The U.S. Supreme Court issued a stay of exe­cu­tion for Georgia inmate Troy Davis on September 23 only two hours before his sched­uled exe­cu­tion. Evidence of his inno­cence has gar­nered nation­al and glob­al atten­tion, with pleas for clemen­cy com­ing from for­mer President Jimmy Carter, Desmond Tutu, and Pope Benedict XVI. Seven of the nine non-police wit­ness­es who tes­ti­fied against Davis at his orig­i­nal tri­al have recant­ed their tes­ti­mo­ny, includ­ing two who have said they felt pres­sured by police to tes­ti­fy against Davis. The Georgia Supreme Court and the state Board of Paroles and Pardons have denied requests for a new tri­al and clemen­cy, despite the lack of phys­i­cal evi­dence implicating Davis. 

The Supreme Court issued the stay with­out expla­na­tion and will decide on September 29 whether to hear his case. If they choose not to hear his claims, the stay will auto­mat­i­cal­ly ter­mi­nate and Georgia can pro­ceed with the exe­cu­tion. Davis’ lawyers appealed to the Court to decide whether the Eighth Amendment bars the exe­cu­tion of a con­vict­ed per­son who could like­ly prove his inno­cence. In their peti­tion to the Court, his attor­neys wrote that the case, ​“allows this court an oppor­tu­ni­ty to deter­mine what it has only before assumed: that the exe­cu­tion of an inno­cent man is con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly abhor­rent.” (Read Davis’ Cert. Petition to the U.S. Supreme Court).

Kent Scheidegger, a death penal­ty sup­port­er at the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation in California, said the inter­ven­tion by the Court is ​“not usu­al but not too rare either.” He added, ​“I’m not ter­ri­bly sur­prised. This fel­low has enough of a claim of inno­cence that many peo­ple say he’s innocent.”

(R. Brown, ​“With 2 hours to spare, jus­tices stay exe­cu­tion,” New York Times, September 24, 2008). See also Innocence and U.S. Supreme Court.

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