New evi­dence in the Troy Davis case in Georgia has recent­ly emerged, fur­ther impli­cat­ing anoth­er sus­pect in the mur­der of off-duty police offi­cer Mark Allen MacPhail. In 1991, Davis was sen­tenced to death for offi­cer MacPhail’s mur­der. Davis became the pri­ma­ry sus­pect after Sylvester ​“Redd” Coles told the police about Davis’s pres­ence at the crime scene. During his 1991 tri­al, nine pros­e­cu­tion eye­wit­ness­es tes­ti­fied against Davis. All but two of the wit­ness­es (one of whom is Coles) have recant­ed their tes­ti­mo­ny. The new tes­ti­mo­ny was pro­vid­ed by Quiana Glover, who was at a friend’s house when she said Coles admit­ted to killing MacPhail. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution quot­ed her affi­davit as stat­ing that Coles knew the mur­der was being false­ly attrib­uted to Davis instead of him­self. In August 2009, the U.S. Supreme Court issued an his­toric order, con­tin­u­ing Davis’s stay of exe­cu­tion and instruct­ing a fed­er­al District Court judge in Savannah to hold an evi­den­tiary hear­ing to decide whether Davis’s new evi­dence clear­ly estab­lish­es his innocence.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution report­ed: ​“According to Glover’s affi­davit, a woman who was with Coles at the par­ty told him he was drink­ing too much and to slow down. ​‘This [exple­tive] is killing me,’ Coles replied. When Glover said she asked what Coles was talk­ing about, he said, ​‘Man, looky here, I’m the one who killed that [exple­tive]. But if they want to hold Troy’s [exple­tive] then let them hold him. Besides, I’ve got kids to raise.’ ”

(B. Rankin, ​“Troy Davis case rais­ing nov­el legal issues,” Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Dec. 20, 2009). See U.S. Supreme Court and Innocence.

Tags
Citation Guide