Death row inmate Troy Davis loses federal appeal
April 16, 2009 at 5:37 pm by Mara Shalhoup in News
Troy Davis
Longtime Georgia death row inmate Troy Davis, whose innocence claims have attracted national attention and who’s received three last-minute stays of execution, has lost what could be the last appeal to spare his life.
According the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals’ decision, issued today [PDF]:
Davis has failed to adequately explain why he had not exhausted his state remedies concerning … prior to filing his first federal habeas petition.
Basically, it’s not a matter of too little evidence in Davis’ favor but, rather, evidence that was presented way too late.
According to the AJC:
The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected Davis’ bid in a 2-1 decision, saying he could not file a new appeal raising claims of innocence. But the court continued his stay of execution for 30 more days so Davis can pursue his final appeals before the U.S. Supreme Court.
In December 2008, a three-judge panel heard Davis’ most recent federal appeal for a new trial. Through his attorneys, Davis claims to have been wrongfully convicted in 1991 of killing a Savannah police officer. Seven of the nine witnesses who testified against Davis at trial have since recanted their testimony — many of them claiming that they were coerced into identifying Davis by the police department colleagues of murdered officer Mark MacPhail.
(Photo courtesy Georgia Department of Corrections)
April 16th, 2009 at 5:55 pm
I have said it before and will say it again.
I am for the death penalty.
I think killing Troy Davis is wrong.
April 16th, 2009 at 6:08 pm
To anyone who has looked at his case it is outrageous that he would get the death penalty. There just isn’t the evidence!
There are thousands of Troy Davis activists around the WORLD who have stepped in time and time again to beg for Troy’s life. Things like this give America such a poor world reputation.
I ask everyone to pray for justice for Troy and all of the other Troy Davises out there!
April 16th, 2009 at 9:33 pm
Sounds to me like, in issuing a 30-day stay for Davis to file a habeas petition with the U.S. Supreme Court, the 11th Circuit (namely Justices Dubina and Marcus) is allowing his execution, but doesn’t want his blood on their hands. Such cowardice. However, I do have respect for Justice Barkett – he is the only justice on that panel to acknowledge the inhumanity of a system that does not protect the innocent from execution.
April 18th, 2009 at 6:43 pm
Judge Barkett, in her dissenting opinion, has indeed shown why the execution of Troy Davis would be a shocking miscarriage of justice; as did also Chief Justice Leah Sears in her dissent in a 4-3 decision of the Georgia Supreme Court denying Davis an opportunity to seek a new trial. Even if the evidence is deemed insufficient to warrant a new trial, it clearly raises strong enough doubts so as to bar execution, where especially strong confidence in guilt should be required assuming that the death penalty is constitutional in any case.
In my view, capital punishment in itself violates the prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment; but that aside, executing Davis when the case for guilt has been shown this shaky would be a triumph of legal formalism over elementary justice.
May 13th, 2009 at 4:57 am
I am not for death penalty.
Troy Davis is innocent.
Please, he must live !
Jean-Marie delthil.
May 29th, 2009 at 12:26 pm
Obviously most here have only seen the hugely biased information from Amnesty and the Davis Camp.
The Macphail family website:
http://www.markallenmacphail.com Has some good information.
Troy’s “street name” was “RAH” for “Rough as Hell” Wonder why he isn’t using it now??
His school chums remember him fondly..
Davis threatened classmate
I went to Windsor Forest High School with Troy Anthony Davis in 1984or 1985, I graduated in 1986. I do not remember graduating with him but I do remember him sitting behind me in Mrs. Todds science class with his arm in a cast the whole period kicking the back of my desk, asking me if I wanted to fight, and the most vivid of all Troy saying “I’ll kill you cracker.” This went on everyday for the whole period. It was my only class with him.
I remember reading the news after his arrest and just saying to myself, “He did it, I saw it coming years ago.”
Troy Anthony Davis was a punk thug then and he deserves no mercy now, because he knew all along what he wanted to do with his life, and I believe that killing a white person was what he wanted to do.
The smirk on his face that the witnesses testified to is just what made him the killer that he is. July 17 will bring justice to more than The McPhail family, it will bring justice to me, 22 years later.
JOEY BLACK
Savannah
as Do the Cops:
Savannah police stand by their investigation.
Retired police Maj. Dwane Everette Ragan, who was a lieutenant at the time of the shooting, said in an interview last week that Coles and Collins were “persons of interest.” But he said neither fit witness descriptions of the shooter. “What [Coles] did was put names and descriptions on the people in the parking lot,” Ragan said. “We’re confident we got the right person.”
[ By the way Coles is significantly shorter than Troy ]
“If I saw him, I’d punch him in the face,” the victim’s mother said of Davis. “I am angry at the whole family. I don’t know how they have such a following.”
Did he carry guns?
In the summer of 1989, Troy Davis was almost 21 and living at his mother’s house in Cloverdale, a modest subdivision of tidy lots where the residents, mostly black, all knew each other.
His name had appeared five times on charge sheets in the Chatham County court system. The most serious charge: carrying a concealed weapon. He paid a $252 fine.
Copyright 2007 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
From the DA office:
Lock said the defense wants to accuse police of a grand conspiracy, but it’s impossible to believe that police could have put words into the mouths of so many witnesses. If there’s a conspiracy, Lock said, it’s easier to believe that anti death penalty activists have conspired to manipulate witnesses in the years since Davis’ conviction.
“It’s easy to understand how … witnesses who knew [Davis] and lived in the same neighborhood could be coerced into signing [affidavits],” Lock said. They do not want to feel responsible for sending him to death row, he said. If there was a conspiracy, it was not by police before the trial, it was by Davis and his supporters after it, the prosecutor said.
and so much more..
Troy was convicted by a jury who watched the faces of all the witnesses, who have seen much more evidence than the Davis side claims ( I DARE you to ask them for a copy of an ORIGINAL trial transcript!!!)
You’ve been lied to!
Davis is guilty!