Will our Conservative Supreme Court attend to the sense of Congress as reported by one of the law's authors?

Posted June 1st, 2009 by Prometheus 6

Or will they judge according to what they think the law should be?

A litany of affidavits from prosecution witnesses now tell of an investigation that was focused not on scrutinizing all suspects, but on building a case against Mr. Davis. One witness, for instance, has said she testified against Mr. Davis because she was on parole and was afraid the police would send her back to prison if she did not cooperate.

Death Penalty Disgrace
By BOB BARR

THERE is no abuse of government power more egregious than executing an innocent man. But that is exactly what may happen if the United States Supreme Court fails to intervene on behalf of Troy Davis.

Mr. Davis is facing execution for the 1989 murder of an off-duty police officer in Savannah, Ga., even though seven of the nine witnesses have recanted their testimony against him. Many of these witnesses now say they were pressured into testifying falsely against him by police officers who were understandably eager to convict someone for killing a comrade. No court has ever heard the evidence of Mr. Davis’s innocence.

After the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit barred Mr. Davis from raising his claims of innocence, his attorneys last month petitioned the Supreme Court for an original writ of habeas corpus. This would be an extraordinary procedure — provided for by the Constitution but granted only a handful of times since 1900. However, absent this, Mr. Davis faces an extraordinary and obviously final injustice.

This threat of injustice has come about because the lower courts have misread the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, a law I helped write when I was in Congress. As a member of the House Judiciary Committee in the 1990s, I wanted to stop the unfounded and abusive delays in capital cases that tend to undermine our criminal justice system.

With the effective death penalty act, Congress limited the number of habeas corpus petitions that a defendant could file, and set a time after which those petitions could no longer be filed. But nothing in the statute should have left the courts with the impression that they were barred from hearing claims of actual innocence like Troy Davis’s.

It would seem in everyone’s interest to find out as best we can what really happened that night 20 years ago in a dim parking lot where Officer Mark MacPhail was shot dead. With no murder weapon, surveillance videotape or DNA evidence left behind, the jury that judged Mr. Davis had to weigh the conflicting testimony of several eyewitnesses to sift out the gunman from the onlookers who had nothing to do with the heinous crime.

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Bob Barr taking up Troy Davis' case?

On June 1st, 2009 rikyrah says:

Um, anyone wondering about a motive here?

I thought about thinking about it

On June 1st, 2009 Prometheus 6 says:

I decided Troy Davis' case is more important than my suspicions.

Bob Barr's Philosophic Turn Around

On June 1st, 2009 ptcruiser says:

I believe that politics can sometimes change folks lives. Bob Barr, I believe, is genuinely concerned about the government's power versus that of the individual. At one time he saw this issue through the narrow prism of the Republican Party but over time he realized that many of the issues he and the party supported vastly expanded the government's police powers over the individual. As he moved closer to libertarianism, which was where he probably belonged all the time, he began to see the contradictions between the views he supported as a Republican and his own personal and philosophical conceptions of freedom. The notion of not allowing a defendant to raise claims of innocence, especially when the defendant is facing execution, would be an injustice of the highest order and contrary to the principles of the U.S. Constitution in his view. I suspect that many libertarians are regretting their embrace of the Republican Party and are trying to develop a more consistent and logical stance.

It is cases like this that

On June 2nd, 2009 Osiris_E. says:

It is cases like this that really get under my skin and has made me re-think me legal profession. How many innocent people do you think have been executed under these circumstances?

How many innocent people do

On June 2nd, 2009 ptcruiser says:

How many innocent people do you think have been executed under these circumstances?

I'm too afraid of the answer to even guess.

I know 13 were saved in Illinois

On June 2nd, 2009 rikyrah says:

which put me off the Death Penalty permanently.

I'm too afraid of the answer

On June 2nd, 2009 Osiris_E. says:

I'm too afraid of the answer to even guess.

This question is a nightmare for the legal profession (as it should be). But it's a question the legal profession needs to seriously consider if it intends maintain its contention of "blind justice". I am not totally against the death penalty but I do think there should be a national moratorium on it precicly for cases like these and cases where DNA can be obtained. DA's and Judges are extremely arrogant people. To them, they are all-knowing; their decisions are next to biblical commandments and therefore do not want to see their prosecutions and judgements scrutinized (or blasphemed as one judge put it to me). This arrogance is a serious barrier to the truth and has caused, I think, many people to be wrongly executed and convicted.

The Arrogance of DA's and Judges

On June 2nd, 2009 ptcruiser says:

DA's and Judges are extremely arrogant people. To them, they are all-knowing; their decisions are next to biblical commandments and therefore do not want to see their prosecutions and judgements scrutinized (or blasphemed as one judge put it to me). This arrogance is a serious barrier to the truth and has caused, I think, many people to be wrongly executed and convicted.

Judge Sotomayor apparently is not exempt from this attitude as well according to Emily Bazelon's analysis of a case Sotomayor ruled on.

Prosecutors, DNA testing

On June 2nd, 2009 ProfGeo says:

As scary as the arrogance of assuming you're always right, is unwillingness to admit a mistake. The result can be the same.

Prosecutors Block Access to DNA Testing for Inmates

...A recent analysis of 225 DNA exonerations by Brandon L. Garrett, a professor at the University of Virginia School of Law, found that prosecutors opposed DNA testing in almost one out of five cases. In many of the others, they initially opposed testing but ultimately agreed to it. In 98 of those 225 cases, the DNA test identified the real culprit.

In Illinois, prosecutors have opposed a DNA test for Johnnie Lee Savory, convicted of committing a double murder when he was 14, on the grounds that a jury was convinced of his guilt without DNA and that the 175 convicts already exonerated by DNA were “statistically insignificant.”

Tell that to the 175 exonerated individuals, I say...

Prometheus 6