For nearly a quarter of a century, Cardozo School of Law professor Barry Scheck and his legal partner Peter Neufeld have worked tirelessly to prove the innocence of hundreds of prisoners around the country.
Their efforts led to the creation of The Innocence Project, which claims to have assisted in the exoneration of 273 prisoners through DNA testing, including 17 who served time on death row, since 1992.
Along the way, Scheck and The Innocence Project picked up the case of Georgia death-row inmate Troy Davis, who was convicted in the 1989 murder of Savannah Police Officer Mark Allen MacPhail. They argued vigorously for Davis' innocence, managing to rally hundreds of thousands of supporters including former President Jimmy Carter, Pope Benedict XVI and Archbishop Desmond Tutu.
While Davis' case was characterized by his supporters as a grave miscarriage of justice it had been reviewed by both state and federal courts for fairness for 20 years. The U.S. Supreme Court took the extraordinary step of assigning U.S. District Judge William T. Moore to scrutinize the witness testimony to determine whether it raised substantial questions about Davis' guilt. Moore concluded unequivocally in a 174-page ruling that it did not.
In the end, Davis' supporters pleas fell on deaf ears: the 42-year-old Davis was put to death for the murder on Sept. 21.
But Davis' execution has not silenced the doubts about his guilt. And in the aftermath of Davis' death, Scheck and the Innocence Project have called on Georgia to consider a moratorium on the death penalty.
The Atlanta-Journal Constitution recently caught up with Scheck to reflect on the case, the day of the execution and his organization's plan for pursuing criminal justice reform in Georgia:
Q: Was there ever a point at which you and your staff thought you might be able to get Davis' sentence commuted?
A: I did believe that the (Georgia) Board of Pardons and Paroles would act favorably because the evidence was so obviously weak and subject to doubt. I'm talking about the forensic evidence, the ballistic evidence, one of the worst cases of eyewitness misidentification that anyone could find. When you sort through all of that, what's left of the case? So it was a case where I expected the board to exercise discretion and act as a safety valve for the system.
Q: When the board ultimately denied Davis clemency, is that when you realized that things looked bleak?
A: Unfortunately, I've been through this a number of times before. You never give up. That's the most important thing. You do everything possible and hope for the best. But ... I knew that the odds had shifted dramatically against Troy.
Q: Following the execution, what did you and your staff do for the rest of the evening and into the next morning?
A: It was horrible. Everyone was demoralized the next day. We had a debriefing (at Cardozo Law School in New York) so that everyone could talk about how they felt. There are so many people involved in the movement -- young, idealistic people who are trying to reform the criminal justice system. They're used to winning. And this has been a very successful movement. But it's not always successful. It was just very hard for these young champions of liberty to digest. It never gets easy for any of us.
Q: Why do you think Davis’ case attracted so much attention and news coverage?
A: I think the infirmities of this case and the weakness of the evidence against Troy Davis were just obvious. It involves the shooting of a police officer -- who by all accounts was acting valiantly, the victim is white, the person charged is black and the forensic evidence has proven to be unreliable by everyone's admission. Put all those things together, and it's just an obvious case where there was an unacceptably high risk of executing an innocent man. The case showed all the weaknesses in the system.
Q: You mentioned weaknesses in the system. Are there any that are specific to Georgia?
A: The Troy Davis case illustrated that Georgia had the country’s worst rule with respect to depriving an inmate claiming innocence of a hearing on recantation evidence of witnesses. Georgia courts won't even hold a hearing and listen to witness testimony, no matter how compelling the recantation. Generally speaking, Georgia has a real breakdown in the post-conviction process.
Q: You've also spoken previously about problems with Georgia's indigent defense system. Care to elaborate?
A: Take the Brian Nichols case. (Nichols, who killed four people at the Fulton County Courthouse in 2005, was sentenced to life without parole in what is believed to be the most expensive death penalty case in Georgia history). His case literally broke the bank of the public defense system there. Capital cases, particularly high profile ones, can become hideously expensive and deprive necessary resources from the defense of the indigent. The take-home lesson here is Georgia really ought to say that our safety valve is broken. No. 2, a moratorium on capital punishment in Georgia would be an awfully good idea. That way the state could look objectively at the policy to see whether it's truly worth it.
Q: Do you sense that there's growing support for a moratorium on the death penalty?
A: I do. Recently in New Jersey, New Mexico and Illinois, all of those states reached a conclusion that, as a matter of public policy, capital punishment isn't worth it. If you're going to have that system, it has to be fair, adequately funded and have mechanisms in place to make sure that you don't execute the innocent. I also think people are realizing that it's an unacceptably high price that people pay for having capital punishment. There could be a better use of resources. If you had a moratorium, you would be able to do better with your criminal justice dollar.
Q: How do you think the Davis case will ultimately be remembered?
A: That it was like watching a train wreck in slow motion.
The Sunday conversation is edited for length and clarity. Joel Anderson can be reached by e-mail at janderson@ajc.com.
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