{"id":11485,"date":"2007-07-17T10:40:04","date_gmt":"2007-07-17T14:40:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/11485.html"},"modified":"2007-07-17T10:40:04","modified_gmt":"2007-07-17T14:40:04","slug":"troy-davis-gets-a-stay-in-georgia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/troy-davis-gets-a-stay-in-georgia\/","title":{"rendered":"Troy Davis gets a stay in Georgia"},"content":{"rendered":"

Following up on an item<\/a> from yesterday, the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles was set to hear an 11th-hour appeal yesterday. I wasn’t optimistic, but the panel surprised a lot of people by granting<\/a> a stay of execution.<\/p>\n

One day before he was to die by lethal injection, convicted cop killer Troy Davis received a 90-day stay of execution Monday from a Georgia clemency board, allowing him time to press his case that he has been the victim of mistaken identity.<\/p>\n

The prosecution’s case against Davis, 38, has crumbled in the 16 years since he was sentenced to death for shooting a police officer working a security detail in Savannah. Most of the key witnesses in Davis’s trial have recanted their testimony, and some have said they lied under police pressure.<\/p>\n

But none of those witnesses testified during Davis’s appeals — in part because federal courts barred their testimony — and Davis was scheduled to die at 7 p.m. Tuesday.<\/p>\n

On Monday, however, five of the trial witnesses spoke before the state Board of Pardons and Paroles, and the five-member panel decided it would be willing to hear more.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In a brief statement, the Board said, “Those representing Troy Anthony Davis have asserted that they can and will present live witnesses and other evidence . . . to support their contention that there remains some doubt as to his guilt.”<\/p>\n

Joan MacPhail, the slain officer’s widow, condemned the delay. “I believe they are setting a precedent for all criminals that it is perfectly fine to kill a cop and get away with it,” she told the AP. “It’s tearing us up.”<\/p>\n

I can only imagine the pain MacPhail has had to endure, and she has my deepest sympathy, but it’s simply not true to suggest the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles has given the green light to cop-killers. Troy Davis, by all available evidence, didn’t shoot her husband. The only dangerous precedent that can be set here is the execution of an innocent man, after refusing to hear exculpatory evidence.
\n
\nMark Kleiman notes<\/a> an important detail I hadn’t seen.<\/p>\n

[A]pparently (I’m just going on newspaper accounts) the Board’s power is limited to commuting his sentence to life without parole. That outcome would make no sense whatsoever.<\/p>\n

If Davis is innocent, then he no more belongs on an ordinary cellblock than he does on Death Row. If he’s guilty, then a commutation seems unjustified. Whoever it was that harassed a homeless man to try to make him give up a can of beer and then shot the off-duty policy officer who tried to come to the rescue, it’s hard to see what that person is any less deserving of death than any other capital convict. (The Libby commutation had something of the same flavor; if Libby was guilty as charged, the sentence was by no means excessive; if he was the victim of a rogue prosecutor who never should have been tried in the first place, why leave is conviction in place?)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Agreed. Executing Davis for killed Officer MacPhail would be a travesty, but keeping him locked up until he dies is only marginally better.<\/p>\n

Perhaps Davis could seek a commutation from the president? According to Tony Snow, Bush “routinely<\/a>” spends weeks mulling over these questions, so I’m sure the president would want to give the case his due diligence.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Following up on an item from yesterday, the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles was set to hear an 11th-hour appeal yesterday. I wasn’t optimistic, but the panel surprised a lot of people by granting a stay of execution. One day before he was to die by lethal injection, convicted cop killer Troy Davis received […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11485","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11485","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11485"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11485\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11485"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11485"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11485"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}