Parishioners collected funds during a Sunday service for the memorial service expected to take place next Saturday.
Anti-death penalty activists still have not lost their desire to seek justice in the case of Troy Davis, and now they’re raising money so that he can be properly laid to rest.
On Sunday, Reverend Raphael Warnock, pastor of Atlanta’s prominent and historic Ebenezer Baptist Church, called on his congregants to offer the Davis family help with funeral costs.
"The fact that the state of Georgia managed to execute Troy Davis in the face of this lingering doubt does not mean that that was the right answer, it simply means that we have a whole lot more work to do," Warnock said.
The donations were collected during this past Sunday’s service for the expected memorial, to be held next Saturday in Savannah.
Warnock said he believed that Davis was innocent, but even if he were not, the pastor said that the execution did not allow for mercy and that the Board of Pardons did not do what was right.
Troy Davis was executed Sept. 21 for the 1989 murder of off-duty Georgia police officer Mark MacPhail. His case received national support and attention from protestors who urged that he did not deserve to die and that his case had “too much doubt.”
“We have to move past that pain and do justice,” Warnock said. “The death penalty is still wrong.”
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(Photo: Jessica McGowan/Getty Images)
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