn’t see that part… When the police were talking to me, it was like they wanted me to say I saw the shooting and sign a statement.”
 
The next morning, detectives came by and showed her one picture: a shot of Troy Davis, with his name written on the back. The detectives told her that others had identified this man as the shooter. “From the way the officer was talking, he gave me the impression that I should say Troy Davis was the one who shot the officer like the other witnesses had.” Fearing that if she didn’t cooperate she would be in violation of her parole, Dorothy told the officers that Troy Davis was the shooter.
 
As early as the trial, Dorothy was uncomfortable with the information she was presenting. But though she knew she hadn’t seen the shooting, she was nervous to change her story. “I was afraid that if I didn’t say what I’d told the police before, then I could be charged with perjury and sent back to jail…I didn’t want to get up there and say that I saw who did the shooting because I didn’t see that part. But I felt like I had to say that.”
 
Darrell “D.D.” Collins
 
Darrell Collins, sixteen at the time of the crime, was interrogated by police about the shooting at the Burger King. The police threatened to charge him as an accessory to murder if he did not say that he had seen Troy Davis commit the crime. Darrell insisted that another one of his friends had been involved in the fight leading up to the shooting, and that he had not seen who actually shot Officer McPhail. This interrogation went on for several hours, after which Collins finally agreed that what they said was true. “They would tell me things that they said happened and I would repeat whatever they said. Like when they said, ‘Troy hit the man in the head,’ I nodded and repeated what they said, whether it was true or not.” At the trial, he testified that Troy had been fighting with a man before the murder. “I am not proud for lying at Troy’s trial, but the police had me so messed up that I felt that’s all I could do or else I would go to jail.”