Questions Before the U.S. Supreme Court in the Troy Davis Case

The United States Supreme Court is cur­rent­ly con­sid­er­ing whether to hear the case of Troy Davis or to allow his exe­cu­tion to go for­ward. The Court stayed his exe­cu­tion on September 23, less than two hours before it was to take place. The for­mal term for agree­ing to hear a case is ​“grant­i­ng a peti­tion for cer­tio­rari.” Davis’ attor­neys sub­mit­ted such a peti­tion, rais­ing a num­ber of ques­tions on which the Court could grant a hear­ing. The first ques­tion pre­sent­ed to the Court is:

“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?”

Davis’ peti­tion to the Supreme Court is an appeal of the deci­sion by the Georgia Supreme Court deny­ing him an evi­den­tiary hear­ing to exam­ine evi­dence of his inno­cence. Davis claims that the 8^th Amendment, which for­bids cru­el and unusu­al pun­ish­ments, bars the exe­cu­tion of defen­dants with sub­stan­tial reli­able evi­dence of their inno­cence obtained since tri­al. Georgia low­er courts refused to grant an evi­den­tiary hear­ing in the case on the grounds that the new evi­dence – the recan­ta­tion of the eye­wit­ness tes­ti­mo­ny of 7 of 9 non-police wit­ness­es and addi­tion­al tes­ti­mo­ny impli­cat­ing one of the eye­wit­ness­es as the shoot­er – does not meet Georgia state law stan­dards per­tain­ing to the applic­a­bil­i­ty of recan­ta­tion tes­ti­mo­ny. However, the dis­sent­ing State Supreme Court judges argued that the ​“appli­ca­tion of the majority’s ​‘cat­e­gor­i­cal rule’ against recan­ta­tion evi­dence ​‘fails to allow an ade­quate inquiry into the fun­da­men­tal ques­tion, whether or not an inno­cent per­son might be con­vict­ed or even, as in this case, might be put to death.’”

In Herrera v. Collins (1993), the U.S. Supreme Court assumed that ​“a tru­ly per­sua­sive demon­stra­tion of ​‘actu­al inno­cence’ made after tri­al would ren­der the exe­cu­tion of a defen­dant uncon­sti­tu­tion­al.” Davis is ask­ing the Court to go beyond this assump­tion and hold that the con­sti­tu­tion bars the exe­cu­tion of a demon­stra­bly inno­cent defen­dant. If the Court so holds, it fol­lows that Davis is enti­tled to an evi­den­tiary hear­ing to pro­tect that right under the ​“due process” clause of the 14^th Amendment . At such a hear­ing, the recan­ta­tion of the eye­wit­ness­es could be closely examined.

Davis’ peti­tion rais­es two oth­er relat­ed ques­tions that the Supreme Court could agree to consider:

“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?”

Here, Davis’ request for a hear­ing rests on his claim that Georgia’s state law sur­round­ing a motion for a new tri­al cre­ates a fed­er­al­ly pro­tect­ed right involv­ing his life and lib­er­ty. To ensure that such a con­sti­tu­tion­al right is respect­ed, a hear­ing on his new evi­dence is required.

Finally, Davis asks the Court to consider:

“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?” 

In oth­er words, is Georgia’s denial of a hear­ing unrea­son­able, giv­en what is at stake? Once the Court rec­og­nizes that Davis is rais­ing a right pro­tect­ed by the Due Process Clause, the ques­tion of whether he should receive a hear­ing is gov­erned by a bal­anc­ing of the var­i­ous inter­ests of the defen­dant and the state. For Davis, with­out a hear­ing he could lose his life, even though he may be inno­cent; for the state, grant­i­ng a hear­ing only requires them to delay their car­ry­ing out of their sentence.

Davis claims that in mak­ing their deci­sion, the low­er courts looked at each piece of his new evi­dence in iso­la­tion from all oth­ers, rather than con­duct­ing a cumu­la­tive analy­sis of all of the evi­dence, as the U.S. Supreme Court has repeat­ed­ly instruct­ed low­er courts to do. Davis’ attor­neys argue that if the evi­dence is looked at cumu­la­tive­ly, the recan­ta­tion tes­ti­mo­ny could have the effect of under­min­ing con­fi­dence in the orig­i­nal ver­dict. Davis’ attor­neys not­ed that eye­wit­ness misiden­ti­fi­ca­tion tes­ti­mo­ny has been a fac­tor in 77% of all post-con­vic­tion DNA exon­er­a­tions, high­light­ing the fal­li­ble nature of the type of tes­ti­mo­ny in ques­tion here. The prosecution’s case against Troy Davis was com­prised almost entire­ly of eye­wit­ness tes­ti­mo­ny. Davis’ peti­tion states: ​“Society, thus, has an inter­est in ensur­ing that the exe­cut­ed who can pro­duce sub­stan­tial, admis­si­ble new evi­dence of their inno­cence are not exe­cut­ed with­out the oppor­tu­ni­ty to vin­di­cate them­selves through min­i­mal due process required by our Constitution.”

The Supreme Court is expect­ed to con­sid­er Davis’ peti­tion at its meet­ing on Friday, October 10. See Troy Davis’ Cert. Petition to the U.S. Supreme Court. See also Innocence and U.S. Supreme Court.

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