In Memoriam: Girvies Davis
Girvies Davis was executed on May 17, 1995, by the State of Illinois.
David Protess, the journalist who has helped prove the wrongful convictions
of several Illinois death row defendants, said that if he had had
one more week to complete his investigation, he believed he could
have proven Girvies’ innocence. Eric Zorn wrote more than 13
columns in the Chicago Tribune trying to Girvies’ life.
Girvies was “a hard, bad man who led a hard, bad life,”
according to Zorn. He grew up in an atmosphere of neglect, in a family
plagued by poverty and alcoholism, in one of the toughest and poorest
sections of East St. Louis, which is one of the toughest and poorest
towns in America.
As a child, Girvies, whose mother taught him to steal, was involved
in burglaries, purse-snatchings, and fencing stolen goods. He was
only 8 years old the first time he was arrested. His formal education
ended when he was 12 – a fourth grader unable to read or write
and barely able to speak coherently.
When he entered death row in 1980, Girvies was an angry, violent man
who fought with prison guards, a “hate-filled individual who
you did not want to be around,” recalls a fellow death row inmate.
On death row, fellow inmates taught him to read, using hand-drawn
flash cards. After years of studying, Girvies earned a GED and then
a correspondence degree from a Bible college. He became an ordained
minister and the spiritual advisor to other condemned men.
When asked many years later what motivated him to learn to read and
write, Girvies said that death row was the first place he’d been
where he met people like him (other inmates) who could speak in full
sentences and whose sentences didn’t require obscenities. He
asked them how they learned to speak. They told him he needed to learn
to read, and they taught him.
Girvies expressed remorse for his crimes, for “the harm and pain
I have caused people by my evil behavior.”
Girvies' concern for his fellow human beings, guards as well as inmates,
was reflected even in his preparations for his own execution. Several
months before his execution, he requested that none of the staff at
Menard be involved in transporting him to the execution site, because,
as he put it, “It would be difficult . . . to maintain a humane
working relationship or otherwise stable environment between condemned
prisoners and any Menard correctional officers involved in removing
me from my cell to be transported for execution."
His concern with others was also apparent when he first learned that
the Governor had denied clemency – 7 hours before his scheduled
execution. Four of his attorneys and friends were with him at the
time; and it was Girvies who had to comfort them -- rather than they
him -- assuring them that they had done everything they could, and
that he was “ready”.
Girvies donated his body to the University of St. Louis medical school,
saying that “The body, as far as I’m concerned, is nothing
but a shell. If it can be used to help others to continue to exist.
. . I’m for that.”
Everyone who knew Girvies suffered a double loss: the loss of belief
in the integrity of the legal process, and the personal loss of a
dear and blessed friend, whose death left an indescribable emptiness
in many hearts.
