This thread discusses the Content article: Georgia Supreme Court to Troy Davis: Innocence doesn't matter
Opinion is here: http://www.gasupreme.us/pdf/s07a1758.pdf
Case summary is here: http://www.gasupreme.us/op_summaries/mar_17.pdf
From the case summary:
TROY ANTHONY DAVIS V. THE STATE (S07A1758)
In a 4-to-3 decision, the Supreme Court of Georgia has turned down death row inmate Troy Davis’s request for a new trial. Today’s majority opinion, written by Justice Harold Melton, finds that a Chatham County superior court did not make a mistake in denying Davis’s “extraordinary motion for new trial” without first hearing evidence that Davis’s attorneys argued was new and proved his innocence.
Davis was convicted in 1991 and sentenced to death for the 1989 murder of Savannah police officer Mark MacPhail. In 1993, the Georgia Supreme Court unanimously affirmed the conviction, and in 2000, it also affirmed another court’s denial of his writ of habeas corpus – a court proceeding brought in the county where a prisoner is incarcerated to determine whether his conviction was illegal. Davis’s federal habeas petition also failed. In July 2007, shortly before his scheduled execution, Chatham County Superior Court Judge Penny Haas Freeseman denied his extraordinary motion for a new trial. Davis then appealed to the Supreme Court and on Aug. 3, 2007, the state Supreme Court issued a stay of execution and agreed to hear arguments in the case. Shortly after, the State Board of Pardons and Paroles suspended its consideration of Davis’s petition for clemency pending the Court’s decision.
The evidence at trial 17 years ago showed that Sylvester “Red” Coles asked Larry Young for the beer he had just purchased, then followed and cursed at him when Young refused. Davis and 16-year-old Darrel “D.D.” Collins joined in the confrontation near a bus station and Burger King. Trial witnesses testified that Davis hit Young in the head with a handgun and Collins fled the scene. Officer MacPhail, who was working off-duty in the area, began chasing Coles and Davis. Trial witnesses testified that Coles stopped when MacPhail told him to but Davis kept
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running. MacPhail ran past Coles and Davis then fired at the officer. As MacPhail lay on the ground, trial witnesses said Davis stood over him, smiled and fired the final shot. Earlier in the evening, another man had been shot and injured, and witnesses testified at trial that Davis had been that man’s shooter as well. The shell casings from both scenes matched. At trial, Davis’s defense was that Coles was the murderer; both men testified they were innocent.
In their request for a new trial, Davis’s attorneys argued that since the original trial, seven of the nine witnesses who implicated Davis have recanted their testimony, and four witnesses have implicated Coles. In support, attorneys presented signed affidavits from 13 people, which the trial court reviewed before denying the extraordinary motion.
In today’s decision, the majority finds “that the trial court did not abuse its discretion in denying Davis’s extraordinary motion for new trial without first conducting a hearing…” Under a 1980 Supreme Court ruling called Timberlake v. The State, any new evidence must be “so material that it would probably produce a different verdict.”
“Particularly in this death penalty case where a man might soon be executed, we have endeavored to look beyond bare legal principles…to the core question of whether a jury presented with Davis’s allegedly-new testimony would probably find him not guilty or give him a sentence other than death,” the majority writes.
Today’s 21-page majority opinion goes through each of the 13 affidavits, grouping the witnesses’ statements into four types: recantations by trial witnesses, statements about alleged admissions of guilt by Coles, statements that Coles got rid of his gun following the murder, and an alleged eyewitness account of the murder. The majority points out that recantation testimony, as this Court has noted before, is “entitled to much less regard than sworn testimony delivered at the trial.” For one thing, “trial testimony is closer in time to the crimes, when memories are more trustworthy,” the majority writes. In this case, the majority finds that “most of the witnesses to the crime who have allegedly recanted have merely stated that they now do not feel able to identify the shooter.” One of the affidavits “might actually be read so as to confirm trial testimony that Davis was the shooter.”
“We simply cannot disregard the jury’s verdict in this case,” the Supreme Court has ruled. Joining in the majority are Justices George Carley, Hugh Thompson and Harris Hines.
The dissent, written by Chief Justice Leah Ward Sears, calls the Supreme Court’s response to extraordinary motions for new trial that are based on new evidence “overly rigid” and says it “fails to allow an adequate inquiry into the fundamental question, which is whether or not an innocent person might have been convicted or even, as in this case, might be put to death.” Although trial testimony is generally more credible than later recantations, “it is unwise and unnecessary to make a categorical rule that recantations may never be considered in support of an extraordinary motion for new trial,” the dissent says.
“While the majority wisely decides to look beyond bare legal principles and seeks to consider the strength of Davis’s new evidence, I believe that it has weighed that evidence too lightly,” the Chief Justice has written. “In this case, nearly every witness who identified Davis as the shooter at trial has now disclaimed his or her ability to do so reliably.” She is joined in her dissent by Presiding Justice Carol Hunstein and Justice Robert Benham.
If a hearing on the new evidence were held, and the trial court found it credible, a new jury may very well find reasonable doubt of Davis’s guilt or decline to impose the death penalty, the dissent says. “Accordingly, I would order the trial court to conduct a hearing, to weigh the
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credibility of Davis’s new evidence, and to exercise its discretion in determining if the new evidence would create the probability of a different outcome if a new trial were held.”
Attorneys for Appellant: Thomas Dunn, Jason Ewart, Philip Horton, Danielle Garten
Attorneys for Appellee: Spencer Lawton, Jr., District Attorney, David Lock, Chief Asst. D.A.
Oh, Great Spirit, grant that I may not criticize my neighbor until I have walked a mile in his moccasins." - Old Indian Prayer My dad told me!! |
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