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Troy Davis execution: Georgia pardons board denies plea for clemency

Leaving aside some of the over the top rhetoric, I have some real problems with this whole story. Either we have to assume that a group of people is perfectly willing to ignore evidence and condemn a man to death, which I find unlikely, or we have to assume that the evidence we hear is not correct, which seems unlikely, or we can assume that there is more evidence that most of us are unfamiliar with, which seems more likely. I think this rush to judgement on the part of people posting here is kinda sad, though I can understand where it is coming from. Everything I have heard(and not mentioned in the thread is one of the 2 witnesses who has not recanted is a possible suspect in the murder, and that one of the jurors commented that if he knew the ballistic results he would have voted not guilty) suggests that there is strong reason to question his conviction, and yet those 5 people on the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles where not swayed, which means either they are bad people, or painfully dumb, or there is something else going on we do not know about.

Knowing Georgia politics, this is probably the answer.
 
Condemned Ga. inmate has much support, little hope

Condemned Ga. inmate has much support, little hope - Yahoo! News

He lost his most realistic chance to avoid lethal injection on Tuesday, when Georgia's pardons board rejected his appeal for clemency. As his scheduled 7 p.m. Wednesday execution neared, his backers resorted to far-fetched measures: urging prison workers to strike or call in sick, asking prosecutors to block the execution — even considering a desperate appeal for White House intervention.


He has gotten support from hundreds of thousands of people, including a former FBI director, former President Jimmy Carter and Pope Benedict XVI, and a U.S. Supreme Court ruling gave him an unusual opportunity to prove his innocence last year. State and federal courts, however, repeatedly upheld his conviction for the 1989 killing of Mark MacPhail, an off-duty police officer who was working as a security guard in Savannah when he was shot dead rushing to help a homeless man who was being attacked.


Davis' attorneys say he was convicted based on flawed testimony that has been largely recanted by witnesses, but prosecutors and MacPhail's relatives say they have no doubt the right man is being punished.

Georgia initially planned to execute Davis in July 2007, but the pardons board granted him a stay less than 24 hours before he was to die. The U.S. Supreme Court stepped in a year later and halted the lethal injection just two hours before he was to be executed. And a federal appeals court halted another planned execution a few months later.

So let's get this straight. The pardons board granted him a stay, the highest court in the entire US halts a lethal injection, a federal court halts another execution, and they're STILL trying to execute him?

Here is the best part:

Witnesses placed Davis at the crime scene and identified him as the shooter. Shell casings were linked to a shooting hours earlier that Davis was convicted of. There was no other physical evidence. No blood or DNA tied Davis to the crime and the weapon was never located.

This whole situation looks like it may well turn out to be the first time we have undeniable proof that the state has executed an innocent man.
 
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It's about time they put this bastard on ice.

Yes, let's put him on ice, and the real killer, most likely Sylvester Coles, who was identified by at least 10 witnesses as the killer, walks free. This kind of thinking might be good for the Iranian mullahs, but this is America, dammit.
 
Re: Condemned Ga. inmate has much support, little hope

Sounds to me like Troy Davis was smoking dust that evening, shot a stranger in the face for no good reason, then shot a police officer in the face for no good reason, came down off the dust, realized how badly he f*cked up his life, then fled to his sister's house in Atlanta.

Frankly, I do not believe the story that Troy "Rough as Hell" Davis was so taken aback by his friend Redd Coles slapping a homeless man that he suddenly (and conveniently) fled the scene in apparent sheer disgust over such wanton violence, just prior to the shooting death of Officer MacPhail. What is more, if it had been Redd Coles who actually shot MacPhail, Davis would likely have admitted as much during his interrogation, and he definitely would have testified to such at trial for his life.
 
I am in favor of sending 100 Innocent men to their deaths in order to ensure that every guilty one ends up there. It isn't my PREFERENCE for how it should work, but in order to ensure that the guilty end up getting their just rewards, that's the way it has to work.

That is completely contrary to a convention of American jurisprudence, which believes that it is better that a guilty man go free than an innocent man spend a day in prison. Your worldview is much closer to Nazi justice that would shoot a whole town just to be certain they got the guilty party. Sorry sir, but on matters of justice I say your views are un-American.
 
Then just add it to the list of the "incredibly inhumane and stupid" things I believe.




If I'm ever in a situation where it COULD happen to me, then I probably deserve to have it happen.


Well lets hope your one of the innoncent ones that gets included then :) this way you can live your dream
 
So I return to my original question. If you, as the victim, are the sole witness to a mugging (say), the guy is caught and you ID him. Should the police just inform you they're releasing the guy and not bringing charges because the only evidence it's him is your ID?

Yes, if there's no other corroborating evidence that the person was at the scene and tie my belongings to him. There are plenty of scenarios where I might be wrong or lying, therefore the police shouldn't just take my word for it without other corroborating evidence.

Your scenario is exactly that of the women who convicted a black man of raping her only to find out 11 years later that he was innocent after a DNA test.
 
Leaving aside some of the over the top rhetoric, I have some real problems with this whole story. Either we have to assume that a group of people is perfectly willing to ignore evidence and condemn a man to death, which I find unlikely, or we have to assume that the evidence we hear is not correct, which seems unlikely, or we can assume that there is more evidence that most of us are unfamiliar with, which seems more likely. I think this rush to judgement on the part of people posting here is kinda sad, though I can understand where it is coming from. Everything I have heard(and not mentioned in the thread is one of the 2 witnesses who has not recanted is a possible suspect in the murder, and that one of the jurors commented that if he knew the ballistic results he would have voted not guilty) suggests that there is strong reason to question his conviction, and yet those 5 people on the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles where not swayed, which means either they are bad people, or painfully dumb, or there is something else going on we do not know about.

Seems to me they have shifted the burden of proof onto the defense. The defendant is now guilty of said crime until proven beyond reasonable doubt that he's not. It's not unheard of for the boards/courts have heard appeals, decided against it, and end up executing an innocent person.
 
That is completely contrary to a convention of American jurisprudence, which believes that it is better that a guilty man go free than an innocent man spend a day in prison.

Which is exactly why the body count of innocents will always be much, much higher on the side where the American CJS f*cks up and either wrongfully exonerates a guilty man or underprosecutes him, and he subsequently kills again.

To be sure, the CJS has a lot more blood on its hands for wrongful exonerations and underprosecutions, than it ever will for wrongful convictions in death penalty cases. If we are to argue against capital punishment on the grounds of human fallability, then we should also argue against the Great Writ of habeas corpus along the same line of reasoning. After all, would it not be more prudent to retain custody of a defendant who is acqutted by a jury in a death penalty case wherein considerable danming evidence is presented during trial? What if he really is guilty and kills another innocent person subsequent to his release?

In the end, the law must choose in the face of objective uncertainty, even in matters of life and death. There is no way around this. The CJS could just as easily have acquitted Davis and released him back into society, only to have him shoot yet another police officer to death, or have commuted his sentence to 'life without parole', only to have him murder an inmate or C.O. soon after being released into prison general population. In both instances, the CJS would have the blood of the innocent on its hands, no differently than they would for executing Davis after wrongfully convicting him (if that is even the case here).
 
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That is completely contrary to a convention of American jurisprudence, which believes that it is better that a guilty man go free than an innocent man spend a day in prison. Your worldview is much closer to Nazi justice that would shoot a whole town just to be certain they got the guilty party. Sorry sir, but on matters of justice I say your views are un-American.

I would suggest that the American system has no interest in actual JUSTICE, just Legality. There is no impetus in the American system to ensure that the guilty party is PUNISHED for their crime, just an interest in whether the criminal was treated "Fairly" before being given a slap on the wrist (at worst) and turned back out into society.

Well lets hope your one of the innoncent ones that gets included then :) this way you can live your dream

Not a dream; just a realization that no human life is worth more than the desire to ensure actual PUNISHMENT is handed out to the guilty.
 
I am in favor of sending 100 Innocent men to their deaths in order to ensure that every guilty one ends up there. It isn't my PREFERENCE for how it should work, but in order to ensure that the guilty end up getting their just rewards, that's the way it has to work.

i'm fortunate enough to live in a civilised Country where the death penalty has been abolished forever after laws were passed ensuring it could never be reinstated. prior to that, the death penalty had not been used since 1967. what you are advocating above will never ever happen in my Country.

it always amuses me to see that some of the people who loudly campaign for less Government interference in their lives are the same people who are quite happy to give that same Government the absolute power to choose life over death even knowing mistakes can and have been made.
 
Personally, overall, I see this as a form of moral blowback. The United States has been committing moral atrocities since the Cold War (Chile, Iran, Grenada) that go into the present day (Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya). This moral bankruptcy of the nation has come back to haunt the US domestically and this is just one form of it. If the federal government, the people who lead the nation can kill children and innocent civilians, terming them "collateral damage," cannot adhere to any moral values, how can other forms of government (eg state governments) adhere to any moral values?
 
i'm fortunate enough to live in a civilised Country where the death penalty has been abolished forever after laws were passed ensuring it could never be reinstated. prior to that, the death penalty had not been used since 1967. what you are advocating above will never ever happen in my Country.

it always amuses me to see that some of the people who loudly campaign for less Government interference in their lives are the same people who are quite happy to give that same Government the absolute power to choose life over death even knowing mistakes can and have been made.

Ya know why that is? Because there are some crimes that are committed that call for no less of a punishment than death. Perhaps your heart will bleed for someone like Susan Smith, who drowned her 2 little boys, or like the Arizona shooter or the Fort Hood shooter (I could go on and on). As for me, my heart bleeds for the victims and some SOBs richly deserve nothing less.
 
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i'm fortunate enough to live in a civilised Country where the death penalty has been abolished forever after laws were passed ensuring it could never be reinstated. prior to that, the death penalty had not been used since 1967. what you are advocating above will never ever happen in my Country.

Which is part of why there isn't enough money on this planet to get me to visit your country (Ausie or NZ, I assume) or anywhere in Europe. Not only are you people unwilling to actually PUNISH criminals, you folks have gone out of your way to remove as many of my means of self-defense as possible. Sorry, not interested in being a sheeple.

it always amuses me to see that some of the people who loudly campaign for less Government interference in their lives are the same people who are quite happy to give that same Government the absolute power to choose life over death even knowing mistakes can and have been made.

I think you miss something. Many of us who speak loudly about the Government interference in our lives are also very vocal about the fact that we do believe the Government has a place in our lives. The problem is that we believe the Government is focused on the wrong things in our lives.
 
Which is part of why there isn't enough money on this planet to get me to visit your country (Ausie or NZ, I assume) or anywhere in Europe.

Is it just me or did anyone else just hear a collective cheer from Australia, New Zealand and all of Europe? :lol:
 
Ya know why that is? Because there are some crimes that are committed that call for no less of a punishment than death. Perhaps your heart will bleed for someone like Susan Smith, who drowned her 2 little boys, or like the Arizona shooter or the Fort Hood shooter (I could go on and on). As for me, my heart bleeds for the victims and some SOBs richly deserve nothing less.
T Factor,

i have no sympathy for the perpetrators of evil crimes and my sympathies lay with the victims. you might be prepared to let a person who may be innocent be executed (which is what my reply was to Tigger about), but i am certainly not.
 
Yes, if there's no other corroborating evidence that the person was at the scene and tie my belongings to him. There are plenty of scenarios where I might be wrong or lying, therefore the police shouldn't just take my word for it without other corroborating evidence.

Your scenario is exactly that of the women who convicted a black man of raping her only to find out 11 years later that he was innocent after a DNA test.
What about a child who's molested but doesn't say anything out of fear for awhile (and after any physical evidence is gone)? Just too bad, so sad? Currently police bring charges against someone based only on the word of a single victim all the time. Those of you who argue they don't, are just inaccurate. To do anything else ignores the realities of how and where crimes are committed. It's up to the jury if they believe the witness by the high standard of proof of beyond a reasonable doubt.
 
Which is part of why there isn't enough money on this planet to get me to visit your country (Ausie or NZ, I assume)

thank goodness. cause seriously, how much can a koala bear?
 
T Factor,

i have no sympathy for the perpetrators of evil crimes and my sympathies lay with the victims. you might be prepared to let a person who may be innocent be executed (which is what my reply was to Tigger about), but i am certainly not.
"T Factor" ?

Why can you never just own up to that which you clearly say? You were very specific that you believed the death penalty (and people who support it, which is the majority of my country) to be uncivilized and the actual guilt of someone plays no role in your opposition. In each of my examples there is no question as to the guilt of the killers, yet you still think they deserve a long and happy life. Something they denied their victims.
 
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"T Factor" ?

Why can you never just own up to that which you clearly say? You were very specific that you believed the death penalty (and people who support it, which is the majority of my country) to be uncivilized and the actual guilt of someone plays no role in your opposition. In each of my examples there is no question as to the guilt of the killers, yet you still think they deserve a long and happy life. Something they denied their victims.

here you go again. lying.

T factor,

please show me where i suggested that a person who is guilty beyond doubt "deserves a long a happy lilfe". considering i made no mention of what punishment i thought was suitable for these people you are lying again. being against the death penalty doesn't mean you wish the criminal a long and HAPPY life.

getting rather tired of your obvious trolling.
 
here you go again. lying.

T factor,

please show me where i suggested that a person who is guilty beyond doubt "deserves a long a happy lilfe". considering i made no mention of what punishment i thought was suitable for these people you are lying again. being against the death penalty doesn't mean you wish the criminal a long and HAPPY life.

getting rather tired of your obvious trolling.

Ah "T" is for troll?

But there's no question, is there, that you were suggesting that the US is just less than civilized because we do have the death penalty?
 
Ah "T" is for troll?

But there's no question, is there, that you were suggesting that the US is just less than civilized because we do have the death penalty?

T is for whatever you want it to be. ýou're pretty good at making **** up that people don't actually say to suit your argument any other time. the death penalty is barbaric and uncivilized. i apply the some feeling to any Country that uses it as punishment. while I oppose the death penalty, the bigger issue for me is that i am bothered by the fact that some states have no difficulty executing a convicted party without an extensive body of physical evidence. if you're going to take somebody's life, you better be damned sure that you know that they're guilty. whether or not Troy Davis is guilty, the evidence doesn't seem to be anywhere close to being conclusive. that is what this thread is about afterall.

sorry if that makes your butt hurt and you want to take it personally.
 
Is it just me or did anyone else just hear a collective cheer from Australia, New Zealand and all of Europe? :lol:

thank goodness. cause seriously, how much can a koala bear?

I'm sure. There are a lot of places in those areas that I'd love to see, but not while it requires giving up a basic human right, and entering a society like any of those in Europe, Australia, or New Zealand. Hell, I won't even go to Canada.

I've always thougth kaola's would probably make nice hats, like raccoons do. Different type of tail, but similar idea.
 
..... while I oppose the death penalty, the bigger issue for me is that i am bothered by the fact that some states have no difficulty executing a convicted party without an extensive body of physical evidence. if you're going to take somebody's life, you better be damned sure that you know that they're guilty....

Show me a truly "innocent" person over age five anywhere in the "civilized" world.
 
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