UPDATE III, from the comment section of The Field Negro, by The Field Negro:
"Seven of the nine witnesses for the state recanted, and they stated in sworn affidavits that they were pressured by the police to testify the way they did at the trial?
NO PHYSICAL EVIDENCE!
I REPEAT: PHYSICAL EVIDENCE!
NO DNA EVIDENCE!
Yes, he might have been a punk and he was running with some bad dudes. But you forgot the fact that the person who reported Davis to the police in the first place was with Davis that day, and was the person who first accosted and beat that homeless man.
Also,you might want to check on your facts regarding the gun:
"One of the state's key claims at trial was that the same gun used to shoot Officer MacPhail was also used in the first of two shootings earlier that evening in another neighborhood known as Cloverdale--and that this 'fact' implicates Mr. Davis -- has now been called into serious doubt. The state attempted to link the two crimes based on 'expert' findings. The state had a ballistics examiner, Roger Parian, testify that there was enough similarities between a bullet fired in Cloverdale and a bullet removed from the officer's body that the bullets may have been fired from the same gun...
The state's 'same gun' theory is no longer viable. A new report prepared by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation years later at the request of the Board of Pardons and Paroles showed that the markings on the two bullets are insufficient to determine that they were fired from the same gun. Former Georgia Bureau of Investigation firearms examiner Christopher Robinson confirms that the 2007 GBI reports show that the state's 'same gun' testimony at trial was 'inaccurate and misleading.' and that the 2007 GBI report 'indicates that it is impossible to tell whether the bullets were fired from the same firearm."”
There is a very good chance that the guy who fingered Davis was the actual trigger man.
But it doesn't matter now, does it?
Go read Infidel753 on this subject.
(Radical Redneck: Stay away from this blog. You're too stupid to understand how grindingly stupid you are.)
UPDATE II: 10:22 pm --Supreme Court denied the stay of execution.
UPDATE I: 7:12 pm -- Execution delayed. Waiting for Supreme Court to decide if they will issue a stay of execution.
Cross-posted: By (O)CT(O)PUS, The Swash Zone:
According to The Innocence Project, 273 ex-felons in American prisons have been exonerated through the use of DNA testing - including 17 who have served time on death row. In theory, our justice system is based on an assumption of innocence until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. However, once you have been found guilty, the burden of proof is reversed: You must prove your innocence to a Byzantine bureaucracy before justice is finally served. Of those 273 wrongful convictions, innocent victims of a flawed justice system served an average of 13 years in prison before exoneration and release. Thirteen years! For crimes they did not commit! Attributable to false testimony. Faulty evidence! Police coercion! And/or prosecutorial abuse!
Troy Anthony Davis is scheduled for execution later today. He was convicted in the murder of Savannah police officer Mark MacPhail, who was working part-time as a security guard when he intervened between several men having an argument in a parking lot. One of the men, Sylvester Coles, implicated Davis in the killing. No murder weapon was ever found, and no physical evidence linked Davis to the crime.
Years later, 7 of the original 9 witnesses who linked Davis to the killing recanted all or part of their stories. New witnesses implicated Coles in the crime. State and federal appeals courts found those recantations unpersuasive and declared that Davis had failed to provide sufficient proof of innocence [my bold].
Among those who petitioned the courts for a new trial or evidentiary hearing: Amnesty International, NAACP, former President Jimmy Carter, Al Sharpton, Pope Benedict XVI, Desmond Tutu, former Georgia Congressman Bob Barr, and former FBI Director and Judge William Sessions.
One would think a continuing search for truth and justice should take precedence over a lust for revenge. However, once convicted, you are presumed guilty until proven innocent beyond a reasonable doubt. Yesterday, the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles denied Troy Anthony Davis a petition of clemency. His execution is scheduled for 7:00 PM today.
