Less than a month after the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles tem­porar­i­ly halt­ed the July 17 exe­cu­tion of Troy Davis (pic­tured) based on con­cerns about his pos­si­ble inno­cence, the Georgia Supreme Court has agreed to con­sid­er Davis’s appeal. By a vote of 4 to 3, the Court agreed to hear oral argu­ments in the case and con­sid­er whether eye­wit­ness recan­ta­tions and oth­er evi­dence dis­cov­ered since Davis’s 1991 con­vic­tion and death sen­tence are suf­fi­cient grounds for a new tri­al.

Davis was con­vict­ed of killing Mark Allen MacPhail, an off-duty police offi­cer in Savannah. With no phys­i­cal evi­dence link­ing Davis to the crime, pros­e­cu­tors relied on the tes­ti­mo­ny of eye­wit­ness­es to build their case against Davis. Since then, most of the state’s key eye­wit­ness­es have recant­ed or changed their tes­ti­mo­ny, with some say­ing that their orig­i­nal state­ments were giv­en only after police pres­sured them. In addi­tion, some of the eye­wit­ness­es have iden­ti­fied anoth­er man as the per­son respon­si­ble for MacPhail’s death.

Prior to the Georgia Supreme Court’s action, low­er courts had denied Davis’s requests for relief. In one instance, a Superior Court judge cit­ed a Georgia case law find­ing that a dec­la­ra­tion ​“by a state wit­ness that his for­mer tes­ti­mo­ny was false is not cause for a new tri­al.” Some legal schol­ars have point­ed to Davis’s case as an illus­tra­tion of the dan­gers of Supreme Court deci­sions and new laws that have made fed­er­al appeals courts less like­ly to recon­sid­er death sen­tences.

​“We are mak­ing the legal argu­ment that inno­cence mat­ters, that recan­ta­tions mat­ter when they affect the ver­dict,” said Jason Ewart, Davis’s defense attorney. 

(Washington Post, August 4, 2007). See Innocence.

Citation Guide