| Viewing Single Post From: TROY DAVIS TO DIE, BY ONE VOTE | |
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| Sydney Carton | Aug 19 2009, 03:35 PM |
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-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- SC: Well,Troy Daviis just had another close call but he will ,after twenty years, finally get an eviderntiary hearing before a federal judge,as the majority of the Supreme Court ordered Monday.Davis has been consistently losing by a single vote the llast three times around.Apparently someone at the very top dramatically reversed themselves;but I doubt that we will ever hear that story in full. updated 11:52 a.m. EDT, Mon August 17, 2009 By Bill Mears CNN Supreme Court Producer WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The Supreme Court has granted a condemned Georgia inmate's request that his execution be delayed as he attempts to prove his innocence. snip Justice John Paul Stevens on Monday ordered a federal judge to "receive testimony and make findings of fact as to whether evidence that could not have been obtained at trial clearly establishes petitioner's innocence." Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer supported the decision. Sonia Sotomayor, who was sworn in August 8 as the newest member of the high court, did not take part in the petition. Davis' case has had a dramatic series of ups and downs in the past year. He was granted a stay of execution by the Supreme Court two hours before he was to be put to death last fall. A month later, the justices reversed course and allowed the execution to proceed, but a federal appeals court then issued another stay. The high court's latest ruling means Davis will continue to sit on death row. Stevens said the risk of putting a potentially innocent man to death "provides adequate justification" for another evidentiary hearing. His supporters in June delivered petitions bearing about 60,000 signatures to Chatham County, Georgia, District Attorney Larry Chisolm, calling for a new trial. Chisolm is the county's first African-American district attorney. snip Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas objected to the court's decision Monday, calling it a "fool's errand." "Petitioner's claim is a sure loser," wrote Scalia. "Transferring his petition to the [federal] District Court is a confusing exercise that can serve no purpose except to delay the state's execution of its lawful criminal judgment." SC: Several cautions(1) Davis will have the burden of proving his innocence.(2)An investigation by the local DA would have had the effect of opening much evidence concderning the original pre-trial investigation; any such potential evidence will not be available to the defense in the forthcoming hearing(3) What the higher court orders and what the defendant actually gets in the lower court may be two quite different things.Consider the case of Jeffrey MacDonald(under "Past Cases" here).The North Carolina Federal Court has been under orders for years from the Appellate Court to conduct a full evidentiary hearing but the local politicoes continue to block the defendant. |
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| TROY DAVIS TO DIE, BY ONE VOTE · DUKE LACROSSE - Liestoppers | |
7:39 PM Dec 6
