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Can anyone offer a counter argument to this rebuttal of Troy Davis's innocence. It was from Anne Coulture Thx?
I find Ann Coulter more detailed, even in a brief column, and between someone who wants to keep things vague and someone who wants to get specific -- well, I usually credit the person who's unafraid of the little details as probably being on to something.
Sessions also says something I don't believe, having read Coulter. Here's Sessions' claim on the recantations:
Some of these same witnesses also had testified at Davis’ trial but have since recanted their trial testimony. The judge at the evidentiary hearing found their recantations to be unreliable and, therefore, found Davis was unable to “clearly establish” his innocence. The problem is that the testimony of these same witnesses, whom the judge had determined were less believable, had been essential to the original conviction and death sentence.
Is that true? Were there only a couple of eyewitnesses, the lynchpin of the prosecutors' case, and, given they've now recanted, leave us with no credible accusers on the record against Davis?
According to Coulter, this does not appear true at all.
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."
2 Answers
- Jess HLv 710 years agoFavorite Answer
I can't STAND Ann Coulter, but she was right about this.
On an additional note about the "recantations", it's not that the judge simply "found them unreliable"...it's that Davis and his lawyers REFUSED TO PUT THEM ON THE STAND at his appeal hearing, even though they were available to testify, and one of them even waited outside the courtroom to be called. They did this because they KNEW that they would fall apart under cross-examination.
Don't you think that if they thought for one second that the so-called "recanted testimony" was worth anything, and KNOWING that it could SAVE DAVIS'S LIFE, they would have put them on the stand instead of hiding them from the judge and court, and then insinuating to the media that the judge and court were refusing to consider that original trial testimony was "recanted"? The court wanted to hear the "new" testimony from the witnesses themselves, Davis and his lawyers refused to allow them to take the stand at his appeal hearing. THAT is why the "recanted testimony" was deemed to be "unreliable".
In addition to the specific circumstances of this alleged "recanted testimony" at Troy Davis's trial, any court ALREADY knows that recanted testimony is the LEAST believable evidence since it proves only that defense lawyers managed to get to some of the witnesses after the trial has ended, and pressure them to go back and alter their testimony. It is widely KNOWN that defense lawyers will sometimes spend YEARS applying pressure to trial witnesses to recant testimony, and will even coach them about specifically what to SAY. Even criminal lobbyist Justice William Brennan ridiculed post-trial recantations because they are so dirty and untrustworthy, and his CAREER is lobbying for criminal's rights!