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Georgia is moving forward on July 17 with the execution of a man convicted of killing a police officer on the basis on nine eye-witness statements. Since his conviction, six of the nine have recanted their testimony, and one of the nine has confessed to the crime. Problem is, the 1996 law passed to prevent Timothy McVeigh from dragging out his appeals is preventing the introduction of this evidence to prevent the execution. Scary statement of the week: the state Attorney General is "comfortable" with moving forward with the execution.
I went digging around on the net after reading the article in The Hill, and here's some of what I ran across:
From the New York Daily News:
Six of the nine witnesses have since recanted their testimony, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. A witness named Antoine Williams, who originally testified that he saw Davis pull the trigger, signed a sworn statement in 2002 that he had "no idea what the person who shot the officer looks like," and now says he was pressured by cops to finger Davis.
* There is evidence that there may have been witness intimidation or coercion in the original case
* More here, including the fact that a number of other witnesses have implicated one of the very people who testified against Troy Davis at trial
* There was no physical evidence, and no murder weapon
From the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:
Davis's lawyer:
This is a travesty," Jason Ewart, one of Davis' lawyers, said. "We have the vast majority of witnesses at trial who recanted. We have other new evidence that shows Troy is innocent. No judge has ever looked at it."
Georgia's attorney general's office:
"The state has no problem carrying out the lawful sentence against Troy Davis," Willard said.
Is Troy Davis innocent? I don't know. But it would be a tragedy to find out he is, only after he's been killed by the state.
