Judge Norman Fletcher served on the Georgia Supreme Court and was in the major­i­ty that upheld Troy Davis​’s orig­i­nal con­vic­tion and death sen­tence on direct appeal. However, Judge Fletcher has not­ed he was not on the court after many of the wit­ness­es from Davis’s tri­al recant­ed their tes­ti­mo­ny, and he prob­a­bly would have vot­ed in favor of a new evi­den­tiary hear­ing for Davis if he was on the court today. Judge Fletcher recent­ly wrote about the wis­dom of retir­ing U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stevens regard­ing his deci­sion in the Troy Davis case to grant such a hear­ing: “[His] lead­er­ship in this case was a tri­umph of the com­mon-sense notion that inno­cence mat­ters; it mat­ters more than pro­ce­dur­al tech­ni­cal­i­ties. No mat­ter whether one oppos­es or sup­ports the death penal­ty, I would hope we can at least agree that the inno­cent should not be exe­cut­ed.” Of Davis’s case, he wrote fur­ther, ​“No mat­ter the out­come of this case, Davis stands for the prin­ci­ple that the fac­tu­al inno­cence or guilt of peo­ple sen­tenced to death mat­ters. For those fac­ing the irre­versible pun­ish­ment of death, we should always do our best to get to the truth. Never should pro­ce­dur­al rules trump the con­sid­er­a­tion of new­ly dis­cov­ered exculpatory evidence.”

Judge Fletcher was a jus­tice on the Georgia Supreme Court from 1989 through 2005, serv­ing as chief jus­tice from 2001 to 2005. He now serves on the Constitution Project​’s Right to Counsel Committee.

(N. Fletcher, ​“Stevens leav­ing lega­cy of judi­cial care,” Atlanta Journal Consitution, June 22, 2010 (op-ed)). See also Innocence and New Voices. The evi­den­tiary hear­ing for Troy Davis that was ordered by the U.S. Supreme Court took place on June 23 – 24 in the U.S. District Court in Savannagh, Georgia. The judge has asked the attor­neys from both sides to sub­mit con­clud­ing briefs by July 7. A deci­sion on whether the hear­ing ​“clear­ly estab­lish­es” Davis’s inno­cence will follow.

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