US execution puts death penalty on trial - Troy Davis case

The Supreme Court is evaluating a last minute appeal. If they pass on it he will be executed. I echo the inquiry; how "innocent" is this guy? Is there a belief that he had no involvement at all? Or is it simply a question of who pulled the trigger?

Also, I read in many articles that there was "no physical evidence" and that he was convicted only on "eye witness testimony" which made it very important that witnesses changed their minds. But today I read an article on CNN that said that appellate courts rejected defense challenges on ballistic evidence. If there is ballistic evidence then the facts as presented by the anti-death penalty crowd (of which I am one) are a little skewed.

 

The ballistics evidence is sketchy too. The murder weapon was never found and the only ballistics evidence was from an expert who stated that it was possible that the bullets that killed the officer could be from the same gun as the weapon that shot Michael Cooper (who was attacked earlier). Again, this was all part of the same trial and there were no witnesses that definitively linked Davis to the attack on Cooper. Additionally, many of the witnesses that recanted stated that they falsely testified because of police intimidation.

The entire case including the ballistics evidence boils down to eyewitness testimony. If no witness can link him to Cooper's attack, then the ballistics evidence is meaningless.

 

Thank you for the post. I repped you for it. I appreciate when posters address a post and provide details that had previously not been fully explained.

This whole case seems like a worse botchfest than Scott Steiner pro-wrestling match!

 

They also found bloody clothes with the victims blood at troy davis's house, but they were excluded. He was definitely at the scene and there its a fifty fifty shot he is guilty, but can you kill a guy basically on the flip of a coin.

 

There's always more info...

Thanks Langhi.

 

You don't need an "argument". What do you believe? You believe prosecutors won't chase the death penalty unless they are virtually assured the defendant is guilty. So do you believe that virtually everyone on death row is guilty?

I'm better than what? I stated twice in my original post that I was making assumptions to arrive at the number, and that I didn't know a key piece of the math (whether death row is growing or not). From that, it's pretty obvious that the 10% was a guesstimate as opposed to some precise statistical answer. There are factors that lower that #, and factors that raise it. But it's a reasonable starting point for a guesstimate.

 

It has been postponed one to seven days.

 

I think people should at least read his wiki page before making comments on this case.

 

I have enough posts to know that people who lead off with the tired "reading comprehension" smack are generally starting off with a bit of hyperbole to bolster a weak argument.

I have full knowledge of the limits and so do you - that's why your post is kind of dumb. Your answer to posts about "this is not working, we shoudl change it" is something akin to "yeah it's not working, it's what we got, oh well!"

You call it context, I call it kind of a lazy way out and rather tautological. I think that our post-Gary Gilmore experiment of letting states have free reign on the machinery of death has proven to be a real disaster. It can't really credibly said to have decreased crime and IMO it leads to idiotic, race-to-the bottom scenarios (witnessesth Texas as the very worst and Rick Perry crooning about how icing Willingham - on the basis of evidence that wouldn't even sustain an indictment - as his crowining glory in the Repub primaries). This is compounded by both federal and state courts more than willing to pass the buck and hide behind procedure and thus collectively wash their hands of what has doubtlessly resulted in state-sanctioned murder of innocents in numerous cases, unless of course you are preaching the silly Panglossian belief that the 100's of released condemneds represents "the system working" - a standard pro-death refrain but one ridiculous on its face.

Yes but so what? If we're going to go "media distorting facts about crime" - it probably distorts a lot further in one direction than the other given the "it bleeds it leads" ethos that we've been subjected to for about 100 years or more.

 

Like thirty people saw him shoot the cop in a Burger King parking lot, including people that knew Davis and some military personnel as well.

There's a reason no state or federal judge has granted him a retrial.

 

Why didn't they testify? Or no one could have called the cops to arrest him? He was there but no way to tell if he killed the cop.

 

http://twitter.com/#!/AnnCoulter/status/116628663260299265

holy crap man......

 

Nope, he was injected 10 minutes ago this posting.

 

I know a lot of people are against the death penalty, whether you think it is right or not, I don't think anyone would think this guy was innocent.....

If you just read a bit about it, the guy was definitly involved.

DD

 

CNN is reporting he has been executed.

Damn! What a travesty.

 

Well, that's enough for me. I'll stop worrying about it. Thanks brah.

 

That doesn't matter. The death penalty is irreversible. You need to have a zero percent chance of screwing this up. That's the issue with this. If you jail someone for life, you can at least somewhat rectify it if he or she were found to be innocent later but with the death penalty there is no going back. And considering how many witnesses recanted their stories and how universal the claims of police misconduct are, there is a ton of doubt.

He's involved, there's no question. But no one has been able to definitively prove that he did it. The death penalty should be used sparingly and in cases where these types of shenanigans don't happen. There are death penalty cases to where people believe beyond reasonable doubt that a murder occurred and you never hear a peep out of those cases. But this is not one of those cases and consequently should be treated as such.

A person's life is at stake here and the government has a responsibility to be 100% thorough in its decision. It is clear to me that it hasn't been and the result is saddening.

 

http://www.cjlf.org/files/DavisExcerpt.html