In what legal experts are calling a highly unusual step, but a major breakthrough, Monday the U.S. Supreme Court ordered a new hearing for death-row inmate Troy Davis, the 40-year-old African-American man from Georgia who faces execution despite widespread concern Davis is an innocent man.
Davis has been on death row since 1991 for the 1989 murder of off-duty white Savannah policeman Mark MacPhail. Despite his 18 years on death row, Davis maintains his innocence, and legal experts and human rights advocates say there is enough evidence to back up his claim.
Monday's Supreme Court decision instructed a lower court to "receive testimony and findings of fact as to whether evidence that could not have been obtained at the time of trial clearly establishes [Davis'] innocence."
Advocates are calling the high court's order a crucial and important turn of events, and Davis' attorneys say that a new trial would allow them to show new evidence that could prove Davis was mistakenly identified as the killer.
The original witness testimonies were the backbone of the prosecution's case against Davis because of the absence of a murder weapon, fingerprints and DNA evidence. Since Davis' trial, seven of nine key prosecution witnesses who testified against him have recanted their testimony, and other witnesses have said another man confessed to the killing.
Despite these witness' recantations and the exculpatory statements of additional witnesses pointing to another man as the shooter, over the last couple of years federal and state courts have repeatedly denied Davis' request for a new trial to present the new evidence. The ruling on Monday, as the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported, was Davis' "last chance in the court system."
Ruling in favor of Davis, Justice John Paul Stevens cited prior court precedent that said it would be "an atrocious violation of our Constitution and the principles upon which it is based" to execute an innocent man. Steven added that "the substantial risk of putting an innocent man to death clearly provides an adequate justification for holding an evidentiary hearing."
In the last two years, Davis has come within hours of lethal injection three times but has been granted a stay each time. When Davis' last stay of execution expired on May 15, lawyers filed a last-ditch appeal to the Supreme Court, asking that the case be sent back to a federal judge for an evidentiary hearing that would include witnesses whose testimony has never been heard in court.
A Movement Grows
Grassroots activists have helped to push Davis' case into the national spotlight, and have made his appeal for a new trial one of the most high-profile death penalty cases in the United States. The Troy Davis case has also become a rallying cry amongst death penalty opponents across the nation and around the globe, birthing one of the largest anti-death penalty movements in recent years.
Groups such as Amnesty International and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People have organized around Davis' innocence, staging national and international days of action that have included large mobilizations, rallies, vigils and petition drives to stay Davis' execution and in support of a new trial.
The movement has gained the attention and support of influential advocates, including former President Jimmy Carter, Civil Rights icon John Lewis, Nobel Prize laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and Pope Benedict XVI, as well as the European Union, the European Parliament, the Secretary General of the Council of Europe, former FBI Director William Sessions, and former and current members of U.S. Congress Bob Barr, Carol Moseley Braun and John Lewis.
Death penalty opponents see the growing movement to free Davis as a way to bring more people into the wider anti-death penalty movement, and to educate the broader public about the racial disparities in the criminal justice system and in the application of the death penalty.
The movement against the death penalty is also growing in the South. As Facing South has reported, executions have become a Southern phenomenon in many ways. in fact, the South has performed 80 percent of all executions since 1977, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Texas and Virginia alone account for 45 percent of all U.S. executions.
More than anything, Davis' case, situated as it is in the South, has helped to shine a light on the way the death penalty plays out in the region.
As NACCP president Benjamin Jealous recently wrote in The Nation:
Adding to the sense of urgency around the Davis case, too, is the long, sour history of wrongly-accused black men receiving "rough justice" in the Deep South. Davis was convicted in Chatham County, a place where genteel traditions and picturesque antebellum mansions mask the harsher truths about the history of slavery, racism, and the Jim Crow era that is still imprinted on the region. Chatham County is home to about 250,000 of Georgia's 9.7 million residents but it has produced 40 percent of all death row exonerations in the state.
It will forever amaze me that it seems to take our nations highest courts to see and fix an obvious blunder or wrong. So heres a man who was convicted from testimony which was later recanted, and with no DNA or physical evidence whatsoever! Now these so called educated and wise judges cannot give this man a hearing? Rather I feel it is a more subtle delight that these white judges take pleasure in with the slow torture of an obviously innocent man, with this man being led to the gallows time and time again is truly a clear indication of the moral handicaps which plague most of the white race.
August 19, 2009 7:04 AM | Reply
THIS OLD WORLD ORDER OF ABUSE AND NEGLECT OF OUR POORER AMERICANS NEEDS ENLIGHTENED POLITICAL MINDS AND HEARTS TO VIEW GOD DIFFERENTLY THEN $$$? NO MATTER WHAT THEIR POLITICAL PARTY AFFILIATION ???
WHEN WILL OUR WEALTHY ELITE AMERICANS ABATE THEIR ASSAULT ON POORER AMERICANS WITH THEIR MONETARY CONTROL OF OUR IVORY TOWER U.S. CONGRESSIONAL LEADERS OF THE NEW WORLD ORDER ???
THERE ARE NOT MANY MORE DISTRACTIONS LEFT WHICH ARE AVAILABLE FOR OUR WEALTHY ELITE AMERICANS TO HIDE BEHIND IN NOT TAKING PROPER CARE OF ALL OUR AMERICANS IN A HUMANE FASHION !!!
RALPH NADER ATTEMPTED TO EDUCATE AMERICAN VOTERS ABOUT U.S. CORPORATE POWER IN AMERICA AND HOW THEY CONTROL OUR CONGRESSIONAL PEOPLE THROUGH THEIR POCKET BOOK (POLITICAL DONATIONS). WITHOUT THE DOUGH $$$ THESE U.S. CONGRESSIONAL LEADERS OF THE FREE WORLD DO NOT GET RE~ELECTED TO CONGRESS.TO STAY IN POLITICAL OFFICE IN AMERICA,ONE HAS TO BARTER YOUR VOTES IN CONGRESS AND REPRESENT POWER INTERESTS IN RETURN FOR THE BUCK$.
POORER AMERICANS HAVE NEVER HAD THE $$$ LOBBY TO INFLUENCE THIS CORRUPT POLITICAL CONCEPT (of horse trading political votes for political contributions) TO ACHIEVE PROPER HEALTH ~CARE OR LEGAL REPRESENTATION FOR ALL OUR MIDDLE ~ CLASS AND WORKING POOR AMERICANS.
AMERICAN IVORY TOWER U.S.CONGRESSIONAL LEADERS OF THE FREE WORLD HAVE PASSED FEDERAL LEGISLATION IN WASHINGTON DC TO SPEND 50 BILLION AMERICAN TAX $$$ ON THE INTERNATIONAL FIGHT AGAINST AIDS OVER THE NEXT FIVE YEARS WHILE THEIR OWN AMERICAN CITIZENS ARE BEING TOLD BY THIS SAME U.S.CONGRESS THAT NATIONAL HEALTH CARE AND PROPER LEGAL REPRESENTATION FOR MIDDLE CLASS AND WORKING POOR CITIZENS IS UNAFFORDABLE.
*** WEALTHY ELITE AMERICANS (WHO ARE ONLY 1% OF OUR USA POPULATION) SADLY ALSO CONTROL HOW OUR U.S.CONGRESS SPENDS THEIR BUDGET TRILLION$ AND HAVE OBVIOUSLY FOUND MORE WORTHY INTERNATIONAL CITIZENS THEN OUR OWN DESPERATE AND NEEDY POOR TO ASSIST !!!
~Poorer Americans Nationwide only get 400 million $$$ per year for legal representation allocated them by CONGRESS~
Middle Class and Working Poor Americans are unable to afford proper legal representation in their Civil, Criminal and Family Courts of law all across America causing tremendous hardships nationwide,but these great minds and callous hearts in our American Congress have found others Worldwide more needy then their own citizens who are being falsely incarcerated,wrongfuly executed,losing their homes or apartments,losing child custody or visitation with their children etc?
Not being afforded proper legal representation by our U.S. Congress has created a total breakdown of the American judicial system for our poorer Americans because the our U.S. Courts punish all of us little people if we are not assisted with proprer legal counsel.it is a known fact that our average Middle Class and Working Poor Americans without proper legal representation in all of our American Courts of law lose their legal cases to the better financed who are able to afford lawyers.
Lawyers For Poor Americans is now actively in the hunt for International Countries and Leaders Worldwide to help raise 5 Billion Dollar$ for our slighted poorer Americans who have had their own American Congress turn their backs on their desperate needs in not affording them proper legal representation.
Troy Davis and Mumia Abu ? Jamal are 2 perfect examples of American citizens who never had proper legal representation or defense investigations afforded them by our U.S. Congressional Leaders Of The Free World in their initial criminal trials in (Georgia and Pennsylvania) who might very well have to pay the ultimate price of possibly being completely innocent and falsely executed in the near future.
These two poor Americans are among tens of thousands of legal cases nationwide that never were afforded proper legal representation or proper defense investigation at their initial trials.We the public really have no idea if these men are innocent or guilty until they both are given fair legal representation at their new future trials.
Improper murder trials and needless deaths due to lack of healthcare take place in Third World Countries all the time !
*** Why should average Middle~Class and Working Poor Americans
in the Wealthiest Country Of The World be treated as if they are living a Third World Life Style ??
lawyersforpooreramericans@yahoo.com
424-247-2013
August 29, 2009 2:36 AM | Reply
well said, kauai kid
September 2, 2009 4:26 AM | Reply
Why is this going on for so long. Come to the right decision and let this man go home. I hope when he is found not guilty, which I believe is the only justice, I hope those who convicted him come to book and face guilt. I am white but believe black justice in the usa still has a long way to go.
Good luck Troy.
September 30, 2009 7:46 AM | Reply