June 30 hearing set for Troy Anthony Davis

By Bill Rankin

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

A federal judge has scheduled a June 30 evidentiary hearing for Troy Anthony Davis, the death-row inmate who claims he did not shoot and kill a Savannah police officer in 1989.

Last August, in an extraordinary order, unlike any it has issued in almost half a century, the U.S. Supreme Court halted Davis' execution and directed a federal judge in Savannah to conduct a hearing.

 The high court said the judge should hear testimony that could not have been obtained at the time of Davis' 1991 trial and decide whether this new evidence "clearly establishes" his innocence in the death of Officer Mark Allen MacPhail.

The case was assigned to U.S. District Judge William T. Moore Jr., who recently scheduled the hearing for June 30.