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Troy Davis and the Georgia Parole Board

By Kent Scheidegger et al.

The Georgia Parole Board issued this press release Monday on the Troy Davis case. The full text is also quoted after the jump, in case they remove the page linked here. It's good that they made an exception to their "no comment" policy, but they did not go far enough. In capital cases with claims of actual innocence, an explanation should be the rule, not the exception. Further, the explanation should go into detail as to why the board does not believe the inmate is actually innocent. The right way to do it was illustrated by Gov. Pete Wilson of California in the Thomas Thompson case. We appended this explanation to our brief in Calderon v. Thompson, 523 U.S. 538 (1998), and the Supreme Court noted it. See id., at 547-548, 552, 556. The Georgia Board should do the same, as should the clemency authority in any case of this type...continue to full post

Full post as published by Crime and Consequences on September 23, 2008 (boomark / email).