Editorial: Let facts be heard

Wednesday, July 18, 2007 | 7:02 a.m.

If a witness, whose testimony in court was instrumental in getting a man sentenced to death, later said that he had lied while on the stand, should granting a new trial be considered?

We believe the answer is yes.

A law passed in 1996, however, makes that difficult. The Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act was passed by Congress in the wake of the Oklahoma City bombing.

To prevent condemned inmates from using the courts to postpone their sentences almost indefinitely , the law narrowed the reasons they can use to file appeals.

This law came to bear in the Georgia case of Troy Anthony Davis. Post-trial witness statements, the court ruled, were not a reason for granting an appeal.

In Davis' case, seven of the nine witnesses whose testimony sent him to death row recanted, many citing police pressure for their trial statements. The prosecutor, however, argued that the recantations did not mean that their original testimony "was in every part the purest fabrication."

There it might have stood had not the case received attention from prominent people, including former FBI Director William Sessions. In The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Sessions wrote that Davis' guilt was in question and "It would be intolerable to execute an innocent man."

Davis was accused in 1989 of killing a police officer working as a security guard at a restaurant in Savannah, Ga. Responding to an after-dark assault in the parking lot, the officer was shot and killed.

The case swung on the testimony of the witnesses, because no gun or other physical evidence was found.

On Tuesday Georgia's parole board granted Davis a 90-day stay of execution. Although Davis' attorney filed an appeal for a new trial with the Georgia Supreme Court, the execution could still take place at the end of the stay.

We think this case illustrates a reason to soften the 1996 law. Given the finality of a death sentence, credible new evidence after conviction should always be heard.