WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Monday took the rare step of ordering a federal judge to consider the innocence claims of condemned Georgia prisoner Troy Anthony Davis, who has mounted a global campaign to declare he was wrongfully convicted of murder and barred by federal law from presenting the evidence that would prove it.
The court interrupted its summer recess to order a new hearing to determine “whether evidence that could not have been obtained at the time of trial clearly establishes” Davis’ innocence.
Davis has come close to execution several times since he was convicted of the 1989 killing of off-duty Savannah police officer Mark Allen MacPhail. The case has spawned a national and international following, intense interest from Amnesty International and the NAACP, and support from Pope Benedict XVI, former President Jimmy Carter and Archbishop Desmond Tutu, among others.
The court decision Monday comes amid complaints from federal judges that a law passed by Congress in 1996 to streamline the death-penalty appeals process keeps them from getting to questions of innocence raised by condemned petitioners.
Davis’ lawyers filed a petition directly with the Supreme Court after lower federal courts said that, because he could point to no constitutional defects in the trial he received, he could not present new evidence that would show his innocence.
Davis says that since his trial, seven of Georgia’s nine key witnesses have recanted their testimony against him. He claims that the man who was the key witness against him was the actual shooter.
At the heart of the issue is what federal courts are to do with claims of innocence by those convicted in state courts, when there were no constitutional violations at the trial.
