Troy Davis: Not Dead Yet

Georgia Board of Pardons and parole gives Troy Davis a 90 day stay of execution so they can consider the evidence of his innocence -- that the eyewitnesses on the basis of whose testimony he was convicted have recanted -- the very evidence that the courts are prohibited by federal law from considering.

Someone or other mentioned to me yesterday that in a sick way Davis is lucky he got the death penalty since that meant some people were paying attention to the case and a minor ruckus eventually got raised. Suppose Davis had just been sitting in prison on a 20-to-life sentence, would anyone have even noticed? The extent to which the criminal justice system allows for the railroading of poor people with little means is simply off the charts, and the incredible reliance on wildly unreliable eyewitness testimony is a big part of the issue.

UPDATE: Wait, wait; it looks like the Board of Pardons and Paroles may not actually have the power to pardon, only to commute the sentence to life in prison. Oy. If the man's innocent, he's innocent.

Comments

The extent to which the criminal justice system allows for the railroading of poor people with little means is simply off the charts,

That's called "motivation."

Posted by SomeCallMeTim | July 17, 2007 8:45 AM

This case has it all:

Cops who just want to clear a case, and don't care whether they have the right guy or not.

A prosecutor who wants another skin on his belt.

A victim's family who just want someone - anyone - to die in retribution.

And nobody in a position of authority who gives a good god-damn whether justice has been done or not.

Posted by Don K | July 17, 2007 9:00 AM

One thing Canada gets right is that we take our miscarriages of justice seriously. Virtually every murder conviction that has later been the subject of exoneration gets a full public inquiry, which tend to be headed by prominent former or current jurists (2 headed by Supreme Court judges, including the Chief Justice).

But, as you point out, the reason miscarriages of justice happen is not limited to murder cases. The corollary to that is that DNA - which has become the tool of choice leading to exoneration, is not available for all cases. The factors that lead to miscarriages of justice (ie. the conviction of a factually innocent person) are overwhelmingly the same: mistaken eyewitness identification, bullshit pseudo-science (eg. retrieved memory experts), and prosecutorial misconduct.

Yet these things can happen in non-murder cases, or in cases where there is no DNA magic bullet. So, yes, for every high profile murder exoneration, how many thousands of innocents languish in jail convicted of lesser (but not minor) offences, where DNA won't save the day?

Posted by 3pointshooter | July 17, 2007 9:26 AM

"One thing Canada gets right is that we take our miscarriages of justice seriously. Virtually every murder conviction that has later been the subject of exoneration gets a full public inquiry, which tend to be headed by prominent former or current jurists (2 headed by Supreme Court judges, including the Chief Justice)."

You have the luxury of doing that because 12% of your population isn't comprised of a group that commits violent crimes at 9 times the rate of whites. You also don't have another significant percentage of your population comprised by a group that commits violent crimes at 2.5 times the rate of whites.

Posted by Harold | July 17, 2007 9:33 AM

Hope you washed your sheets, Harod -- I hear there's a big meeting tonight. Good lord.

Posted by nolaboyd | July 17, 2007 9:40 AM

You also don't have another significant percentage of your population comprised by a group that commits violent crimes at 2.5 times the rate of whites.

The Scotch-Irish are, by every definition I'm aware of, considered white. And I'm pretty sure they're more than six percent of population.

Posted by SomeCallMeTim | July 17, 2007 9:42 AM

The Scotch-Irish are, by every definition I'm aware of, considered white.

Good lord man. Not by me, I assure you.

Posted by Lord Nobby, Duke of Warwickshire | July 17, 2007 9:45 AM

Natives make up a vastly disproportionate percentage of Canadian prisoners - to the extent that we now have special "native" sentencing courts.

Toronto - where I practice criminal law - has a rather large black population, which takes up a disproportionate segment of the criminal justice system.

Posted by 3pointshooter | July 17, 2007 10:19 AM

"Davis is lucky he got the death penalty since that meant some people were paying attention to the case . . . Suppose Davis had just been sitting in prison on a 20-to-life sentence, would anyone have even noticed?"

Ira Glass's PRI radio show had a segment on the Innocence Project, in which one of the guys eventually freed explained that at his sentencing hearing he purposely showed a monster-face in order to GET the death penalty, figuring it was the only way he had any chance of keeping his case active enough to sustain any hope of his conviction being overturned.

Posted by helmlng | July 17, 2007 10:22 AM

3pointshooter,

What percentage of Canadians are 'natives'? What percentage are black?

Posted by Harold | July 17, 2007 10:30 AM

3% of Canadians are aboriginal, yet they make up over 20% of the federal prison population (with women offenders it is even higher - over 30%).

2% of Canadians are black, although about 80% of them live in 5 major urban centres.

Posted by 3pointshooter | July 17, 2007 11:08 AM

It's good to see that you've created a forum for this case. Europeans are watching!

Posted by Parisgirl | July 17, 2007 11:31 AM

You have the luxury of doing that because 12% of your population isn't comprised of a group that commits violent crimes at 9 times the rate of whites.

It's easy to just blow this off as another Fred-style racist comment, but hang on a second. The luxury of doing what?

Virtually every murder conviction that has later been the subject of exoneration gets a full public inquiry...

That's right. Canada has the luxury of conducting an inquiry into every wrongful murder conviction. Apparently we're wrongfully convicting so many people that we can't spare the resources. Oddly, according to this commenter, it's rampant black criminality that forces us to wrongfully convict so many people. Quite the head-scratcher.

Posted by Steve | July 17, 2007 11:46 AM

I rather had a spit-take when NPR covered the board's decision to give a 90-day hold on the execution, and blandly stated that if this fellow can prove his innocence he can get life in prison, instead of death.

Posted by Warren Terra | July 17, 2007 2:30 PM

There's nothing wrong with Harold that couldn't be fixed with a bit of paralytic, and a good organ-recovery team. After checking him for rabies, of course.

Posted by Barry | July 17, 2007 4:20 PM