Convicted cop killer Troy Davis is slated to be executed at 7 pm tonight after being denied clemency from a Georgia pardons board. Denial of clemency has been described as routine.
This execution has been troublesome for many people including proponents of the death penalty. 7 out of 9 of the witnesses in the trial have recanted their statements. At least one has said that he was young when he said what he gave them what they wanted to hear.
CBS News reports the following:
CBS News legal analyst Andrew Cohen described the denial of clemency as “routine.”
“Parole boards almost never grant clemency, so this is not a surprise,” Cohen said. “Now if Wednesday’s execution is going to be halted it’s going to have to come from the federal courts, and the U.S. Supreme Court in particular, which last week halted a Texas execution.”
Davis has gotten support from hundreds of thousands of people, including a former FBI director, former President Jimmy Carter and Pope Benedict XVI, and a U.S. Supreme Court ruling gave him an unusual opportunity to prove his innocence last year. State and federal courts, however, repeatedly upheld his conviction for the 1989 killing of Mark MacPhail, an off-duty police officer who was working as a security guard in Savannah when he was shot dead rushing to help a homeless man who was being attacked.
