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.