UPDATE: Supreme Court Issues Stay for Troy Davis

3 p.m.

Here’s what SCOTUS BLOG put up a few minutes ago:

The Supreme Court blocked the scheduled execution Tuesday evening in Georgia of Troy Anthony Davis, giving itself time to consider his appeal challenging his conviction for the murder of an off-duty police officer in Savannah. The stay order is here. It was issued about two hours before the execution was to be carried out.

The Court is to consider Davis’ petition for review (08-66) at its Conference next Monday. The stay of execution will be lifted automatically if review is denied, the order said. If review is granted, the stay will remain in effect until the case is decided.

And here’s the CNN story.

Good for the Supremes. Exactly the right move. This way they may consider the case carefully.

Here’s what Virginia Sloan, president of the Washington DC-based Constitution Project, said shortly after the decision was made public: “The U.S. Supreme Court acted wisely in staying the execution of Troy Davis, and I urge the High Court to grant certiorari to consider the merits of Davis’ case. His claims of innocence were never fully considered by the courts or the executive branch, even after seven witnesses changed their original testimony and six implicated another man. In addition, his state-provided attorney was overburdened and had insufficient resources to mount a full defense. The Court should intervene to fully examine his claims of innocence.”

Remember, seven out of nine original witnesses say that Davis didn’t do it—or that they don’t know who did it. Never did. Most of the seven who have recanted say they were pressured by detectives to I.D. Davis, and six witnesses pointed to another guy—Red Coles—who was there on the scene and who conveniently was the person who originally accused Davis. (He’s one of the two remaining witnesses who has not recanted.) Several of the new witnesses who have come forward to name Coles say that, about a year after the shooting, he confessed to the murder and bragged that he’d pinned it on another guy, but that they were too afraid of Coles to say anything way back when. (A 2003 Atlanta Journal Constitution article has additional details.)

One of the primary issues with Davis’s case is that, due to a 1996 law passed to speed up the often endless appeals that occur with death penalty cases, attorneys for the state of Georgia argued that they didn’t have to look at new evidence possibly vindicating Davis because he didn’t present it years ago when his appeal was originally in the state courts. In other words, the problem with getting a new trial for Davis wasn’t with the new evidence, it was purely about the time frame.

And if he’s innocent? Well, that’s just the breaks. Sucks to be him. Mistakes are made. Price of doing business. Eggs/omelets and all that.

Of course, one of the pesky problems about making a mistake in a capital case is that dead is forever.

Go here and here for more of the back story.