How You Can Help a Man You’ve Probably Never Heard Of
Pervis Payne’s execution date is nearing — he needs our voices
I’ve been following Pervis Payne’s story for a while now, hoping upon hope that something would shift and he’d be taken off death row. He’s running out of time.
Mr Payne has been facing execution for more than three decades. He’s accused of killing a young white woman and her daughter in Tennessee in 1987.
He has maintained his innocence for 33 years. The Innocence Project, which is driving his case, works to put an end to wrongful convictions and helps exonerate the wrongly convicted.
Pervis Payne is the wrongly convicted.
There is evidence that creates reasonable doubt but we need your voices to get the word out.
· DNA on the murder weapon was not tested until September 2020 — The Shelby Country District Attorney General, Amy Weirich, allegedly blocked any DNA testing from the crime scene. What is Ms Weirich afraid of?
· DNA found on the murder weapon did not belong to Mr Payne — There’s no proof that Mr Payne came into contact with the murder weapon — so how was he convicted and put on death row?
Mr Payne is Black, the victims were white. In 1987 in Tennessee, racial bias could be heard echoing through the trial as the prosecutors painted Mr Payne as a hypersexual Black man looking for a white woman to assault.
Today, Mr Payne is still fighting for his life. The pandemic stayed his execution in December 2020, but he is fast approaching his new date of Friday, April 9, 2021.
Please join the Innocence Project, Activist Martin Luther King III and supporters around the world and raise your voice in calling for the court and Governor Lee to revisit Mr Payne’s case.
Innocence Project petition for Pervis Payne
Change.org petition for Pervis Payne
#PervisPayne #JusticeForPervisPayne
