Rare US hearing could give death row inmate a second chance

SAVANNAH, Georgia — Lawyers for a US convict were to present evidence Thursday that could show a man who has spent nearly 20 years on death row is innocent of the 1989 murder of an off-duty police officer.

Attorneys for Troy Davis were to spend a second day seeking to demonstrate their client deserves a retrial, a day after a string of witnesses admitted they lied during his 1991 trial.

The admissions came at a special hearing ordered by the US Supreme Court last year, after seven of the nine witnesses who testified against Davis in 1991 recanted.

The witnesses, some of whom were illiterate, in prison, or in their teens when they originally testified, provided the key evidence that convicted Davis, an African-American, of murdering Mark McPhail, a white police officer.

Davis, now 41, has always proclaimed his innocence, and one-by-one Wednesday, witnesses admitted they had lied to help convict him.

"When the police arrived, I told them I could barely recognize the shooter," said Atwan Williams. "I was scared, nervous, I was just trying to take off."

Asked if he had read back the deposition he gave to police, Williams replied: "No sir, I can't read."

Kevin McQueen told the court he had been given a lighter sentence in return for claiming Davis had confessed to him. "I was mad at him," he said.

Several witnesses said Wednesday that they had lied because they were intimidated by the police.

"I had cops all around me," said Jeffrey Sapp, a friend of Davis's.

"I was so scared, I'd have told them everything they wanted. They kept saying 'Troy told you, Troy told you.' I was saying the same thing they told me to say."

At least one of the witnesses, who was 16 when he testified in the original trial and claimed he was harassed by police, now says another witness against Davis could have murdered McPhail.

Prosecutors in Davis's original trial relied on witness accounts to convict him and presented no physical evidence, such as DNA or fingerprints.

Facing the people whose testimony put him on death row for the past 19 years, Davis betrayed no emotion.

Dressed in a white prison uniform but without handcuffs, he listened quietly to the testimony, occasionally talking to his attorneys.

The courtroom, filled to capacity with spectators who arrived in the early morning to secure a seat, was divided between Davis's black relatives, and the white members of the McPhail family, including his two children.

"I am ready for justice," Kim Robertson, a friend of McPhail's, told AFP. "The execution should already have taken place. I have no doubt he's guilty."

But the US Supreme Court ruled last August that it had no such certainty and ordered a lower court to submit a memo on whether new evidence could prove Davis innocent.

The Supreme Court will then consider whether or not Davis should be granted a new trial.

The decision was unusual, in part because it was issued during an official recess, but also because the bar to ordering new consideration of evidence is extremely high.

"Never before has the US Supreme Court ordered a hearing to determine if it is unconstitutional to execute someone who is innocent," said Larry Cox, executive director of Amnesty International USA, in a statement Tuesday.

He said the case against Davis had "unraveled," but even the shifting stories presented by witnesses may not prove sufficiently exculpatory to save Davis from execution.

The law is unresolved on whether a showing of innocence would allow Davis to escape the death penalty if his original trial met constitutional standards for prosecution.

Davis' older sister, Martina Correia, lamented that the hearing was being held in Savannah. "I think there's a lot of bias here," she told AFP.

Nonetheless, for Correia, the proceedings were the culmination of years of struggling on behalf of her brother.

She gave up a military career because it was incompatible with opposing the death penalty and says her desire to see her brother freed helped her fight cancer.

"In 2001 I was diagnosed with advanced cancer and given six months to live. I asked God to allow me to see Troy walk free and I'm still fighting a good fight. I still have cancer."

Source: Agence France-Presse, June 24, 2010

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