Will Georgia Kill an Innocent Man?

[chefmike]

Will Georgia Kill an Innocent Man?
Friday, Jul. 13, 2007

The pending execution of Troy Anthony Davis, scheduled to take place on July 17, is raising serious questions about his guilt — and about the Newt Gingrich-era federal law that has limited his appeals options and prevented him, say his supporters, from getting a fair shake.

Davis, 38, a former coach in the Savannah Police Athletic League who had signed up for the Marines, was convicted in the 1989 murder of Mark Allen MacPhail, a Savannah, Ga., police officer. MacPhail was off-duty when he was shot dead in a Savannah parking lot while responding to an assault. Davis was at the scene of the crime, and an acquaintance who was there with him accused Davis of being the shooter. Since his conviction in 1991, Davis has seen each of his state and federal appeals fail. But in the court of public opinion, Davis presents a compelling argument. Seven of the nine main witnesses whose testimony led to his conviction have since recanted. The murder weapon has never been found, and there is no physical evidence linking the crime to Davis, who has asserted his innocence throughout.

Earlier this month, two of the jurors who sentenced Davis to death signed sworn affidavits saying that based on the recanted testimony, he should not be executed. "In light of this new evidence," wrote one juror, "I have genuine concerns about the fairness of Mr. Davis' death sentence."

One of Davis' major obstacles has been the federal Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA), legislation championed by former House Speaker Newt Gingrich as part of his Contract with America and signed by former president Bill Clinton. The act was passed in 1996 as a way of reforming what Gingrich called "the current interminable, frivolous appeals process." Its major provisions reduced new trials for convicted criminals and sped up their sentences by restricting a federal court's ability to judge whether a state court had correctly interpreted the U.S. Constitution.

Facing political pressure one year after the Oklahoma City bombing and seven months before the presidential election, Clinton signed the bill, but inserted a somewhat incongruous signing statement that called for the federal courts to continue their oversight role.


rest of article here-
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1643384,00.html?xid=feed-yahoo-full-nation

[rick_932]

thanks for the article chef. our judicial system has a long way to go before we can call it fair. theres many people who are imprisoned under false accusations each year and sadly, some have to wait pretty much forever to be proven innocent, during which theyre wasting time in prison for a crime they didnt commit. i hope the governor opens his eyes, takes into account the bigger picture, and sees that this is an innocent man who's scheduled to die for a crime he didnt commit.

[chefmike]

Whether or not you believe in the death penalty, I think that most rational people would agree that there should be DNA evidence before someone is executed.

[rick_932]

Whether or not you believe in the death penalty, I think that most rational people would agree that there should be DNA evidence before someone is executed.

i agree, the inclusion of DNA evidence in criminal cases has cleared many prisoners of suspected crimes over the past years. i think DNA testing should be mandatory for any high profile case that warrants the death penalty.

[Quinn]

Whether or not you believe in the death penalty, I think that most rational people would agree that there should be DNA evidence before someone is executed.

i agree, the inclusion of DNA evidence in criminal cases has cleared many prisoners of suspected crimes over the past years. i think DNA testing should be mandatory for any high profile case that warrants the death penalty.

Agreed.

-Quinn

[Nooksack]

Georgia's legal system is jacked up to hell and back that this doesn't surprise me in the least. Right now they are holding a kid in jail for a 10 year sentence for having consensual sex with a girl 1 year younger than he. They then changed the law 2 years into his sentence but won't make it retroactive so he can get out of jail and the Governor is being a dick and not pardoning the kid for being a kid... yeah, chances are that GA is gonng kill someone innocent.

[Felicia Katt]

While Bush was Governor of Texas, there were 152 executions. While rates very State to State, aprroximately 10 per cent of death penalty convictions were reversed between 1977 and 2001. Even if Texas were shining beacon of due process for rights of the accused (which it is not), George has probably already sent 15 wrongfully convicted men to their death, so why shouldn't Georgia?

Its not as bad as sending nearly 4000 men, whose only conviction was to the defense of their country, to their death in Iraq, but its close.

FK

[tsafficianado]

chefmike, who we will assume earned his JD nights while tending the drive-thru at mcd's during the day, seems to support Time's contention that the application of justice in the US would be better served if left to the hands of the 'court of public opinion' rather than in the hands of juries and state and federal circuit and appeals courts. the wise chef further suggests that we would be well served to apply an absurd requirement on the prosecution of capital cases in order to further ball up the works and reduce the possibility that murderers will be brought to justice and punished as the law prescribes. CM probably didn't bother to investigate the facts regarding AEDPA, for instance the fact that it was passed in the US Senate by a vote of 91-8-1 and in the House by a vote of 293-133-7 and that it has passed muster with the United States Supreme Court. of course, the justices of the SP probably don't have CM's advanced comprehension of the law, but that is another story.
then we have the usual liberal whine about the rights of all of those poor unfortunate criminals and the unfounded and unsupported accusations that Texas and Georgia, those bastions of medieval injustice, are in the business of murdering innocent people.
this thread should rightly be posted in the P&R forum where the libtards are in complete control and can remove any dissenters at will.....and then your myopia could go unchecked.

[chefmike]

While Bush was Governor of Texas, there were 152 executions. While rates very State to State, aprroximately 10 per cent of death penalty convictions were reversed between 1977 and 2001. Even if Texas were shining beacon of due process for rights of the accused (which it is not), George has probably already sent 15 wrongfully convicted men to their death, so why shouldn't Georgia?

Its not as bad as sending nearly 4000 men, whose only conviction was to the defense of their country, to their death in Iraq, but its close.

FK

Sending others to their untimely and unjust deaths is one of the few things that the chimp-in-chief has ever been proven competent at.

[mbf]

Its not as bad as sending nearly 4000 men, whose only conviction was to the defense of their country, to their death in Iraq, but its close.

FK

as sad as it is, i d like to add the numbers of countless iraqui people to GWB bodycount. we will never know how many, despite the fact that we life in the "information age" (yeah sure....)

[ToyBoy6669]

the death of a man who is guilty starts when we fail to raise him right, the death of an innocent man is when we fail to remember whats right.

With that much support the fact that he has not been allowed an appeal is nearly disturbing

[chefmike]

I'd say that it's most definitely disturbing.

[chefmike]

And while we're on the subject...

The Ghosts Bush Left Behind
Mary Mapes

Scooter Libby's commutation is still being celebrated in some circles, but down here in Texas, President Bush's move has stirred bitter memories and awakened old ghosts.

I can't help remembering all the people I reported on who begged then-Governor Bush for mercy. They begged for the lives of clients and childhood friends, fathers, sons and brothers, mothers and next-door neighbors. They begged for their own lives. They were all turned away.

Texas has a fabled history of frontier-style justice. Heck, the Houston District Attorney's office alone has sent more people to their deaths than many Third World countries.

But no one in Texas, certainly not anyone in our semi-civilized history, has displayed the moral disregard on the death penalty that George W. Bush demonstrated in his years as governor.

From 1995 to 2001, George W. Bush presided over more than 150 executions, more than any governor in modern times. He signed death warrants the way Britney Spears signs autographs. He refused to allow stays, even for DNA testing, and he answered concerns about the fairness of the system by mouthing empty platitudes about justice and the purity of jury verdicts.

He sat atop a system where sleeping or drunk or incompetent defense attorneys were recurring risks, where issues of race colored jury selection, where politics drove prosecutor's choices to pursue the death penalty, and where the retarded and the mentally ill were regularly led into the death chamber and carried out in body bags.

The governor's office was the last resort for the lost. Governor Bush was all macho and no mercy.

Throughout his years in office, he acted like a kid with a new car, driving the death machine like a drag racer, as hard and as fast as he could.

In many of the cases, Bush and his trusty sidekick Alberto Gonzales, the Laurel and Hardy of the legal system, formed a Death Row dream team. Gonzales wrote brief prosecutorial summaries of each case. Bush read them -- or not -- and then invariably decided not to intervene.

Did the governor even bother to read the clemency petitions put together by inmates and their attorneys? Gonzales has said that the governor did read some of these, but only "from time to time."

Bush denied every petition for clemency that came across his desk except one. The lucky winner was Henry Lee Lucas, a compulsive liar who claimed to have killed hundreds of people. Lucas clearly and demonstrably had not committed the crime for which he was sentenced to die, a problem so blatant and so publicized that even Bush was finally forced to take action.

Ironically, Lucas continued to insist he was guilty of a number of crimes with which he had no connection. The old man whose prostitute mother had put out his eye with a burning cigarette when he was a child, squinted and told me proudly during a Death Row interview that he had "de-headed" a specific victim. Oopsy. In that case, it turned out the person had been shot to death.

This all would have been darkly laughable, but in the rickety jalopy of justice that George W. Bush drove in Texas, a sad fraud like Lucas, a broken fool who spouted bad information about crimes he hadn't committed, came within a heartbeat of the death chamber.

The sheer numbers of human beings who ended up strapped to the gurney here should have grabbed national attention, but they didn't. Not until the Karla Faye Tucker case came along.

I met her in 1994 during a visit to the Texas Women's Death Row. At the time the cellblock was painted in girlish pastels. The doomed women spent their days doing crafts, watching TV and waiting for their appointments with the prison hairdresser or the executioner, whichever came first.

I was chatting with someone who had killed her kids, when I heard a gushy southern "Hi!" from one of the cells. A woman who looked like she might once have been a small-town homecoming queen motioned to me from behind the bars. When I came close, Karla Faye introduced herself and showed me a picture of her new husband, a handsome prison pastor. Karla had become a born-again Christian and often forced the other women on Death Row to watch evangelical TV. I liked her anyway.

I found out later that Karla's drug addict mother used her as a child prostitute to earn money. The little girl became an addict, as well. Karla was condemned to death for helping her then-boyfriend kill two people with a pick ax in a grisly, drug-addled frenzy.

Karla and I stayed in touch and when her death date drew near, she agreed to her first interview with me and correspondent Lesley Stahl for a 60 Minutes piece. That story and Karla's fast-approaching execution set off a firestorm of publicity and a compelling campaign aimed at convincing Bush to spare Karla's life. Even Christian fundamentalist leader Pat Robertson took a momentary break from the "eye for an eye" club to make a personal plea that Karla be spared.

Governor Bush told everyone that he was praying for guidance. But once again, it quickly became clear that God was amazingly consistent on this issue, at least when talking to the governor of Texas. It was announced that the Almighty had apparently given the green light.

When I met with Karla a few days before she was scheduled to die, she was exuberant. She told me she had been praying constantly for a commutation of her sentence and that, the previous night, God had given her an answer.

She said she'd had a vivid dream in which she'd finally gotten Bush's approval for clemency. In her dream, she heard the guards shouting, "She got it, she got it," while inmates throughout the prison cheered. She said she felt so happy that she thought her heart was going to burst.

When she woke up alone in her cell and realized it was only a dream and that she was still headed for the death chamber, she told me that she quietly celebrated by herself. Now she didn't need a pardon from Governor Bush after all, she said. God, she believed, had generously given her the chance to see what a pardon would have felt like. She said she didn't care what happened to her now.

When it came time to say goodbye, we touched hands through the glass. She told me she was going to heaven. I told her to save me a seat.

Ever the loopy optimist, for her last meal Karla requested diet salad dressing. She praised God on the gurney and died spiritually ready to go home, but hoping she wouldn't have to.

Tucker Carlson reported that during the 2000 presidential campaign when he questioned Bush about the case, the candidate did a mocking impression of Karla Faye begging for her life. "Please don't kill me," he pretended to plead with a smirk.

That just leaves me speechless. Not surprised, but speechless.

My memories of George Bush as Texas governor will always be intertwined with scenes from the long list of executions over which he presided, forever part of the ugly atmosphere created by his legal love affair with death.

I remember the roar of the happy crowds outside the Huntsville death house when inmates' executions were announced.

I can't forget the pale, crumpled face of one inmate's elderly mother when she was whisked out of the prison in a wheelchair after watching her son die.

I saw the honest bewilderment of an experienced police detective who uncovered new evidence in one case that he believed to be so compelling that he personally lobbied the governor's office for a delay in the execution so DNA testing could be done. Sorry. Ix-nay. Denied.

I met prison staffers worn down by the steady pace of executions, heard about inmates who fought and kicked as they were dragged to their deaths, read of the men and women who asked for forgiveness before dying and wondered about the ones who insisted they were innocent until their last breath.

A handful of cases do raise questions of actual innocence. Many more bore the earmarks of a broken system burdened by social and financial unfairness.

Most of those executed, of course, were men and women clearly guilty of the crimes for which they had been sentenced to die. The families of their victims have suffered for years and suffer still.

In fact, I thought the saddest element of all was the way Governor Bush and his enablers led these victims' families to believe that more blood would help them heal, that more pain would give them peace. I watched these broken-hearted people walk out of the prison after executions, too. They did not look any happier than when they went in.

Down here, during the Bush years, the details didn't matter.

The doomed were all put to death with a dark and unfeeling efficiency, as though the governor saw himself as something akin to an animal control officer. The inmates seemed as memorable and as meaningful to George Bush as the hapless dogs and cats in an overcrowded county shelter.

Maybe the president's stinginess with mercy in Texas helped make him more generous with it in Washington. Maybe the fact that Scooter Libby wasn't black or brown or poor tilted the balance. Maybe it was the secrets that Scooter will now keep squirreled away.

Or maybe this time God just answered the president's prayers for guidance differently.

Frankly, if I were George Bush, I'd be praying that the ghosts he left behind in Texas are more merciful than he was.

[CORVETTEDUDE]

I think far too many people actually think Justice is "by design" supposed to be fair. Nothing is further from the truth. Who elected these policy makers, did they make these policy decisions without the approval of their constituants??? How dare they!!!

Sad as it may be for Davis and others like him, they aren't the first and, most certainly, won't be the last!

[tsafficianado]

chefmike, he with the wisdom of one who puts together happy meals, enlightens us with the musings of the barney fife of american 'journalism' in a piece that is so riddled with fabrications, distortions and self-serving interpretations that even a buffoon should howl (are you howling chumpmike?). the highlight of the piece is a rambling whine about the execution of poor little karla faye tucker whose only crime was the active and confessed participation in the axe murder of two people. you and mary the moron actually expect anyone to take this nonsense seriously? harharharharharharharhar

[chefmike]

You are nothing more than a shill for the crooks and liars in the whitehouse. And you would have obviously made a "good german", dupe.

Carry your hypocritical ass back to jesus camp, fool. Ted haggard is calling.

[CORVETTEDUDE]

You are nothing more than a shill for the crooks and liars in the whitehouse. And you would have obviously made a "good german", dupe.

Carry your hypocritical ass back to jesus camp, fool. Ted haggard is calling.

Who are you addressing, Chefmike?

[chefmike]

tsafficianado.

[tsafficianado]

During the temporary suspension on capital punishment from 1972-1976, researchers gathered murder statistics across the country. In 1960, there were 56 executions in the USA and 9,140 murders. By 1964, when there were only 15 executions, the number of murders had risen to 9,250. In 1969, there were no executions and 14,590 murders, and 1975, after six more years without executions, 20,510 murders occurred rising to 23,040 in 1980 after only two executions since 1976. In summary, between 1965 and 1980, the number of annual murders in the United States skyrocketed from 9,960 to 23,040, a 131 percent increase. The murder rate -- homicides per 100,000 persons -- doubled from 5.1 to 10.2. So the number of murders grew as the number of executions shrank. Researcher Karl Spence of Texas A&M University said:

"While some [death penalty] abolitionists try to face down the results of their disastrous experiment and still argue to the contrary, the...[data] concludes that a substantial deterrent effect has been observed...In six months, more Americans are murdered than have killed by execution in this entire century...Until we begin to fight crime in earnest [by using the death penalty], every person who dies at a criminal's hands is a victim of our inaction."

Notes Dudley Sharp of the criminal-justice reform group Justice For All:
"From 1995 to 2000," "executions averaged 71 per year, a 21,000 percent increase over the 1966-1980 period. The murder rate dropped from a high of 10.2 (per 100,000) in 1980 to 5.7 in 1999 -- a 44 percent reduction. The murder rate is now at its lowest level since 1966. "
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
it is evident from these statistics that the execution of 71 murderers per year in the US (essentially ALL of whom are guilty) results in a reduction in the number of americans murdered per year by 13,500. in Harris County Texas where the DAs are particularly aggressive in the prosecution of capital cases the murder rate has been reduced from 700 per year in 1982 to 241 in 2000. i will grant that there MAY have been other mitigating circumstances that account for some of these reductions, but even a cursory glance at a graph of the execution rate from 1960 to 2000 contrasted to the percapita murder rate shows unequivocally a very close (reverse)correlation between the two.
is it the contention of the bleeding heart patrol that 13,500 americans need to sacrifice their lives each year to pacify the liberals' sense of righteous indignation? i don't want to see anyone innocent executed but the reality is that the justice system is like any system, it is and ALWAYS will be fallible. should 13,500 lives be lost per year to ensure that one or two innocent people are not executed per decade? weird math.

[SarahG]

I think far too many people actually think Justice is "by design" supposed to be fair. Nothing is further from the truth. Who elected these policy makers, did they make these policy decisions without the approval of their constituants??? How dare they!!!

Sad as it may be for Davis and others like him, they aren't the first and, most certainly, won't be the last!

True, justice is never about fairness... it is about a combination of things aimed at preserving the status quo, to keep a society within "law and order" while catering as an arbritor between parties seeking revenge and while appeasing the (rational or otherwise) political beliefs of the period.

I have no problem with the death penalty. What I do have a problem with, is implementing it within a system that so clearly can not put in place adequate safe guards against executing the innocent.

We need to do better than a "opps, guess that person we killed 2 years ago/last week/today was innocent after all" as we go about our typical, common, cyclic mistakes.

[Felicia Katt]

Murder rates are much higher in States that have the death penalty than in States that do not. The murder rate in Canada, which does not have the death penalty,is about 1/3 that of the US. The rate in Canada actually declined after they abolished the death penalty. I would argue that a true deterrent effect results from a consistent and fair system of justice, not from executions.

I do not believe your numbers, but even assuming they were accurate, I would guess you would have a different opinion if you were one of the innocents to be wrongfully executed. Its always easier to make a sacrifice when its someone elses life. And it is far worse when the State kills someone innocent than when a criminal does. We are not let down when criminals violate us. We expect that from them. But an unviolated faith and trust that our Government will do right is what holds up the very institutions of that Government.

FK

[mbf]

During the temporary suspension on capital punishment from 1972-1976, researchers gathered murder statistics across the country. In 1960, there were 56 executions in the USA and 9,140 murders. By 1964, when there were only 15 executions, the number of murders had risen to 9,250. In 1969, there were no executions and 14,590 murders, and 1975, after six more years without executions, 20,510 murders occurred rising to 23,040 in 1980 after only two executions since 1976. In summary, between 1965 and 1980, the number of annual murders in the United States skyrocketed from 9,960 to 23,040, a 131 percent increase. The murder rate -- homicides per 100,000 persons -- doubled from 5.1 to 10.2. So the number of murders grew as the number of executions shrank. Researcher Karl Spence of Texas A&M University said:

"While some [death penalty] abolitionists try to face down the results of their disastrous experiment and still argue to the contrary, the...[data] concludes that a substantial deterrent effect has been observed...In six months, more Americans are murdered than have killed by execution in this entire century...Until we begin to fight crime in earnest [by using the death penalty], every person who dies at a criminal's hands is a victim of our inaction."

Notes Dudley Sharp of the criminal-justice reform group Justice For All:
"From 1995 to 2000," "executions averaged 71 per year, a 21,000 percent increase over the 1966-1980 period. The murder rate dropped from a high of 10.2 (per 100,000) in 1980 to 5.7 in 1999 -- a 44 percent reduction. The murder rate is now at its lowest level since 1966. "
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
it is evident from these statistics that the execution of 71 murderers per year in the US (essentially ALL of whom are guilty) results in a reduction in the number of americans murdered per year by 13,500. in Harris County Texas where the DAs are particularly aggressive in the prosecution of capital cases the murder rate has been reduced from 700 per year in 1982 to 241 in 2000. i will grant that there MAY have been other mitigating circumstances that account for some of these reductions, but even a cursory glance at a graph of the execution rate from 1960 to 2000 contrasted to the percapita murder rate shows unequivocally a very close (reverse)correlation between the two.
is it the contention of the bleeding heart patrol that 13,500 americans need to sacrifice their lives each year to pacify the liberals' sense of righteous indignation? i don't want to see anyone innocent executed but the reality is that the justice system is like any system, it is and ALWAYS will be fallible. should 13,500 lives be lost per year to ensure that one or two innocent people are not executed per decade? weird math.

this is just plain ridiculous

i happen to live in an oecd country (in the top ten regarding socio-economic figures) we abolished the death penalty in the early 1950s

and we have a murder-rate of 0.9 per 100 000 people.

(oh yeah i forgot...we have strict gun laws as well....)

[house]

chefmike, who we will assume earned his JD nights while tending the drive-thru at mcd's during the day, seems to support Time's contention that the application of justice in the US would be better served if left to the hands of the 'court of public opinion' rather than in the hands of juries and state and federal circuit and appeals courts. the wise chef further suggests that we would be well served to apply an absurd requirement on the prosecution of capital cases in order to further ball up the works and reduce the possibility that murderers will be brought to justice and punished as the law prescribes. CM probably didn't bother to investigate the facts regarding AEDPA, for instance the fact that it was passed in the US Senate by a vote of 91-8-1 and in the House by a vote of 293-133-7 and that it has passed muster with the United States Supreme Court. of course, the justices of the SP probably don't have CM's advanced comprehension of the law, but that is another story.
then we have the usual liberal whine about the rights of all of those poor unfortunate criminals and the unfounded and unsupported accusations that Texas and Georgia, those bastions of medieval injustice, are in the business of murdering innocent people.
this thread should rightly be posted in the P&R forum where the libtards are in complete control and can remove any dissenters at will.....and then your myopia could go unchecked.

you're an idiot. thats clear. and you didnt read the story. they never found a murder weapon...the guy who accused him is now suspected to have been the person who fingered him in the very beginning. Death penalty w/o a murder weapon? Pretty suspicious.

[Lone Wolf]

All we need to do is give the dude a good polygraph test. Legal or not damn few people can beat them and this should settle his guilt or innocense in the court of public opinion or at least on ths board.

[trish]

Well I’m sorry, but you can count be among the naïve who think justice is supposed to be fair. I’m not naïve enough to believe that people and governments administer it fairly, reasonably and morally. But some systems are worse than others. Ours is not the worst by any means, but we do rather miserably for a nation that persistently lays claim to being the best country the world has ever seen. The sentence (well within the sentencing guidelines) against Scooter Libby was commuted by President Bush who made clear he neither understood, considered nor cared about the application of the law. At the same time in California (land of three strikes and mandatory sentencing) we got mothers serving decades in jail for minor charges drug possession or shoplifting. I can certainly see why some people think justice has nothing to do balanced and reasonable action.

[Jericho]

i don't want to see anyone innocent executed but the reality is that the justice system is like any system, it is and ALWAYS will be fallible. should 13,500 lives be lost per year to ensure that one or two innocent people are not executed per decade? weird math.


Any justice system that admits it is and ALWAYS will be fallible has no right sentencing ANYONE to death.

[chefmike]

All we need to do is give the dude a good polygraph test. Legal or not damn few people can beat them and this should settle his guilt or innocense in the court of public opinion or at least on ths board.

That's ridiculous, guilty people beat polygraph tests every day, and innocent people also fail them.

[chefmike]

Condemned Man Receives 90-Day Stay

ATLANTA — A man convicted of killing a police officer won a reprieve a day before his scheduled execution, after his lawyers argued that several witnesses had recanted or changed their testimony.

The state Board of Pardons and Paroles on Monday granted a stay of execution of up to 90 days to Troy Davis, 38, who was convicted of killing a Savannah police officer in 1989.

He had faced a Tuesday execution date before the board's decision, which came after less than an hour of deliberation. The stay means the execution will be on hold while the board weighs the evidence presented as part of Davis' request for clemency. The board must rule by Oct. 14.

Earlier Monday, lawyers for Davis pleaded with the board during a closed-door hearing to grant their client a reprieve. Prosecutors were then given a chance to rebut the clemency request.

After the decision, defense lawyer Jason Ewart expressed relief. "We are no longer under the gun and we can present the rest of our innocence case," he said.

The officer's widow, Joan MacPhail, decried the ruling. "I believe they are setting a precedent for all criminals that it is perfectly fine to kill a cop and get away with it," she said. "By making us wait, it's another sock in the stomach. It's tearing us up."

Also Monday, Davis' lawyers filed an appeal with the state Supreme Court.

During the parole hearing, Davis' friends and relatives spoke in support of the clemency petition, along with Rep. John Lewis, an Atlanta Democrat and civil rights icon. Five witnesses who testified at the trial spoke to the board on Davis' behalf, Ewart said.

Lewis did not speak to reporters after leaving the hearing, but he did issue a copy of his prepared comments to the board.

"I do not know if he is guilty of the charges of which he has been convicted," Lewis told the board. "But I do know that nobody should be put to death based on the evidence we now have in this case."

Prosecutors and the victim's family have argued that Davis received a fair trial and has had plenty of appeals, all of which failed.

"I believe police did their job correctly and found the right man," the slain officer's son, Mark MacPhail Jr., told reporters after his family addressed the board.

MacPhail said he told the board what it was like to grow up without a father. The son, now 18, was less than 2 months old when his father was killed.

The elder MacPhail was shot twice after he rushed to help a homeless man who had been assaulted. The Aug. 19, 1989, shooting happened in a Burger King parking lot next to a bus station where MacPhail, 27, worked off-duty as a security guard.

Davis' lawyers say seven witnesses have recanted or contradicted their testimony that they saw Davis shoot the officer, saw him assault the homeless man or heard Davis confess to the slaying.

Three people who did not testify have said in affidavits that another man, Sylvester Coles, confessed to killing the officer after Davis was convicted. After the shooting, Coles identified Davis as the killer.

The Associated Press has been unable to locate Coles for comment, and Ewart has declined to say whether he knows Coles' whereabouts. Coles was not at the parole board hearing Monday.

Prosecutors argue that most of the witness affidavits, signed between 1996 and 2003, were included in Davis' previous appeals and should not be considered new evidence.

Davis, in a telephone interview with The Associated Press from prison, said last week that his arrest was a case of mistaken identity.

"All I have to lean on is prayer that God will step in and correct this wrong that was done," he said.