Troy Davis: GA Supreme Ct denies stay

[RT Atlanta]

More bad news (this from local NPR affiliate reporter via twitter)

***********************
rickeybevington Rickey Bevington
Georgia Supreme Court has unanimously denied Troy Davis a stay of execution for 1989 murder of Savannah police officer Mark McPhail #gpbnews
1 minute ago Favorite Retweet Reply
***********************

I am VERY surprised at the unanimity of the GA Supreme Ct's decision.

US Supreme Ct ain't gonna stop it.

[Parker CA]

1. Very sad.

[alsame]

2. Cynthia Tucker was just on Hardball talking about how no one wants

to admit that any mistakes were made. "Protecting the system" is more important than the truth. Very sad indeed.

[RT Atlanta]

4. It's awful and Cynthia is Right

How these fucking people will be able to sleep tonight or look themselves in the mirror is beyond me.

Put your ass on the line, make the "tough call" and put a temporary halt to the execution.

[GreenPartyVoter]

5. Protecting a system that doesn't work, apparently. Smooth move.

[pacalo]

8. Exactly. Meanwhile, the real shooter named Red doesn't seem to be a consideration at all.

What matters to them is that someone must pay for the policeman's murder. Why are they ignoring witness accounts that Red was the shooter? Is he a valuable police informant, for instance, to get such a pass?

I would respect the system more if mistakes on their behalf were admitted. And, in cases like this, there's no better word for the accountability of denial than the "system", because everyone has everyone else's back in the legal chain.

[sad sally]

10. Unjustice...

After analyzing these cases, the researchers found that most wrongful convictions resulted from a combination of errors. The main cause in more than half of the cases -- 52.3 percent -- was eyewitness misidentification.

The next most common main cause was perjury by a witness, which contributed to 11 percent of the convictions. Other problems included negligence by criminal justice officials, coerced confessions, "frame ups" by guilty parties, and general overzealousness by officers and prosecutors.

Overzealousness can lead authorities to make careless, if unintentional errors, and cause some authorities to bend rules to get a known criminal off the street. Failure to keep an open mind can cause errors that become rubber-stamped by trusting colleagues as the case moves through the judicial process, Huff says. By the time the errors are discovered, the trail to the real offender is cold.

Public pressure to solve a case and the organizational culture of a police or district attorney's office can affect the process. While most errors are unintentional, the researchers say there are far too many incidences of unethical and unprofessional behavior.

"If you lock someone up for life, you take him off the streets, but you can later release him and compensate him if you discover that you made an error. If you kill him, you no longer have that option and you also send a message that violent solutions -- executions -- are approved by the state."

http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/ronhuff.htm?du

[pacalo]

3. UNBELIEVABLE.

[sasha031]

6. this is so tragic

:-(

[WillyT]

7. Fuck...

:mad:

:nuke:

[EFerrari]

9. For shame.