In Case You Missed It Ann Coulter on Troy Davis

Cedar Posts doesn't care much for Ann Coulter, she has that sneer just like my ex wife. It gives me nightmares. But Ann like my ex was sometimes right. I think she nails the Troy Davis madness pretty much to the point.

Cop killer is media's latest baby seal

For decades, liberals tried persuading Americans to abolish the death penalty, using their usual argument: hysterical sobbing.

Only when the media began lying about innocent people being executed did support for the death penalty begin to waver, falling from 80 percent to about 60 percent in a little more than a decade. (Silver lining: That's still more Americans than believe in man made global warming.)

Fifty-nine percent of Americans now believe that an innocent man has been executed in the last five years. There is more credible evidence that space aliens have walked among us than that an innocent person has been executed in this country in the past 60 years, much less the past five years.

But unless members of the public are going to personally review trial transcripts in every death penalty case, they have no way of knowing the truth. The media certainly won't tell them.

It's nearly impossible to receive a death sentence these days unless you do something completely crazy like shoot a cop in full view of dozens of witnesses in a Burger King parking lot, only a few hours after shooting at a passing car while exiting a party.

That's what Troy Davis did in August 1989. Davis is the media's current baby seal of death row.

After a two-week trial with 34 witnesses for the state and six witnesses for the defense, the jury of seven blacks and five whites took less than two hours to convict Davis of Officer Mark MacPhail's murder, as well as various other crimes. Two days later, the jury sentenced Davis to death.

Now, a brisk 22 years after Davis murdered Officer MacPhail, his sentence will finally be administered this week barring any more of the legal shenanigans that have kept taxpayers on the hook for Davis' room and board for the past two decades.

(The average time on death row is 14 years. Then liberals turn around and triumphantly claim the death penalty doesn't have any noticeable deterrent effect. As the kids say: Duh.)

It has been claimed in the New York Times and Time magazine, for example that there was no "physical evidence" connecting Davis to the crimes that night.

Davis pulled out a gun and shot two strangers in public. What "physical evidence" were they expecting? No houses were broken into, no cars stolen, no rapes or fistfights accompanied the shootings. Where exactly would you look for DNA? And to prove what?

I suppose it would be nice if the shell casings from both shootings that night matched. Oh wait they did. That's "physical evidence."

Cedar Posts interjects: (Shell casing were indeed found at the first shooting, however the single matching casing found at the shooting scene of Officer MacPhail was found days later by a homeless person.)

It's true that the bulk of the evidence against Davis was eyewitness testimony. That tends to happen when you shoot someone in a busy Burger King parking lot.

Eyewitness testimony, like all evidence tending to show guilt, has gotten a bad name recently, but the "eyewitness" testimony in this case did not consist simply of strangers trying to distinguish one tall black man from another. For one thing, several of the eyewitnesses knew Davis personally.

Eyewitness testimony established the following:

Two tall, young black men were harassing a vagrant in the Burger King parking lot, one in a yellow shirt and the other in a white Batman shirt. The one in the white shirt used a brown revolver to pistol-whip the vagrant. When a cop yelled at them to stop, the man in the white shirt ran, then wheeled around and shot the cop, walked over to his body and shot him again, smiling.

Cedar Posts interjects (Coulter adds smiling for dramatic effect, a search of the trial documents shows not reference to a smiling assailant.)

Some eyewitnesses described the shooter as wearing a white shirt, some said it was a white shirt with writing, and some identified it specifically as a white Batman shirt. Not one witness said the man in the yellow shirt pistol-whipped the vagrant or shot the cop.

Several of Davis' friends testified without recantation that he was the one in a white shirt. Several eyewitnesses, both acquaintances and strangers, specifically identified Davis as the one who shot Officer MacPhail.

Now the media claim that seven of the nine witnesses against Davis at trial have recanted.

First of all, the state presented 34 witnesses against Davis not nine which should give you some idea of how punctilious the media are about their facts in death penalty cases.

Cedar Posts interjects (While Coulter is correct the state called 34 witnesses, only nine of the witnesses offered direct testimony that Davis was the shooter. The other witnesses simply placed Davis at the scene.)

Among the witnesses who did not recant a word of their testimony against Davis were three members of the Air Force, who saw the shooting from their van in the Burger King drive-in lane. The airman who saw events clearly enough to positively identify Davis as the shooter explained on cross-examination, "You don't forget someone that stands over and shoots someone."

Recanted testimony is the least believable evidence since it proves only that defense lawyers managed to pressure some witnesses to alter their testimony, conveniently after the trial has ended. Even criminal lobbyist Justice William Brennan ridiculed post-trial recantations.

Cedar Posts interjects (Coulter leads the unwilling and unknowledgeable to think that a US Supreme Court Justice has ridiculed the Davis recantations. Justice Brennan died in 1997.

Three recantations were from friends of Davis, making minor or completely unbelievable modifications to their trial testimony. For example, one said he was no longer sure he saw Davis shoot the cop, even though he was five feet away at the time. His remaining testimony still implicated Davis.

One alleged recantation, from the vagrant's girlfriend (since deceased), wasn't a recantation at all, but rather reiterated all relevant parts of her trial testimony, which included a direct identification of Davis as the shooter.

Only two of the seven alleged "recantations" (out of 34 witnesses) actually recanted anything of value and those two affidavits were discounted by the court because Davis refused to allow the affiants to testify at the post-trial evidentiary hearing, even though one was seated right outside the courtroom, waiting to appear.

The court specifically warned Davis that his refusal to call his only two genuinely recanting witnesses would make their affidavits worthless. But Davis still refused to call them suggesting, as the court said, that their lawyer-drafted affidavits would not have held up under cross-examination.

With death penalty opponents so fixated on Davis' race he's black it ought to be noted that all the above witnesses are themselves African-American. The first man Davis shot in the car that night was African-American.

I notice that the people so anxious to return this sociopathic cop-killer to the street don't live in his neighborhood.

There's a reason more than a dozen courts have looked at Davis' case and refused to overturn his death sentence. He is as innocent as every other executed man since at least 1950, which is to say, guilty as hell.


Cedar's Take: Troy Davis may or may not be guilty. The thing that stands out is that testimony names Sylvester "Redd" Coles as arguing with a homeless man, Larry Young, over a beer. Then Troy Davis is claimed to up and hit Young with a gun. Then Davis shoots Officer MacPhail twice.

Police determine that Coles owns a 38 caliber weapon the same caliber used in the murder. Coles claims that he gave his gun to another man earlier in the night. A man he didn't know. Coles went to the Savannah police claiming that Davis was the shooter.

Ballistics expert testified that the bullets recover from both shoots "could have come from the same gun" but he admitted it was doubtful.

I'm not sure if Coles is not the shooter. There are some serious questions about the case but why has it taken 20 years to make these concerns public?

Officer Down Page for Mark MacPhail is here.