VADP

Radley Balko

HuffPost Reporter

Posted: 9/28/11 12:00 PM ET

It has long been the conventional wisdom on both sides of the death penalty debate that if a state or the federal government were ever shown to have executed an innocent person, we'd see a dramatic drop in support for state executions. In the 2006 case Kansas v. Marsh, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, a death penalty supporter, called the search for a wrongly executed person the "Holy Grail" of death penalty opponents.

But a little less than two years after David Grann made a convincing argument in The New Yorker that the state of Texas had done just that, public support for capital punishment hasn't wavered. In October 2009, Grann wrote about Cameron Todd Willingham, executed in 2004 for setting the fire that killed his three young children. Willingham was convicted because of forensic testimony from fire officials that arson experts call junk science.

Grann's story was widely discussed and distributed, but the predicted sea change in public perceptions of the death penalty didn't happen. According to Gallup polling, support for the death penalty dropped just a point between 2009 and 2010, from 65 percent to 64 percent, well within the margin for error. And about half the country still believes the death penalty isn't used often enough.

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Grant Blankenship for The New York Times

Supporters of Troy Davis outside the Georgia prison where he was held reacted to the Supreme Court's refusal to consider a stay.

By JOHN SCHWARTZ

Published: September 22, 2011

After decades of litigation, the final legal ruling allowing the execution of Troy Davis was a one-sentence order from the United States Supreme Court so terse that it could have fit neatly into a Twitter message with room to spare. 

But it is hardly the last word on the case, or in the national debate over the death penalty.

The finality of Mr. Davis’s sentence, and the outpouring of protest worldwide, leaves in its wake more than its share of questions — many that go beyond the facts of the case to encompass fundamental issues of capital punishment.

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Georgia inmate Troy Davis was executed Wednesday night for the 1989 murder of Mark MacPhail, an off-duty Savannah police officer.

Davis died at 11:08 p.m. ET, according to a prison official. The execution was about four hours later than initially scheduled, because prison officials waited for a U.S. Supreme Court ruling on Davis' request for a stay.

After 10 p.m. ET, the Supreme Court, in a brief order, rejected Davis' request. His supporters had sought to prevent the execution, saying seven of the nine witnesses against him have recanted or contradicted their testimony.

Below are the developments as they happened. Read the full story here.

• Ed Pilkington
• guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 20 September 2011 09.23 EDT


Troy Davis execution: the Georgia Board of Pardons and Parole rejected his request for clemency after hearing hours of testimony. Photographs: Gettty Images

One of the most hotly contested death row cases in recent years looks set to go ahead with the execution of Troy Davis in Georgia on Wednesday.

Davis lost his final bid for clemency despite overwhelming evidence indicating that his conviction for murder is unreliable.

He will be put on a gurney at the state prison in Jackson and administered a cocktail of lethal drugs at 7pm local time on Wednesday, barring a last-minute intervention by the US supreme court which few observers expect to take place.

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