In Final Hours, Pleas to Halt Troy Davis Execution Continue

by Nicole Flatow

Reaction is ratcheting up to the planned execution of Troy Davis in Georgia, scheduled for 7 p.m. today. On Twitter, hip hop stars have urged their fans to protest, and the NAACP is holding a news conference, hoping to stop the execution. Prominent figures from former FBI Director William Sessions to House members John Conyers, Bobby Scott and Hank Johnson have asked that the execution be halted.

Several last-minute appeals have been rejected, with the Georgia parole board refusing clemency and state prison officials rejecting a request to implement a lie detector test.  

Though many reports suggest all avenues for stopping the execution have been exhausted, emptywheel’s Marcy Wheeler writes that “there are paths left to be pursued, even if narrow and dimly lit.”

One avenue that she explores is filing an action in state court, which would then be appealed to the Supreme Court, on the issue of eyewitness testimony. Both a new study on the unreliability of eyewitness testimony and a case the Supreme Court is scheduled to hear in November on the subject, Perry v. New Hampshire, reopen the issue, she reasons.

“In an imminent execution situation, anything and everything must, and will, be pursued. The dedication, intensity, selflessness and never say die, literally, attitude of death penalty lawyers is legendary,” she writes.”… It ain’t over until it’s over.”

At Slate, University of Virginia law professor Brandon Garrett explains how the Troy Davis case exemplifies “just how wrong eyewitness evidence can be,” noting that the case hinged on eyewitness testimony that was “quite literally, staged by the police” when officers brought key witnesses back to the Burger King where the shooting occurred and had members of the lineup play different roles (the person Davis alleges committed the murder played an innocent bystander).

Garrett, the author of a recent book on the first 250 people exonerated by DNA evidence, details all of the ways in which the eyewitness testimony in this case was unreliable. Ultimately, he concludes:

The Troy Davis case is a case about the death penalty and also about how much risk of error we as a society can tolerate. It is a case about judicial reluctance to meaningfully examine new evidence of innocence, including witness recantations. It is a case about jailhouse informants. But the Troy Davis case is finally a case about the fragility and malleability of eyewitness memory. And the eyes of the world are now on Georgia.