Troy Davis: Doubt casts bigger shadow than we realized

It has been proven that eye witness testimony is not reliable.

link to AJC

5:56 pm September 20, 2011, by Jay Bookman

Since DNA evidence became available and admissible in court, 17 people who had been convicted of murder and sentenced to death by execution were later exonerated by DNA. Those innocent people were then freed, often with the support of the very same prosecutors who had initially proved they were guilty “beyond the shadow of a doubt.”

Think about that. Without the tool of DNA evidence, those 17 innocent people would almost certainly have been executed for crimes that they did not commit. In effect, they would have become innocent victims of a society and a legal system that abhor the taking of innocent life. (Since 1973, the Death Penalty Information Center says, more than a hundred people condemned to Death Row have had their sentences overturned because of doubts about their guilt.)

Since DNA evidence became available and admissible in court, 17 people who had been convicted of murder and sentenced to death by execution were later exonerated by DNA. Those innocent people were then freed, often with the support of the very same prosecutors who had initially proved they were guilty “beyond the shadow of a doubt.”

Think about that. Without the tool of DNA evidence, those 17 innocent people would almost certainly have been executed for crimes that they did not commit. In effect, they would have become innocent victims of a society and a legal system that abhor the taking of innocent life. (Since 1973, the Death Penalty Information Center says, more than a hundred people condemned to Death Row have had their sentences overturned because of doubts about their guilt.)

I can’t say that I think Troy Davis, scheduled to be executed this week for murdering Savannah Police Officer Mark Allen MacPhail, is innocent. My best guess is that he isn’t. My best guess, having reviewed as much of the evidence as I can, is that Davis probably did kill MacPhail. But there is no DNA evidence in the case, no fingerprint evidence, to substantiate that fact. The case is based almost entirely on testimony from eyewitnesses that in some instances has altered over the passage of time.

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