Death Row inmate’s fights to save case

originally published by: Law.com
9th August 2010

Lawyers for Troy Davis are fighting to fix the damage caused by their failure to call at a recent hearing the man they say committed the murder for which Davis has been sentenced to die.

The problem occurred in June, during an event Davis’ supporters had fought for years to achieve: an evidentiary hearing at which Davis could press his claims that he did not kill Savannah, Ga., police officer Mark Allen MacPhail.

Courtesy of an unusual order from the U.S. Supreme Court, they received that opportunity before U.S. District Judge William T. Moore Jr. But after the hearing got under way, Moore said he had a problem with Davis’ case: Where was Sylvester Coles? Going back to Davis’ murder trial in 1991, Davis’ advocates had pointed the finger at Coles as the real killer of MacPhail.

“Here’s one of the most critical witnesses to Mr. Davis’ defense who is available, who is in the community, who lives in this community, who could have been subpoenaed to come here and has not been subpoenaed to come here,” Moore chided Davis’ lawyers at the June 24 court session, according to Davis’ court papers.

Based on Davis’ failure to bring Coles to court, Moore ruled that he wouldn’t hear the testimony of Quiana Glover, who was expected to say that Coles had confessed to her that he had killed MacPhail.

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Posted by Zinzi Eka-Naphtali on 12/08/2010. Filed under Capital Punishment,Human Rights. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry