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Troy Davis: AVANNAH, Ga. (AP) — Did Troy Anthony Davis deserve to be on Georgia's death row? The answer depends on one's faith in the system and its many procedural hoops.
Trial witnesses recanted what they'd sworn to police, and jurors even questioned their verdict. Activists, some of them death-penalty supporters, protested by the thousands that he was innocent — or at least that guilt was hopelessly shrouded in reasonable doubt.
But do those "supposed recantations," asks law professor Michael Mears, constitute a mountain of evidence? Or were they, as prosecutors claim, just a molehill, fabricated by death penalty opponents?
A close review of Davis' two-decade legal odyssey sheds some light, if not a clear-cut resolution.
It suggests that a good deal of the witnesses' hedging on what they'd seen the night of the murder was not new — that jurors had heard it at trial. Davis' attorneys missed "opportunities" that might have changed the outcome of appeals.
Finally, executive clemency is meant to be a guard against unfair trials and shoddy defense work — but that fail-safe failed here, critics say.
Mears, an associate professor at Atlanta's John Marshall Law School, feels that Davis didn't belong on death row for the 1989 slaying of Savannah police officer Mark MacPhail. But after reading much of the transcript and the "so-called affidavits," he concedes that a reasonable jury could have found him guilty of murder.
"I don't know of any other way that the system could have processed Troy Anthony Davis's case other than the way it has," Mears says.
A review of the case starts at the crime scene.
MacPhail was off-duty but working security at a Greyhound bus station the night of Aug. 19, 1989, when he rushed to the aid of a homeless man who was being beaten. The 27-year-old officer was shot twice — once each in the face and chest — and died in a Burger King parking lot.
Davis, 20, who had dropped out of high school to help care for an ill sibling, turned himself in four days later.
During the trial, Davis testified that he was with Sylvester Coles when his companion got in a scuffle with Larry Young over a beer. He said Coles began beating the man, and that Young's calls for help attracted MacPhail.
Davis testified he started walking away, then began running when he saw a police officer heading toward them.
"I didn't see the shooting, you know," Davis testified. His attorney, Robert Falligant, tried to persuade jurors that Coles was the real killer.
But Coles testified that it was Davis who had been arguing with Young, and that Davis hit the man in the head with a gun. Coles said he ran when he saw a police officer approaching, and then heard gunshots. He told jurors he never saw the shooter.
Coles, who has never been charged in the case, still lives in Savannah. No one answered the door at his apartment when an Associated Press reporter knocked this week. He has not changed his testimony.
There was no DNA evidence implicating Davis. No fingerprints. Not even a gun.
There were casings from bullets of the caliber that killed MacPhail. An expert from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation linked them to shells found at the scene of a non-fatal shooting a few hours earlier.
But firearms examiner Roger Parian could only say that the .38-caliber shell casings appeared to have come from same gun.
"In this particular case, I couldn't unequivocally say it was the same gun," he testified.
Davis was convicted of both shootings. For MacPhail's slaying, he received the death penalty.
Protesters have made much of the notion that several key witnesses in Davis 1991 trial recanted or significantly altered their statements, and that much of that has not been allowed into the record. But a review of the trial transcript supports what prosecutors have long held:
That several of the these "new" statements largely rehash doubts and second thoughts the witnesses had already voiced in front of the trial jury 20 years ago.
Trial witnesses recanted what they'd sworn to police, and jurors even questioned their verdict. Activists, some of them death-penalty supporters, protested by the thousands that he was innocent — or at least that guilt was hopelessly shrouded in reasonable doubt.
But do those "supposed recantations," asks law professor Michael Mears, constitute a mountain of evidence? Or were they, as prosecutors claim, just a molehill, fabricated by death penalty opponents?
A close review of Davis' two-decade legal odyssey sheds some light, if not a clear-cut resolution.
It suggests that a good deal of the witnesses' hedging on what they'd seen the night of the murder was not new — that jurors had heard it at trial. Davis' attorneys missed "opportunities" that might have changed the outcome of appeals.
Finally, executive clemency is meant to be a guard against unfair trials and shoddy defense work — but that fail-safe failed here, critics say.
Mears, an associate professor at Atlanta's John Marshall Law School, feels that Davis didn't belong on death row for the 1989 slaying of Savannah police officer Mark MacPhail. But after reading much of the transcript and the "so-called affidavits," he concedes that a reasonable jury could have found him guilty of murder.
"I don't know of any other way that the system could have processed Troy Anthony Davis's case other than the way it has," Mears says.
A review of the case starts at the crime scene.
MacPhail was off-duty but working security at a Greyhound bus station the night of Aug. 19, 1989, when he rushed to the aid of a homeless man who was being beaten. The 27-year-old officer was shot twice — once each in the face and chest — and died in a Burger King parking lot.
Davis, 20, who had dropped out of high school to help care for an ill sibling, turned himself in four days later.
During the trial, Davis testified that he was with Sylvester Coles when his companion got in a scuffle with Larry Young over a beer. He said Coles began beating the man, and that Young's calls for help attracted MacPhail.
Davis testified he started walking away, then began running when he saw a police officer heading toward them.
"I didn't see the shooting, you know," Davis testified. His attorney, Robert Falligant, tried to persuade jurors that Coles was the real killer.
But Coles testified that it was Davis who had been arguing with Young, and that Davis hit the man in the head with a gun. Coles said he ran when he saw a police officer approaching, and then heard gunshots. He told jurors he never saw the shooter.
Coles, who has never been charged in the case, still lives in Savannah. No one answered the door at his apartment when an Associated Press reporter knocked this week. He has not changed his testimony.
There was no DNA evidence implicating Davis. No fingerprints. Not even a gun.
There were casings from bullets of the caliber that killed MacPhail. An expert from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation linked them to shells found at the scene of a non-fatal shooting a few hours earlier.
But firearms examiner Roger Parian could only say that the .38-caliber shell casings appeared to have come from same gun.
"In this particular case, I couldn't unequivocally say it was the same gun," he testified.
Davis was convicted of both shootings. For MacPhail's slaying, he received the death penalty.
Protesters have made much of the notion that several key witnesses in Davis 1991 trial recanted or significantly altered their statements, and that much of that has not been allowed into the record. But a review of the trial transcript supports what prosecutors have long held:
That several of the these "new" statements largely rehash doubts and second thoughts the witnesses had already voiced in front of the trial jury 20 years ago.
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