What the Supreme Court Should Have Considered

Troy Anthony Davis v the State of Georgia
CAPITAL CASE
QUESTION PRESENTED
Mr. Davis’ request for an evidentiary hearing to
examine his new innocence evidence sharply split the
Supreme Court of Georgia. Since Mr. Davis’ murder
conviction, seven of nine State witnesses have recanted their
trial testimony, and several new witnesses have identified or
implicated a different individual, Redd Coles, as the shooter.
A bare majority of four Georgia Supreme Court Justices
denied Mr. Davis’ motion for new trial and evidentiary
hearing, citing a procedural requirement that witness
recantations could never be material unless extrinsic evidence
could show that the trial testimony of each recanting witness
was the “purest fabrication” and that each piece of new
evidence, standing alone, could prove Petitioner’s innocence.
Three of the seven justices argued that this case illustrates that
the State’s procedures for motions for new trial based on new
evidence are “overly rigid and fail[] to allow an adequate
inquiry into the fundamental question, which is whether or
not an innocent person might have been convicted or even, in
this case, might be put to death.” App. A at 17a.

The questions presented are:
1. Does the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution
create a substantive right of the innocent not to be executed so
as to invoke the procedural requirements of the Due Process
Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution
when substantial evidence of innocence is discovered?
2. Alternatively, the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth
Amendment protects State-created liberty interests when State
law mandates a decision favorable to an individual based on a
set of substantive predicates. Georgia law creates an
Extraordinary Motion for New Trial that mandates a new trial
based on newly-discovered evidence if the defendant can
show that the new evidence meets six substantive predicates.
Does Georgia’s Extraordinary Motion for New Trial create a
liberty interest protected by procedural due process?
3. If either the Eighth Amendment or Georgia law creates a
liberty interest protected by the Due Process Clause, does the
Supreme Court of Georgia’s failure to grant an evidentiary
hearing to review the cumulative substance and credibility of
Mr. Davis’ admissible new innocence evidence violate the
procedural requirements of the Due Process Clause?

From the ACLU:
When it comes to the death penalty, innocence should never have to be proven beyond a shadow of a doubt. We must not execute a human being if there is any legitimate chance that he is innocent.
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The Court stayed Troy Davis's execution to consider hearing the cop-killing death penalty case, but then declined to hear it. Doesn't the fact that they stayed the execution indicate some shadow of doubt? Enough for a trial or hearing to consider the new evidence of his innocence before he is executed?

And from Friends of Justice:
Unless there is proof, with “no doubt of any kind,” that a witness’ trial testimony was “the purest fabrication” no relief can be granted.
That’s a mighty high hurdle. In the absence of physical evidence, how can you ever prove that a witness had it wrong in 1991 and has now got it right? All things being equal, the original testimony will be given greater weight by appeals courts because it was closer to the date of the alleged crime and therefore more likely to be reliable.
What if it is asserted that the recanting witness was coerced into testifying falsely. But how can we evaluate this claim? It would require a hearing to establish that (a) a coercion claim is being made, and a hearing can’t be granted unless all doubt about the veracity of the original testimony has already been removed. Even then, when law enforcement swears that witnesses weren’t coerced, we would be left with a he-said-she-said stand off. The mere fact that law enforcement says witnesses testified freely casts some doubt on the claim of coercion. And some doubt, no matter how little, is all you need to uphold a conviction.
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Seven recantations but none ever heard in court. See the man who the officer died trying to help tell his story of that night and how the police obtained his statement. As of June 2007, 82% of Georgia police departments have no written policy on how to collect eyewitness evidence using live or photographic lineups. Read some recantations and stories of how the first statements were obtained.

Stephen Colbert interviews an exonoree.