The Supreme Court yesterday denied the last ditch appeal of Georgia death row inmate Troy Davis, who was convicted of killing police office Mark McPhail in 1989. Although most of the witnesses against him subsequently recanted, with several saying they were coerced by police into blaming Davis, a Georgia judge who reheard the evidence in the case called Davis protestations of innocence “largely smoke and mirrors.”
Only four justices are required to hear a case, so presumably at least one of the Democratic nominees to the court presumably defected and sided with the conservative bloc, although we'll probably never know who it was. We can probably assume though, that Justice Antonin Scalia was among those voting to deny Davis' petition. When Davis first asked the Supreme Court to force a re-hearing of his case, Scalia scoffed that “this court has never held that the Constitution forbids the execution of a convicted defendant who had a full and fair trial but is later able to convince a habeas court that he is ‘actually’ innocent.”
