On Mon, 26 Sep 2011 15:30:45 -0400, Dave Smith wrote:

> On 26/09/2011 2:44 PM, Michel Boucher wrote:
>> Dave > wrote in
>> :
>>
>>>> the fact is troy davis was almost certainly innocent of the
>>>> crime he was executed for.
>>>
>>> Not from what I read about it.
>>
>> The weapon was never recovered. Right there, that is a definite
>> lack of information in what is specifically a shooting case.
>>
>> No gun, no prints, no "open and shut case" as Hamilton Burger used
>> to say. Obviously, habeas corpus only applies to white folk.
>>
>
> There is no single set of rules about what pieces of evidence constitute
> proof, and there was lots of other evidence. There were seven witnesses
> who testified that they saw Davis shoot McPhail, ad two others who
> testified that Davis had confessed to them that he had done it.

seven of nine witnesses recanted their testimony, some alleging police
coercion.

blake

blake murphy > wrote in
:

>> There is no single set of rules about what pieces of evidence
>> constitute proof, and there was lots of other evidence. There
>> were seven witnesses who testified that they saw Davis shoot
>> McPhail, ad two others who testified that Davis had confessed
>> to them that he had done it.
>
> seven of nine witnesses recanted their testimony, some
> alleging police coercion.

And given that the event occurred at 01h15, it was dark and from
what I can tell the eye witnesses were not near the incident and
what the eyewitnesses said was that a man in a white shirt had
fired the gun. They did not specifically name Troy Davis. It was
only the next day that someone said that Troy Davis had confessed
to him, which is, if memory serves, hearsay evidence and not
considered reliable.

--

"War is the terrorism of the rich and powerful and
terrorism is the war of the poor and powerless."

Peter Ustinov

blake murphy wrote:
> Dave Smith wrote:
>
>> There is no single set of rules about what pieces of evidence constitute
>> proof, and there was lots of other evidence. There were seven witnesses
>> who testified that they saw Davis shoot McPhail, ad two others who
>> testified that Davis had confessed to them that he had done it.
>
> seven of nine witnesses recanted their testimony, some alleging police
> coercion.

The seven witnesses who recanted to me is reason to drop him off of
death row. The two who did not recant to me is reason to not release
him. The conundrum is folks on death row get almost endless and almost
guaranteed appeals while folks in the rest of the prison population do
not. It's too late for anything but lessons learned at this point.

Doug Freyburger > wrote in
:

> The conundrum is folks on death row get almost endless and
> almost guaranteed appeals while folks in the rest of the
> prison population do not. It's too late for anything but
> lessons learned at this point.

It's not a conundrum. People who are not on death row have a
chance of release.

What I find particularly heinous about US capital punishment is
that proof of innocence is not sufficient cause to grant habeas
relief: a claim of actual innocence based on newly discovered
evidence did not state a ground for federal habeas relief ("[f]ew
rulings would be more disruptive of our federal system than to
provide for federal habeas review of freestanding claims of actual
innocence" - Rehnquist majority opinion in Herrera v. Collins,
1993).

Talk about a serious disconnect with reality there.

--

"War is the terrorism of the rich and powerful and
terrorism is the war of the poor and powerless."

Peter Ustinov

"Michel Boucher" > wrote in message
...
> Doug Freyburger > wrote in
> :
>
>> The conundrum is folks on death row get almost endless and
>> almost guaranteed appeals while folks in the rest of the
>> prison population do not. It's too late for anything but
>> lessons learned at this point.
>
> It's not a conundrum. People who are not on death row have a
> chance of release.
>
> What I find particularly heinous about US capital punishment is
> that proof of innocence is not sufficient cause to grant habeas
> relief: a claim of actual innocence based on newly discovered
> evidence did not state a ground for federal habeas relief ("[f]ew
> rulings would be more disruptive of our federal system than to
> provide for federal habeas review of freestanding claims of actual
> innocence" - Rehnquist majority opinion in Herrera v. Collins,
> 1993).
>
> Talk about a serious disconnect with reality there.

it is not "actual proof" of innocence that the court considered. It
considered "a claim" of innocence.

Anybody can claim anything. Proof is another matter.