TROY DAVIS CASE; NEW YORK TIMES EXPRESSES RELIEF OVER SUPREME COURT DECISION; DECRIES "SHOCKING" SCALIA AND THOMAS DISSENTS;

"FOR THE STATE TO PUT A PERSON TO DEATH IS, IN OUR OPINION, ALWAYS WRONG. TO DO SO IN THE FACE OF CLEAR EVIDENCE OF INNOCENCE IS BARBARIC."

EDITORIAL: NEW YORK TIMES;

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Background: (Wikipedia); The Troy Davis case concerns the case of Troy Anthony Davis, a former sports coach from the U.S. state of Georgia, who was convicted and sentenced to death in 1991 for the August 19, 1989 murder of off-duty Savannah, Georgia police officer Mark MacPhail. Throughout the trial and subsequent appeals, Davis maintained his innocence, claiming he was wrongfully convicted of the crime as a result of false identification. After the trial and first set of appeals, seven of the nine prosecution eyewitnesses who had linked Davis to the killing recanted or contradicted their original trial testimony, claiming police coercion and questionable interrogation tactics. The witness who first implicated Davis and has remained consistent, Sylvester "Redd" Coles, was initially a suspect in the crime. Coles was seen acting suspiciously the night of MacPhail's murder and has been heard boasting that he killed an off-duty police officer. There is only one witness who did not recant his testimony and is not himself a suspect in the murder, but he made an in-court identification of Davis two years after the crime.Davis opponents say Coles came back to the scene of the shooting with a female after police arrived. Davis changed clothes (even asking Coles for a shirt later) and fled to Atlanta with his sister. Davis has repeatedly asked the courts to examine the new exculpatory evidence, but so far has not been successful in persuading a majority of judges to grant him a new trial or conduct a hearing in which the recanting eyewitnesses could be cross-examined to determine the credibility of Davis’ innocence claims. In October 2008, Davis filed a second Habeas petition in the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals on the grounds that it was the first time Davis was presenting a free-standing innocence claim and that no court has yet held an evidentiary hearing on the exculpatory evidence of recanted testimony. On 16 April 2009 the three-judge panel denied Davis' petition on procedural grounds by a 2-1 majority. Amnesty International has strongly condemned the refusal of U.S. courts to examine the innocence evidence, and has organized rallies and letter-writing campaigns to persuade the Georgia and Federal courts to grant Davis a new trial or an evidentiary hearing. Many prominent politicians and leaders, including President Jimmy Carter, Pope Benedict XVI, Nobel laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Presidential candidate Bob Barr, and former FBI Director and judge William S. Sessions have called upon the courts to grant Davis a new trial or evidentiary hearing. On 17 August 2009, the U.S. Supreme Court, over the dissenting votes of two justices, ordered a federal district court in Georgia to consider and rule on whether new evidence "that could not have been obtained at the time of trial clearly establishes [Davis'] innocence."

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"We are relieved that the Supreme Court has ordered a lower court to reconsider the conviction of a Georgia death row inmate who may be innocent," the August 18, 2009, editorial begins, under the heading, "The Court's Duty."

"In a shocking dissent, Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas dismissed the idea that the courts have a duty to ensure that they are not putting an innocent man to death," the editorial continues.

"We hope that the Georgia court will see that justice is done. And that the other justices will make clear in future cases that the Constitution prohibits the execution of death row inmates who can produce convincing evidence that they are innocent.

Troy Davis was convicted of the 1989 murder of an off-duty Savannah police officer. Seven key witnesses have since recanted, and several people have charged that the main prosecution witness was the shooter. Rather than arguing that there were procedural flaws in his trial, Mr. Davis is making the more basic claim that he is innocent and that new evidence proves it.

The Supreme Court ordered a federal district court to “receive testimony and make findings of fact” about whether the new evidence clearly establishes that Mr. Davis is not guilty. Such a hearing is the best vehicle for getting at the truth — and for possibly rescuing an innocent man. There is no excuse for not having one.

In their extraordinarily cold dissent, Justices Scalia and Thomas argued that the Supreme Court has never held that the Constitution prohibits executing an inmate who had a full and fair trial but is later able to convince a court that he is actually innocent. To the contrary, they argued that a federal law — the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 — prevents the courts from intervening on behalf of a death row inmate who claims to have proof of his own innocence.

This reading of the law is incorrect, as Justice John Paul Stevens ably explained in a separate opinion. It is also unconscionable. For the state to put a person to death is, in our opinion, always wrong. To do so in the face of clear evidence of innocence is barbaric."

The editorial can be found at:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/19/opinion/19wed3.html?_r=1&th&emc=th

Harold Levy...hlevy15@gmail.com;