Inside from the Inside

That’s Troy Davis, granted a stay of execution Monday by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Justice Antonin Scalia wrote a scathing dissent.  Scalia is often touted by conservatives as the poster boy for strict constructionism, the philosphy that limits judicial interpretation to the text as it is written. Let’s see if his vote in this case holds up to that philosophy.

Davis was convicted in 1991 of killing an off-duty cop, but since the conviction seven of nine witnesses have recanted their testimony blaming their original accounts on pressure from the D.A. to finger Davis. Several of those witnesses have now said it was another witness who actually did the killing.

I don’t want to argue the Davis case here, but there are deep problems with his conviction, as you can read about in many places including here. But those problems, Scalia says, are not the point:

This court has never held that the Constitution forbids the execution of a convicted defendant who had a full and fair trial but is later able to convince a habeas court that he is ‘actually’ innocent.

A couple of questions:

• Did Davis have a full and fair trial if he was convicted on the false testimony of seven witnesses lying under coercion from the D.A.?
• What about the 8th Amendment to the Constitution? Wouldn’t executing an innocent man fall under the heading of “cruel and unusual punishment”?  Wouldn’t strict constructionism require that the court to consider whether Davis is ‘actually’ innocent?

I’m all for constructionism and original intent. But would the framers of our Constitution have agreed with Scalia that a procedural matter supercedes innocence when someone’s life is on the line?

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