RIP To Troy Davis

[buds]

A quick search pulled this up. Best clift notes of the last 22 years i can find now.


COPYRIGHT 2011 ANN COULTER
DISTRIBUTED BY UNIVERSAL UCLICK
1130 Walnut, Kansas City, MO 64106


For decades, liberals tried persuading Americans to abolish the death penalty, using their usual argument: hysterical sobbing.

Only when the media began lying about innocent people being executed did support for the death penalty begin to waver, falling from 80 percent to about 60 percent in a little more than a decade. (Silver lining: That's still more Americans than believe in man-made global warming.)

Fifty-nine percent of Americans now believe that an innocent man has been executed in the last five years. There is more credible evidence that space aliens have walked among us than that an innocent person has been executed in this country in the past 60 years, much less the past five years.

But unless members of the public are going to personally review trial transcripts in every death penalty case, they have no way of knowing the truth. The media certainly won't tell them.

It's nearly impossible to receive a death sentence these days -- unless you do something completely crazy like shoot a cop in full view of dozens of witnesses in a Burger King parking lot, only a few hours after shooting at a passing car while exiting a party.

That's what Troy Davis did in August 1989. Davis is the media's current baby seal of death row.

After a two-week trial with 34 witnesses for the state and six witnesses for the defense, the jury of seven blacks and five whites took less than two hours to convict Davis of Officer Mark MacPhail's murder, as well as various other crimes. Two days later, the jury sentenced Davis to death.

Now, a brisk 22 years after Davis murdered Officer MacPhail, his sentence will finally be administered this week -- barring any more of the legal shenanigans that have kept taxpayers on the hook for Davis' room and board for the past two decades.

(The average time on death row is 14 years. Then liberals turn around and triumphantly claim the death penalty doesn't have any noticeable deterrent effect. As the kids say: Duh.)

It has been claimed -- in The New York Times and Time magazine, for example -- that there was no "physical evidence" connecting Davis to the crimes that night.

Davis pulled out a gun and shot two strangers in public. What "physical evidence" were they expecting? No houses were broken into, no cars stolen, no rapes or fistfights accompanied the shootings. Where exactly would you look for DNA? And to prove what?

I suppose it would be nice if the shell casings from both shootings that night matched. Oh wait -- they did. That's "physical evidence."

It's true that the bulk of the evidence against Davis was eyewitness testimony. That tends to happen when you shoot someone in a busy Burger King parking lot.

Eyewitness testimony, like all evidence tending to show guilt, has gotten a bad name recently, but the "eyewitness" testimony in this case did not consist simply of strangers trying to distinguish one tall black man from another. For one thing, several of the eyewitnesses knew Davis personally.

The bulk of the eyewitness testimony established the following:

Two tall, young black men were harassing a vagrant in the Burger King parking lot, one in a yellow shirt and the other in a white Batman shirt. The one in the white shirt used a brown revolver to pistol-whip the vagrant. When a cop yelled at them to stop, the man in the white shirt ran, then wheeled around and shot the cop, walked over to his body and shot him again, smiling.

Some eyewitnesses described the shooter as wearing a white shirt, some said it was a white shirt with writing, and some identified it specifically as a white Batman shirt. Not one witness said the man in the yellow shirt pistol-whipped the vagrant or shot the cop.

Several of Davis' friends testified -- without recantation -- that he was the one in a white shirt. Several eyewitnesses, both acquaintances and strangers, specifically identified Davis as the one who shot Officer MacPhail.

Now the media claim that seven of the nine witnesses against Davis at trial have recanted.

First of all, the state presented 34 witnesses against Davis -- not nine -- which should give you some idea of how punctilious the media are about their facts in death penalty cases.

Among the witnesses who did not recant a word of their testimony against Davis were three members of the Air Force, who saw the shooting from their van in the Burger King drive-in lane. The airman who saw events clearly enough to positively identify Davis as the shooter explained on cross-examination, "You don't forget someone that stands over and shoots someone."

Recanted testimony is the least believable evidence since it proves only that defense lawyers managed to pressure some witnesses to alter their testimony, conveniently after the trial has ended. Even criminal lobbyist Justice William Brennan ridiculed post-trial recantations.

Three recantations were from friends of Davis, making minor or completely unbelievable modifications to their trial testimony. For example, one said he was no longer sure he saw Davis shoot the cop, even though he was five feet away at the time. His remaining testimony still implicated Davis.

One alleged recantation, from the vagrant's girlfriend (since deceased), wasn't a recantation at all, but rather reiterated all relevant parts of her trial testimony, which included a direct identification of Davis as the shooter.

Only two of the seven alleged "recantations" (out of 34 witnesses) actually recanted anything of value -- and those two affidavits were discounted by the court because Davis refused to allow the affiants to testify at the post-trial evidentiary hearing, even though one was seated right outside the courtroom, waiting to appear.

The court specifically warned Davis that his refusal to call his only two genuinely recanting witnesses would make their affidavits worthless. But Davis still refused to call them -- suggesting, as the court said, that their lawyer-drafted affidavits would not have held up under cross-examination.

With death penalty opponents so fixated on Davis' race -- he's black -- it ought to be noted that all the above witnesses are themselves African-American. The first man Davis shot in the car that night was African-American.

I notice that the people so anxious to return this sociopathic cop-killer to the street don't live in his neighborhood.

There's a reason more than a dozen courts have looked at Davis' case and refused to overturn his death sentence. He is as innocent as every other executed man since at least 1950, which is to say, guilty as hell.

[Quiet Reflections]

well Ann Coulter said it so it must be true.

[doctor screw]

Gotta give it to this guy above me
Hes defiant,in his indirect racial jabs
CONGRATS...lol

[giovanni_hotel]

he was found guilty at trial by the jurors. case closed.

Right.
Besides some people are inherently, genetically predisposed towards crime.

Not enough evidence to give that man the death penalty. Maybe not enough to grant him clemency, but you can't IMO put someone to death when your case is based almost exclusively on eye witness testimony from 9 people, when 7 of those eyewitnesses later recant because they aren't really sure who killed that off-duty officer.

Criminal justice, to quote the president of the NAACP, can't be a 'blunt force instrument', where all that matters is someone, ANYONE is punished. Guilt or innocence is secondary.

There has to be surgical precision when giving out death sentences...beyond a shadow of a doubt.

[Kayden Harley]

How does someone get the death penalty for shooting another person? Sooo many people are shot to death, and their killers get 10-20 years in prison. I totally understand the death penalty for the guys in CT. who raped, tortured, bound and burned to death 3 girls (2 of them -1 in front of their father/husband during a home invasion. But Lethal Injection for shooting 1 person?! Come on now.. That's so excessive.

I believe an innocent man was put to death today. This whole case was built by police officers and detectives who bullied "witnesses" into testifying against Troy.

So so sad. I hope his family (and the family of the victim) somehow find strength, closure and peace in the near future.

[doctor screw]

How does someone get the death penalty for shooting another person? Sooo many people are shot to death, and their killers get 10-20 years in prison. I totally understand the death penalty for the guys in CT. who raped, tortured, bound and burned to death 3 woman in front of their father/husband during a home invasion. But Lethal Injection for shooting 1 person?! Come on now.. That's so excessive.

I believe an innocent man was put to death today. This whole case was built by police officers and detectives who bullied "witnesses" into testifying against Troy.

So so sad. I hope his family (and the family of the victim) somehow find strength, closure and peace in the near future.

Puuurtee and smart...me likez that

[giovanni_hotel]

Buds, there weren't 34 eyewitnesses to the shooting. There were 34 prosecution witnesses who testified against Davis.

There was no firearm recovered, and the claims that shell casings found at the scene matched those discovered at other crime scenes allegedly committed by Davis was later found not be true. The ballistics testing later showed all the shell casing didn't come from the same weapon.

Anne Coulter is pro killing Black men. She's even in favor of the death penalty when DNA exonerates the convicted defendant.

Davis wasn't a church deacon and he had a prior record, but I don't believe ANY witnesses were able to distinguish which among two Black men shot a cop in the middle of the night.

A defense attorney billing $500/hour would have won this case in a walk.

[MrsKellyPierce]

I'm so dam tired of the race card everytime something doesn't go the way people think it should. rant over on that but anyway weren't all of the witnesses black? so much for the race card there.

You guys need to do your homework before saying the system failed. Only failure i see is it took so long and so much of our money to get to this point.

The jury not the witnesses

[bte]

While we are talking about executions. One of the guys who were responsible in the dragging death of James Byrd in Jasper, TX was put to death at 6:21pm. So the court system can't be all that bad. Although I don't know much about the Troy Davis case to comment on it.

[MrsKellyPierce]

Buds, there weren't 34 eyewitnesses to the shooting. There were 34 prosecution witnesses who testified against Davis.

There was no firearm recovered, and the claims that shell casings found at the scene matched those discovered at other crime scenes allegedly committed by Davis was later found not be true. The ballistics testing later showed all the shell casing didn't come from the same weapon.

Anne Coulter is pro killing Black men. She's even in favor of the death penalty when DNA exonerates the convicted defendant.

Davis wasn't a church deacon and he had a prior record, but I don't believe ANY witnesses were able to distinguish which among two Black men shot a cop in the middle of the night.

A defense attorney billing $500/hour would have won this case in a walk.

Anne Coulter is off her walker - good points doll