UPDATE: After less than one hour of delib­er­a­tion, the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles grant­ed Troy Anthony Davis a 90-day stay of exe­cu­tion. The stay means Davis’ exe­cu­tion will be on hold while the board weighs the evi­dence pre­sent­ed as part of his request for clemen­cy. (Associated Press, July 16, 2007).

Today (July 16), on the eve of Georgia​’s sched­uled exe­cu­tion of Troy Anthony Davis (pic­tured), the state’s Board of Pardons and Paroles will con­sid­er whether Davis should be grant­ed clemen­cy because of new evi­dence about his pos­si­ble inno­cence. More than two decades ago, Davis was con­vict­ed of killing an off-duty police offi­cer in Savannah. With no phys­i­cal evi­dence link­ing Davis to the crime, pros­e­cu­tors relied on the tes­ti­mo­ny of nine eye­wit­ness­es to build their case against Davis. Since then, sev­en of the state’s key eye­wit­ness­es have recant­ed or changed their tes­ti­mo­ny, with some say­ing that their orig­i­nal state­ments were giv­en only after police harassed them and pres­sured them to lie under oath. Some of the eye­wit­ness say anoth­er man who tes­ti­fied against Davis dur­ing his tri­al, Sylvester Coles, is actu­al­ly guilty of the crime.

Antonie Williams, one of the sev­en eye­wit­ness­es call­ing for clemen­cy in Davis’ case, had iden­ti­fied Davis as the shoot­er dur­ing his orig­i­nal tri­al, but now states, ​“Even when I said that, I was total­ly unsure whether he was the per­son who shot the offi­cer. I felt pres­sured to point at him because he was the one who was sit­ting in the court­room.” Despite Williams’ admis­sion and sim­i­lar state­ments filed by oth­er eye­wit­ness­es in the case, courts have not held evi­den­tiary hear­ings to con­sid­er Davis’ inno­cence claim.

Concerns about the impact of the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act gov­ern­ing fed­er­al review and grow­ing uncer­tain­ties about Davis’ guilt led retired FBI Director William Sessions to write an op-ed about the case for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. In the piece, Sessions not­ed, ​“It would be intol­er­a­ble to exe­cute an inno­cent man. It would be equal­ly intol­er­a­ble to exe­cute a man with­out his claims of inno­cence ever being con­sid­ered by the courts or by the exec­u­tive.” U.S. Representative John Lewis of Georgia shares Sessions’ con­cerns about AEDPA and plans to tes­ti­fy on Davis’ behalf dur­ing today’s clemen­cy hear­ing.
(New York Times, July 15, 2007). See Clemency, Innocence, and Upcoming Executions.

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