For Death Row Prisoner Troy Davis, Innocence Might Not Matter

Even if Georgia death row prisoner Troy Davis is innocent, no one knows what to do about it.

Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court ordered a federal judge to consider evidence that witnesses lied in the 1991 trial that resulted in a murder conviction and death sentence for Davis. Legal briefs are due today from both the state of Georgia and Davis' attorneys urging the judge on the next steps that should be taken.

Five years after a Georgia jury sent Davis to death row, Congress passed a law intended to speed prisoners' trips from there to the execution chamber. The law — the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA) — limits the chances that inmates are provided to appeal their convictions. What's more — and to me, perhaps the most stunning element of the law — is that AEDPA actually prohibits federal courts from considering prisoners' claims of innocence. So while it may seem obvious that incarcerating or executing innocent prisoners should be unconstitutional, in fact, AEDPA forbids most federal courts from reconsidering guilty convictions secured in state courts.

That's the problem Troy Davis faces. Davis has always maintained that the original Georgia jury that sent him to death row got it wrong. It's also an issue for the federal trial court stuck considering his innocence, 19 years later.

When the Supreme Court ordered further consideration of Davis' innocence claim, the justices overcame the limitations of AEDPA by dusting off "original jurisdiction" — an obscure legal doctrine that is available solely to the Supreme Court in capital cases that have laid idle for some 50 years.

In doing so, the high court failed to explain how the trial judge should act upon a finding of innocence. Can the court order Davis freed? Could the court order a new trial, which would allow a jury to consider the recanted testimony of witnesses who originally fingered Davis for the murder? Or will the court find David innocent, yet rule that it has no power to intervene in his trip to the execution chamber?

The ruling will not come for weeks — if not months — after today's filings. After the Supreme Court returns to work in October, presumably with a freshly minted Justice Kagan on the bench, the case could be a test on prisoners' rights for Obama's latest nominee to the high court. Let's hope she delivers.

Photo Credit: Alex E. Proimos