And that assesment is based on...?
What on earth makes you think the trial was fair?
Here is the information from the Amnesty International website:
June 2010: Evidentiary hearing
The hearing took place at the district court in Savannah on 23 June 2010. It was not the same as a trial: Troy was presumed guilty and the burden was on him to prove his innocence, beyond reasonable doubt, of a crime that happened over 20 years ago. During the hearing:
Four witnesses admitted in court that they lied at trial when they implicated Troy Davis
Four witnesses implicated another man as the one who killed Officer MacPhail
Three original state witnesses described police coercion during questioning, including one man who was 16 years old at the time of the murder
However, in August 2010, the federal district court judge ruled that although executing an innocent person would be unconstitutional, Troy had not met the extraordinarily high bar for proving his innocence.
http://www.amnesty.org.uk/content.asp?CategoryID=11458
Does any of that sound like he had a fair trial?
Pardoning Davis could have given him a lot of lost support from the liberal anti-death penalty voters, and some considerable support from anti-death conservatives too. Public opinion has long been aware of the injustices in the history of death rows, plus there's a huge chuck of America's electorate that opposes death penalties, including many die-hard pro-lifers.
Still, it was a major political risk and just plain looking for a fight... and I don't think the President is big on risk-taking.
I just read about his execution. I really do not understand how a man could be executed with so much doubt hanging over the case.
In regards to the poll:
Do I believe that he was guilty? Probably. Though the media, Sharpton, and co. are now trying to make it seem like there was no evidence against Davis, there was. There was a lot of circumstantial evidence aside from just the witnesses who are recanting. Enough to imply guilt. That being said, do I think that he should've been executed? No. The witnesses alone were at least enough to delay it and investigate further. There was no harm in waiting. As I said earlier....probably is not good enough to execute someone based on.
Yeah I was going to say this myself.
My beef is not that I think an innocent man was executed. It's the fact that they don't know he's guilty. The Death Penalty is a serious thing and it seems the Justice system got played with uncertainty and half truths.
I'm talking about the original trial. Nothing at a time indicated people were lying. Sure, now with things coming to light, look into it further.
With witnesses admitting to police coercion and LYING during the initial trial, i'm going to say NO, he did not have a fair original trial either.
The whole thing was corrupted from the beginning. I have no idea why, but that much is obvious.
I added a poll to the thread. Please be sure to vote.
People lie on the stand all the time. It's the defense and prosecutors' job to poke holes in those lies.
Imma be blunt. He died because he was black.
While I agree the previous poster could have most certainly put it more eloquently, perhaps we can agree that race played a part in this. Whether or not it was THE part I'm not sure, but I have a hard time believing that race didn't play any part in this.
The panel ordered both men set free — almost 11 years after being jailed for a killing in which they had no part. Their decision marked only the second case in North Carolina in which convictions were overturned under a law that created the N.C. Innocence Inquiry Commission in 2006.
Kagonyera and Wilcoxson pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in Bowman’s slaying but later said they were under intense pressure from prosecutors, investigators, family members and their own attorneys for fear they could spend life in prison or be sentenced to death.
When people lie in their testimony, they get charged with perjury and their testimony strictly removed as evidence. That didn't happen this time. No justice system can run on the assumption that witnesses lie on the stand. If so, more than 70% of criminal case sentences would have to be repealed.