for long. Davis was a coach in the Savannah Police Athletic League and had signed up for service in the United States Marine Corps. Background of Mark MacPhail Mark Allen MacPhail Sr., was 27 years old at the time of his murder. He was the son of a U.S. Army colonel, was married, and was father to a two-year-old daughter and an infant son. He had joined the Savannah Police Department in 1986 following six years of military service as an Army Ranger. MacPhail had worked for three years as a regular patrol officer and in the summer of 1989 had applied to train as a mounted police officer. Hundreds of mourners, including county, state, and federal law enforcement officers, attended MacPhail's funeral at Trinity Lutheran Church in Savannah on August 22, 1989. Trial and conviction Pre-trial proceedings On November 15, 1989, a grand jury indicted Davis for murder, assaulting Larry Young with a pistol, shooting Michael Cooper, obstructing MacPhail in performance of his duty and possession of a firearm during the commission of a crime. Davis pleaded not guilty in April 1990. In November 1990, the presiding judge excluded forensic evidence from the pair of shorts seized at the Davis home. The judge ruled that Davis's mother did "not freely and voluntarily grant the police the right to search her home." She had testified that police officers had threatened to break down her door unless she let them into her home. The Georgia Supreme Court upheld the exclusion of the evidence in May 1991, saying that the police should have obtained a search warrant. Davis was brought to trial in August 1991. Prosecution case The prosecution claimed that Davis had shot Cooper in Cloverdale, then met up with Redd Coles at a pool hall, pistol-whipped the homeless man Larry Young in the parking lot, and then killed Mark MacPhail. The prosecution called three eyewitnesses to the shooting of Cooper: Cooper testified that he was intoxicated at the time he was shot, and that although Davis was one of the people Cooper had quarrelled with, he "don't know me well enough to shoot me." Benjamin Gordon stated that the man who had shot Cooper had been wearing a white Batman T-shirt and blue shorts. On cross-examination Gordon admitted he had not seen the person who shot Cooper and stated that he did not know Davis. Daryl Collins made a statement