Georgia Supreme Court reviews Troy Davis death penalty case
Troy Anthony Davis may die this year. He will be executed by the State of Georgia unless the Georgia Supreme Court overturns the denial of his motion for a new trial in Savannah.
Yesterday, the Georgia Board of Pardons and Parole suspended its clemency hearing to give the Supreme Court time to review the case. If you have not read about Troy Davis, you can visit his website. Cynthia Tucker's AJC column also discusses the case and the merits of his appeal. The Savannah Morning News article reports on the initial denial of his request for a new trial in Chatham County, Georgia.
Troy Davis was convicted of murdering Savannah police officer Mark Allen MacPhail almost 20 years ago. Seven of the nine prosecution witnesses have since changed their stories and have said that they are not sure Troy was involved. Another witness says she may have seen the real killer (not Troy Davis), but she was too scared to tell the police about it when it happened. The case was full of holes, but there was an understandable rush to convict someone for this crime that had the City of Savannah up in arms.
This is not the first case where eyewitness testimony has been questioned or later proven to be flat-out wrong.
In studying cases of innocent people who have been wrongly convicted, University of Virginia law professor Brandon L. Garrett has concluded that erroneous identifications by eyewitnesses are, by far, the leading cause, occurring 79 percent of the time. (Garrett examined 200 cases of people later exonerated by DNA evidence.) All six of the Georgia men who have been exonerated by DNA evidence were convicted because of faulty eyewitness testimony.
We have challenged many cases that were based on eyewitness identification. Sometimes, we use experts to explain to the jury how someone can say they saw something they didn't and be so certain about it. As recently as a few years ago, Georgia judges would instruct juries that, the more certain an eyewitness was about what he saw, the more reliable his testimony. The scientific evidence proves that such an instruction is wrong and misleads the jury.
Legislation introduced in Georgia this year created a committee to study the problems of eyewitness identification. The Committe will be chaired by Rep. Stephanie Stuckey Benfield (a friend, and a strong legislative supporter of justice). We hope the Committee will recommend significant changes in the laws to strengthen line-up procedures, and eliminate the "show-up" identifications that can lead to wrongful convictions.
Hundreds of people have been released from prison due to DNA evidence that proves their innocence. Many of these people were convicted solely on eyewitness testimony. Given the numbers, it is almost a certainty that people have been executed based on faulty eyewitnesses testimony. Hopefully, Troy Davis won't be next.
