ATLANTA — A federal appeals court on Friday halted the execution of a Georgia inmate convicted in the 1989 killing of a police officer, the third time in 16 months that a stay of execution has been ordered in the case.
The inmate, Troy A. Davis, 40, was scheduled to die by lethal injection on Monday for the murder of Mark A. MacPhail, a Savannah police officer.
In deciding to consider a new hearing for Mr. Davis, the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, in Atlanta, asked his lawyers to prove that no reasonable person today would find him guilty.
Since Mr. Davis’s conviction in 1991, seven witnesses have recanted their testimony, including two who said they had felt pressure by the police to testify against Mr. Davis and three who said a different man had admitted to the killing. Prosecutors presented no DNA evidence or murder weapon, although they linked bullet casings found at the scene to a gun they said Mr. Davis had used in an earlier shooting.
The case has bounced around the judicial system, appearing before at least 29 judges in seven types of reviews. The Georgia Supreme Court twice denied Mr. Davis a new hearing, and the United States Supreme Court and the Georgia State Board of Pardons and Paroles have issued stays of execution before rejecting his appeal.
“It’s extraordinary for three stays to be issued in one case,” said Stephen B. Bright, a visiting lecturer at Yale Law School and president of the Southern Center for Human Rights. “Clearly, the case has been very troubling to each of the courts that examined it.”
Mr. Davis’s lawyers have asked the appeals court to decide whether the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment prohibits the execution of the innocent, the same question that the Supreme Court declined to consider.
If the appeals court agrees to hear the case, the stay of execution will continue until a decision is reached. If not, Georgia may proceed with the execution.
The outcome is difficult to predict, Mr. Bright said, because previous decisions in the case have been so close.
The Georgia Supreme Court voted 4 to 3 in March against a new trial, and the United States Supreme Court made the unusual decision to meet in conference twice before declining the case.
Officer MacPhail was shot to death early on Aug. 19, 1989, while moonlighting as a security guard. He was breaking up a fight between two men over a beer in a Burger King parking lot when, prosecutors say, Mr. Davis fired three shots from a pistol into his leg, chest and face. Mr. Davis says he left the scene before the shooting.
Mr. Davis has received an outpouring of publicity and support, including demonstrations against his execution on Thursday in 35 cities around the world.
“It’s another small victory in a big war,” said Mr. Davis’s sister, Martina Correia. But the officer’s mother, Anneliese MacPhail, called the ruling the latest episode in a recurring nightmare. “Why in the world do we have to go through this again?” she asked. “I thought when the Supreme Court in Washington ruled, it would be over.”
Source: The New York Times
