Guilt should be certain in capital punishment cases

Our country is dangerously polarized.

For eight years, the left proclaimed that the Bush administration was destroying the country.

For the last 20 months, the right has said the same about President Obama.

Last year, the president was blasted for speaking to school children, telling them that the responsibility for their education rested on them and that they should work hard.

We are dangerously polarized, indeed.

In times of such great division, it is critical that we find issues on which we can come together.

The death penalty may seem like an unlikely candidate for such a reconciliation.

But one particular death penalty case offers an opportunity for Americans to come together and show the spirit of justice that is so foundational to our republic.

However you feel about capital punishment, everyone must agree that no innocent person should ever be executed.

That we are presumed innocent until proven guilty is one of the most deeply held beliefs in our judicial system. And given the finality of the death penalty, that standard should be applied with extra rigor in cases of capital punishment.

Yet a man in Georgia awaits his execution, despite very likely not being guilty of the murder for which he was convicted.

Troy Anthony Davis was a former coach in the Savannah Police Athletic League and a recent Marines enlistee.

In 1991, he was convicted of the murder of Savannah police officer Mark Allen MacPhail.

The murder weapon was never found, and there was no physical evidence tying Davis to the murder. He was convicted solely on witness testimony.

Since the trial, seven of the nine non-police witnesses who testified against Davis have recanted their stories. Many of them said the police pressured them into testifying against Davis. Besides those testimonies, there is no evidence to suggest that Davis was the murderer.

One such witness is Darrell Collins, who was 16 at the time, when more than a dozen police officers showed up at his house.

"I told them that ... I didn't see Troy do nothing. They got real mad when I said this and started getting in my face. They were telling me that I was an accessory to murder and that I would pay like Troy was gonna pay if I didn't tell them what they wanted to hear. They told me I would be lucky if I ever got out, especially because a police officer got killed. After a couple of hours of the detectives yelling at me and threatening me, I finally broke down and told them what they wanted to hear. I am not proud for lying at Troy's trial, but the police had me so messed up that I felt that's all I could do or else I would go to jail."

Another witness used to convict Davis is Dorothy Ferrell, a mother of four, who was on parole at the time. She has since said, "I was scared that if I didn't do what the police wanted me to do, then they would try to lock me up again. From the way the officer was talking, he gave me the impression that I should say that Troy Davis was the one who shot the officer ... I told the detective that Troy Davis was the shooter, even though the truth was that I didn't see who shot the officer. I had four children at that time, and I was taking care of them myself. I couldn't go back to jail. I felt like I didn't have any choice but to get up there and testify to what I said in my earlier statements."

Seven of the nine non-police witnesses have similarly disowned the testimony that was used to convict Davis. Of the remaining two witnesses, one is the other principal suspect in the crime.

Last year, the Supreme Court took the unusual step of forcing a district court in Georgia to hold a special evidentiary hearing to consider this new evidence in Davis' case.

Last week, U.S. District Court Judge William T. Moore Jr. ruled that the hearing had failed to prove Davis' innocence.

You read that right. In the technicalities of the U.S. legal system, Davis' attorneys now have to prove his innocence in order for him to avoid execution.

Amnesty International, Pope Benedict XVI, the NAACP and former President Jimmy Carter have all called for Davis' execution to be stayed.

Let's take this opportunity to come together as citizens of a country founded on the lofty notion of justice for all, and insist that legal technicalities never allow a person to be executed for a crime he didn't commit.