Legal News

The High Court?s Davis Rehearing: A ?Fool?s Errand? or the Right Move?

By Ashby Jones

The substantial risk of putting an innocent man to death clearly provides an adequate justification for holding an evidentiary hearing.

– Justice John Paul Stevens, August 17, 2009, writing on behalf of several justices in ordering a federal judge in Georgia to consider and rule on the claim of innocence in the murder case against Troy Anthony Davis

This court has never held that the Constitution forbids the execution of a convicted defendant who had a full and fair trial but is later able to convince a habeas court that he is 'actually' innocent.

– Justice Antonin Scalia, dissenting from the Supreme Court’s decision to order a new hearing

It’s a fascinating question: does the Constitution require a stay of execution of a convicted defendant who had fair trial but later is able to show that he’s actually innocent? The NYT’s Adam Liptak investigates the question Tuesday in his piece on Troy Davis, who was granted a new hearing on Monday by the Supreme Court. Justice Scalia, joined by Justice Thomas, dissented from the court’s decision.

According to Liptak, Scalia is, in fact, right. The Supremes have never ruled squarely on that issue, though they’ve come close. In a 1993 decision, Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist wrote for the court that "we may assume, for the sake of argument in deciding this case, that in a capital case a truly persuasive demonstration of 'actual innocence' made after trial would render the execution of a defendant unconstitutional and warrant federal habeas relief." But the showing of supposed innocence in that case, Chief Justice Rehnquist said, fell short.

In any event, a majority of justices on Monday found the possibility of “actual innocence” persuasive enough to order a federal judge in Georgia to order a new hearing. Click here for the AP story; here for Scotusblog’s link to Justice Scalia’s dissent; here for Justice Stevens’s response to Scalia; here for Scotusblog’s coverage.

We wrote back in June on the Davis case, after the court unexpectedly bought itself a bit more time to consider the case.

The facts, as we chronicled them in June: In 1989, a police officer named Mark MacPhail was murdered while working off-duty as a security guard at a bus station in Savannah, Ga. According to this story in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, MacPhail had rushed to help a homeless man who had been beaten in a nearby parking lot. As he approached three men in the vicinity of the beating, MacPhail was shot to death. Largely based on the eyewitness testimony of nine people (the murder weapon was never found), Davis (pictured) was convicted and sentenced to death. Click here, as well, for a 2007 NYT article that gives a good overview of the case.

Since Davis’s conviction, however, no fewer than six of the nine eyewitnesses have reportedly changed their stories, saying they were pressured by law-enforcement officials to testify. Some of these people have named another man as the actual shooter.

Justice Sotomayor did not participate in the case.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on August 18, 2009 (boomark / email).