Two congressmen to pay a visit to Georgia’s death row

U.S. Rep. John Lewis just let it be known that he and fellow congressman Hank Johnson of DeKalb County will pay a visit to Georgia’s death row and inmate Troy Davis on Friday.

Davis was convicted of murdering a police officer in Savannah in 1989. Since the time of his original trial, seven of the nine witnesses have recanted or contradicted their testimony. Davis’ attorneys have filed a final legal measure to avoid his execution — asking the U.S. Supreme Court to send the case back to a judge for reconsideration of the changing testimony.

Lewis has been involved in the Davis case for the last two years, and testified at a parole board hearing on the inmate’s behalf.

But Lewis has never visited death row, spokeswoman Brenda Jones said — although during his Freedom Rider days, the much-jailed congressman was once hauled off to a maximum security prison in Mississippi.

Jones also pointed out that Lewis had made a quiet prison visit to Genarlow Wilson, who was sentenced to a mandatory 10 years for consensual sex with a 15-year-old girl — an act that occurred when the young black man was 17.

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