Supreme Court Intervenes for Troy Davis

Troy Davis and his supporters got some long-awaited good news Monday. The Supreme Court has just ruled that Davis may present evidence that could overturn his murder conviction and get him off of death row.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday gave Troy Anthony Davis the chance to present evidence in court that the condemned man has said for years will clear him of the murder of a Savannah police officer.

The high court ordered a federal judge to "receive testimony and findings of fact as to whether evidence that could not have been obtained at the time of trial clearly establishes [Davis'] innocence." Source: Court Says Davis can present evidence - Atlanta Journal Constitution

Exonerated by DNA

Byron Halsey
Halsey spent more than two decades in state prison before being exonerated by DNA testing for the brutal rape and murder of two New Jersey children. Now he's filing a federal civil rights suit.

AP / The Star-Ledger

Alton Logan
Logan spent 26 years in prison for fatally shooting a security guard in 1983. In 2007, an attorney for another man who admitted that he had committed the crime came forward with the truth. He was officially declared innocent in April 2009.

Antonio Beaver
He served more than a decade in prison because blood found on an attack victim was not presented in his trial. Once testing proved him not guilty, all charges were dropped in 2007. Unfortunately, he landed back in jailafter crashing his car while drunk.

Innocence Project

Calvin Johnson
DNA from a rape kit did not match Johnson's. He was set free in 1999 after nearly 16 years in prison. He later wrote a book about his ordeal.

John Bazemore / AP

Darryl Hunt
Darryl Hunt was convicted twice of a 1984 North Carolina murder. After DNA results proved his innocence in 1994, it still took 10 years of legal appeals to exonerate him.

Innocence Project

Donte Booker
After serving 15 years on a rape conviction, Booker was exonerated on Feb. 9, 2005, after DNA evidence on the victim's clothing pointed to someone else. In 2007 he was accused of a second rape, of which he was found not guilty by a jury in 2008.

Innocence Project

Floyd Brown
Brown was freed in 2007 after 14 years behind bars. Authorities locked up the mentally disabled man without a trial in 1993 and lost or destroyed key criminal evidence that could have freed him years ago.

Innocence Project

Herman Atkins
Atkins was convicted in 1988 of robbery, rape, forcible oral copulation and for using a handgun. After test results were returned, Atkins was released from prison in February 2000, after spending 12 years in prison. He has since gone to college, married, and dedicated his life to helping those who have been wrongly convicted.

Innocence Project

James Lee Woodard
Woodard spent more time in prison than any other wrongfully convicted inmate in U.S. history -- 27 years. DNA testing in the murder and rape of his girlfriend ultimately overturned his conviction in 2008.

James Waller
In 2006, 23 years after his conviction of rape, DNA from a rape kit that had never been presented was found not to belong to Waller. He was pardoned by Texas governor Rick Perry in 2007.

Innocence Project / AP

In cases like this, it seems to me that only the pursuit of justice and respect for the sanctity of human life should matter. Not one innocent person should be executed if there is good reason to hear new evidence of innocence. Unsurprisingly, Justices Thomas and Scalia see it differently.

Justice Antonin Scalia, joined by Justice Clarence Thomas, issued a dissent, saying the federal judge assigned to hear the case will not be able to grant Davis relief. "It becomes stranger still when one realizes that the allegedly new evidence we shunt off to be examined by the district court has already been considered (and rejected) multiple times," Scalia wrote.

This petition was Davis' last chance in the court system, and the majority of the Supreme Court justices agreed with his team.

Justice John Paul Stevens cited prior court precedent that said it would be "an atrocious violation of our Constitution and the principles upon which it is based" to execute an innocent man.

"Imagine a petitioner in Davis' situation who possesses new evidence conclusively and definitively proving, beyond any scintilla of doubt, that he is an innocent man," Steven wrote. "The dissent's reasoning would allow such a petitioner to be put to death nonetheless." Source: Court Says Davis can present evidence - Atlanta Journal Constitution

Davis was sentenced to be executed for the killing of off-duty Savannah police officer Mark Allen MacPhail in 1989.

But since the 1991 trial, seven of nine state witnesses who testified against Davis have recanted their testimony, and other eyewitnesses have indicated that Sylvester "Redd" Coles was the shooter. Coles has denied killing MacPhail but was at the murder scene and was the first person to implicate Troy Davis.