Despite seri­ous doubts that he mur­dered off-duty police offi­cer Mark Allen MacPhail in 1989, Troy Davis is fac­ing exe­cu­tion in Georgia on July 17. Davis was con­vict­ed main­ly on the basis of eye­wit­ness tes­ti­mo­ny. Since then, sev­en of the nine key wit­ness­es against him have recant­ed or changed their state­ments. Three of those wit­ness­es have filed sworn state­ments alleg­ing that Sylvester ​“Red” Coles, anoth­er key pros­e­cu­tion wit­ness, had con­fessed to killing MacPhail. Davis’ defense attor­neys claim that the refusal of fed­er­al courts to con­sid­er their clien­t’s pos­si­ble inno­cence illus­trates prob­lems with the 1996 Anti-ter­ror­ism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA).

​“Both [AEDPA] as well as the fed­er­al habeas process rely too heav­i­ly on DNA evi­dence to exon­er­ate the wrong­ful­ly con­vict­ed with­out safe­guards for those who have non-DNA evi­dence that proves their [inno­cence],” said Jason Ewart, an attor­ney rep­re­sent­ing Davis. AEDPA is a fed­er­al law that requires inmates seek­ing fed­er­al relief to demon­strate that there was good rea­son why new evi­dence of inno­cence was not intro­duced dur­ing state appeals. In Davis’ case, his defense attor­neys have stat­ed that the legal cen­ter rep­re­sent­ing him at the time of his state appeals lost more than half its fund­ing from Congress, mak­ing it impos­si­ble for them to rep­re­sent their client effectively. 

Some mem­bers of Congress are rethink­ing the wis­dom of AEDPA. ​“The rules regard­ing new evi­dence are more restric­tive than com­mon sense says [they] should be,” notes Representative Artur Davis of Alabama. Representative Hank Johnson of Georgia agreed, stat­ing that it might be time for Congress to reex­am­ine the leg­is­la­tion and its lim­i­ta­tions. A num­ber of orga­ni­za­tions work­ing on Davis’ behalf have called for a com­mu­ta­tion of his sen­tence.
(The Hill, July 2, 2007). See Innocence. See also, Upcoming Executions.

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