Troy Davis: The Supreme Court Upholds the Death Penalty

Until now, March 2011 had been a good month for supporters of the abolition of the death penalty in the United States, which we are. Illinois, for example, had decided to abolish capital punishment to avoid the risk of executing the innocent.

But yesterday, the U.S. Supreme Court, without any commentary, decided to reject Troy Davis’ appeal to delay his execution to allow for a new trial.

Davis, a prisoner in Georgia, has been condemned to death for the murder of a police officer in 1989. At that time, nine witnesses had confirmed that Davis had fired on his victim in the parking lot of a Burger King in Savannah while the plain-clothes officer was coming to the rescue of a homeless man who had been assaulted. Since then, however, seven of the nine witnesses have gone back on their testimonies, and none of the evidence presented by the police was able to place Davis at the scene of the crime.

In 2008, Davis, who has always proclaimed his innocence, profited from an intervention by this same Supreme Court, which had suspended his execution two hours before the appointed time. Since then, a court of appeals studied the case, before concluding that there wasn’t “enough proof” of Davis’ innocence to intervene. This last event forced his case to be sent back to the Supreme Court.

Yesterday, Amnesty International said it was “dismayed” by the decision of the Court, recalling that, from 1977 to 2010, 138 of those condemned to die in the U.S. have been innocent. Several international figures, such as the Pope, have asked for a review of Davis’ trial.

Henceforth, the last resort for Troy Davis is the Georgia Board of Pardons, which can commute his sentence to life in prison.