Heartbreaking and utterly unsurprising

The Georgia Supreme Court today denied Troy Anthony Davis a new trial, in a 4-3 vote. Davis, you may recall, is the man convicted of killing a cop based almost entirely on the testimony of nine eyewitnesses, seven of whom have now recanted and say in sworn statements that they were pressured by the local police and district attorney's office to finger Davis for the crime. The remaining two eyewitnesses cannot be located, but one of them has been implicated by the others as the real killer. Davis came within hours of execution last July before the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles granted a stay to hear the new testimony, but then when the GA Supreme Court took Davis' appeal, the Board dropped the stay and preferred to let the Court handle the thorny issues. Unfortunately, in a narrowly divided decision, the Court allowed the initial jury verdict to stand because it did not believe the new testimony would likely result in a not guilty verdict.

This case is a textbook example of our current system of capital punishment and criminal prosecution in general run amok. I can only hope that Davis' attorneys will be able to pursue other legal avenues to secure his release or commutation of his sentence, though I suspect that will be difficult since he has exhausted his one federal habeas appeal and the Board of Pardons & Paroles will have easy political cover to let the state Supreme Court have the last word on whether the evidence should be heard.

What should scare everyone is that no court has ever heard the new testimony of the seven eyewitnesses as to their actual recollection of what they witnessed that night or the improper coercion they received to testify against Davis. If we let a man die without anyone ever giving full and fair consideration to their stories, we are taking a deliberate blind eye to the failings of our own justice system and in so doing we are allowing a travesty of justice to occur. It is as simple as that.