Almost two weeks after the State of Georgia executed Troy Davis, Amanda Knox walks free from an Italian Court acquitted of murder for which she has been imprisoned for 4 years. The case against Knox appears to have fallen apart as the stark result of Court ordered tests on DNA evidence, some of which had been miraculously found weeks after earlier searches and which was most recently determined by the Court appointed scientists to be unreliable and unsafe in determining Knox's guilt.
On the other hand the case against Troy Davis had in part relied upon 11 witnesses 9 of whom later recanted. From what I have read some of points on appeal were rejected because he hadn't raised them earlier when he hadn't known about them. Additionally, since his conviction a law had been passed which sought to 'expediate' the appeal progress and which contained other provisions to enhance laws dealing with terrorism. None of the new laws successfully answered questions arising from witnesses later admitting that they had wrongfully identified Davis as the shooter, that another man had admitted to others that he was in fact the killer, or that some members of the Jury have said they changed their minds about his guilt.
I don't know enough of the details of the claim that another man had admitted the crime to other persons to comment about it one way or another, although certainly with a man's life at stake it was of critical importance. However, what I do know is that the 9 of 11 witnesses who recanted was significant beyond all proportion not to have added weight on the innocence of Troy Davis. Witnesses do not lightly recant, they can face prosecution for doing so - probably of more concern to them is that they can face the wrath of the Police for no longer being compliant in a set-up. Because a set-up often relies upon an accused friends to spill the beans on him or her whether they're guilty or not, and the motive never is anything more than the advantage that the witness might gain. We've had here in NZ at least one recent case where a compliant witness was actually the murderer and many others where the witnesses have been made secret payments and had charges dropped for telling the 'truth.' A 'truth' which unfortunately ultimately is used against somebody the police 'want' to have found guilty of a crime for which they have already been charged or are anticipated to be charged.
These witnesses by their nature don't easily recant. That 9 recanted in one case against Troy Davis defies comprehension that the evidence of his 'guilt' was not all but destroyed, or that it should at the very least have returned to a retrial. But the State of Georgia needed to kill Troy Davis and that might the real truth of the matter. That he died because in part of because of legislation that sought to expedite executions, also exercised provisions that the fact a condemned man was responsible for not knowing something at an earlier point in time was no reason not to kill him. That those laws, were in part much like our own surveillance laws, designed as tools in the fight against terrorism, betray that part of their real intention is to undermine checks and balances in the Prosecution of Justice in everyday law.
And where does terrorism lie when a man can have the evidence of 9 important witnesses against him disregarded for the convenience of the free State whom wishes to takes his life as an Judicial expedient. Also, what free State values so little the lives of its citizens that it designs laws that allow the 'legal' killing of not only the presumed guilty but also the presumed innocent in a single mix. If substantial ingredients of a prosecution fail, the entire prosecution fails, at the very least promotes the difference of a 'fair' trial where an earlier one is shown as corrupt, or changed in some substantial way. If a presumption of guilt is removed, only one thing remains in a free land - a presumption of innocence.
So now as Amanda Fox flys home to a land where the just days ago Troy Davis was killed, she may appreciate more than most a country or countries that do not sanction the taking of life, and which do not assume the corrupt power of an ancient Caesar to cast a thumb either up or down in a fickle decision over the life of others, countrymen or not.
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