Troy Anthony Davis was not yet 21 years old when he surrendered himself to Savannah police hoping to clear himself as a suspect in the fatal shooting of police officer Mark Allen MacPhail. Barring a dramatic change of course, next Tuesday, September 23, he will be 39 years old when the state of Georgia kills him for that crime.

Some of you might be thinking, No big deal, right? "Cop killer" gets his comeuppance, that's the law.

Unfortunately, in this case, the lines are not so clearly drawn. There was no physical evidence tying Davis to the crime in this case. The murder weapon was never found. Davis was convicted solely on the basis of witness testimony, and since his conviction, seven of the nine non-police witnesses have recanted. Some of the witnesses have gone so far as to offer alternate statements, and some claim to have been pressured by police to testify against Davis. And of the two remaining witnesses, one is the main other suspect in the crime. Go figure he's sticking to the claim that Davis did it.

Last Thursday, hundreds of Davis's supporters rallied at the state capitol opposing his execution in advance of a hearing Friday before the state Board of Pardons and Paroles. On Friday afternoon the Board issued a statement denying clemency in the case. The execution by lethal injection is scheduled for 7:00 p.m. next Tuesday.

As if to put the finishing touch on a case so shrouded in reasonable doubt, the most Board statement listed 39-year-old Troy's age as 38, the same age they attributed to him correctly on July 5, 2007 and incorrectly over a year later September 5, 2008 as well as last week. This lack of attention to detail around a capital case is less than reassuring.

One of those fighting on Troy's behalf is Sara Totonchi, a 31-year-old activist and lobbyist with the Southern Center for Human Rights. Sara was also recently elected chair of Georgians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, a coalition of organizations (such as the SCHR) and individuals opposed to capital punishment. She says she's been working against the death penalty since she was a teenager.

"My family is from Iraq, and one of the things that was stressed by my family was a need to end indiscriminate killing by the government of its citizens. So, fighting the death penalty was something that came really naturally for me."

After college, where she majored in social work and women's studies, she worked for the governor's domestic violence office, where she "watched people who were violent be put in prisons and then come out being more violent than they were when they went in." This compelled her to work more directly with the criminal justice system, with a focus on capital punishment. She also worked on "prison conditions cases and other ways the criminal justice system is used to control people of color and other marginalized communities."

If Troy Davis's sentence is carried out next week, it will be the twentieth execution in Sara's career. (Number 20 was to take place today, but Jack Alderman, also from Savannah, was just granted a stay of execution in order to make his case directly to the Board of Pardons and Paroles.)

With almost 20 executions under her young belt, I asked her how many cases she's actually been on the winning side of.

"Oh, gosh, I would say maybe three or four that didn't result in execution. There was one man in Alabama that was actually exonerated. Another man in Georgia was found to be entirely mentally incompetent and was given a life without parole sentence by the parole board. He unfortunately wound up committing suicide in prison; he was a very ill young man." Another death row inmate this summer had his sentence commuted to life in prison by the board "within a couple days" of his scheduled execution.

With a one-in-five record, how can she still keep at it without losing hope?

"You know, even the ones we lose inspire me," Sara said. She told me of Curtis Osborne, who was executed this summer here in Georgia. His court-appointed attorney at trial "repeatedly referred to him as 'a little n-word that deserved to die' [and] was handling 600 other felony cases while he was representing Mr. Osborne, who was facing the death penalty." His appeal attorneys argued that Osborne's trial attorney never told his client of a plea offer on the table that would have resulted in a life sentence.

There was also Wallace Fugate, executed in 2002. "He was represented by two lawyers who had never tried a death penalty case before and couldn't cite a single Supreme Court case. He was sentenced in 27 minutes, which is shorter than most of us take to get to work in the morning."

Sara builds her resolve from these irreversible losses and fights on. "It's those sorts of injustices that actually keep me going, because I've just got to shine a light on what's happening, what the low standard is for taking a person's life in Georgia."

If you want to join in that fight, Sara says there are generally organizations in every state with a name along the lines of "Georgians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty," so consult your Google. You can also check out your local chapter of Amnesty International, which has collected 100,000 petition signatures on behalf of Troy Davis.

The state parole board can reconsider its decision up until the last minute, which is the most likely course of clemency for him. There is a pending appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, but action on it is not likely to occur in time.

There will, as always, be a vigil outside the prison in Jackson, GA, next Tuesday evening.