Bloodied shorts among Davis hearing evidence (article from over a year ago)
Physical evidence prosecutors were barred from presenting at Troy Anthony Davis' 1991 murder trial will be allowed this week before a federal judge hearing defense claims of innocence.
U.S. District Judge William T. Moore Jr.'s ruling allowing the state to use two Georgia Bureau of Investigation reports on a pair of blood-stained black shorts seized from Davis' mother's home comes days before he is to begin hearings Wednesday to allow Davis' lawyers to try and show that evidence not available at his 1991 trial would have convinced a jury to acquit him.
Moore must find that new defense evidence "clearly establishes (Davis') innocence."
The hearing, mandated by the U.S. Supreme Court last summer, requires that Davis prove his innocence, a reversal of the standard defendant's presumption of innocence.
It tests whether it is unconstitutional to execute an innocent person.
Davis, 38, was convicted in Chatham County Superior Court Aug. 28, 1991, for murder in the 1989 slaying of off-duty Savannah police officer Mark Allen MacPhail.
Davis was sentenced to death, and state and federal courts have repeatedly upheld the verdict and sentence.
Defense attorneys contend those rulings were on technicalities and have fought to get a court to hear what they say is new evidence pointing to Davis's possible innocence.
Black shorts evidence
After months of wrangling over evidence and legal issues, attorneys for the state's attorney general's office last week asked permission to submit Georgia Bureau of Investigation reports concerning "blood examination on pair of black shorts recovered from (Davis') mother's home on Aug. 19, 1989."
They also asked to submit a report of DNA typing of the item.
Davis' lawyers cried foul, urging Moore not to allow the evidence which they called "untimely" and "of questionable probative value."
They argued it would "clearly prejudice" (Davis') ability to rebut the contents of the report.
The jury hearing Davis' 1991 trial never heard about the shorts after Chatham County Superior Court Judge James W. Head barred them from evidence because of what he found was police coercion of Davis' mother, Virginia Davis, when she arrived near her Sylvester Drive home Aug. 19, 1989.
Police seized the shorts from a dryer while searching for the murder weapon.
The Georgia Supreme Court affirmed the ruling.
Davis' lawyers argue six of the nine witnesses who testified against the defendant have recanted their testimony and a seventh contradicted her's.
They blame police coercion for a number of those changes in testimony.
Davis' team is expected to produce 14 witnesses - including those who have changed their trial testimony - and produce 24 exhibits to support claims that Davis is the victim of mistaken identity.