Davis Prosecutor Speaks; Blasts Death Penalty Critics

In a seven-page “manifesto” released yesterday after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to take up Davis’ case, Chatham County District Attorney Spencer Lawton Jr. complained:

“The PR campaign has of course become the favored artifice for corrupting the independence and credibility of the truth-seeking and independent judicial branch of our government,” he wrote.

“These campaigns are usually energized—or at least, having been set off at the center, are carried forward around the circumference of the echo chamber—by people most of whom approach the law in ignorance, or with an ideological bias that, on the face of it, should disqualify them from fact-based, rational discussion.”
“And,” he continued, “these campaigns tend to be swallowed whole and regurgitated in the same form by some of the media.”

Lawton also had strong words for both the judicial system itself and some who have supported Davis.

In light of the rollercoaster of delay, said Lawton, “the criminal justice system has hardly bathed itself in glory.”

“The judiciary’s only currency—unlike the other two branches—is its credibility. There comes a point at which an obsessively punctilious focus on fairness (for one party only) becomes itself unfair. Unfairness has a corrosive effect on credibility.”
Lawton also questioned the motives of Davis’ supporters.

“If the only characteristic of a campaign of indignation attacking what must be the most open and accountable legal system on Earth was its naiveté, we could look upon it with a measure of equanimity, even perhaps amusement,” wrote Lawton. “But the campaign’s cynicism and manipulation are inimical to the law’s neutral truth-seeking purpose. That is—I speak now of the impulsive anti-death penalty folks—often, the ostensible purpose of enlightening the operation of the law has the effect of compromising its principles. Perhaps, I hate to suggest, on purpose, and even potentially fatally.”

Jared Feuer of the local Amnesty International office, who read Lawton’s comments late Tuesday afternoon, said, “To make this about manipulation … is not serving the cause of justice.”

I haven’t seen the full statement but here’s what is reported in the story:

• He dismisses the post-trial affidavits because there are too many. And the 80 percent recantation rate—“the first in the history of the world?” Lawton wonders—didn’t come in support of a motion for a new trial until eight days before the first scheduled execution date.
• Lawton suggests coercion, “Would it not be ironic, for instance, in a case such as this one, if affidavits claiming coercion by police were themselves obtained by coercive tactics?”
• Lawton says the evidence has already been reviewed “by 29 judges in seven different types of review over the course of 17 years, before [Tuesday's] ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court.”
• He sees no benefit in hearing from the witnesses, “[W]hat would be the benefit of direct testimony simply restating what the affidavits said? Or might we expect the witnesses to vary again?” He says the State Board of Pardons and Paroles heard from the witnesses “and questioned them closely.”
• He says there is physical evidence, noting that that crime lab tests demonstrated that the shell casings “from Davis’ shooting” of another man earlier on the night MacPhail was killed were fired from the same weapon as the casings recovered from the scene of MacPhail’s murder.
• He says Coles was allowed by his lawyer to give a statement outside his presence so that means he couldn’t possibly be the real killer.

Davis’ attorneys say Lawton’s assertions “would not survive the light of day in an adversarial court proceeding.” The Sunday Paper did a piece on why Davis did not bring evidence forward sooner:

In 2006, the American Bar Association’s Georgia Death Penalty Assessment Team submitted an evaluation of the state’s death penalty system, which recommended a moratorium on executions due to “a need to reform a number of areas within Georgia’s death penalty system.”

Included among the problems listed in the report is Georgia’s status as the only state not to provide indigent defendants sentenced to death with counsel during habeas corpus proceedings. Inmates facing the death penalty must act as their own attorney during the appeals process if they cannot afford to hire a lawyer. This, according to the report, helps create “a situation where this critical constitutional safeguard is so undermined as to be ineffective.”

Martina Correia says her brother learned first-hand of the difficulties involved when a prisoner with no legal training is expected to defend himself in a case that has already been decided against him. She recalls how Davis was expected to mount his defense in a break room in the prison where he was confined. With no money, no attorney and no subpoena power, there was little he could hope to accomplish.

“From ’91 to ’96, he didn’t have a lawyer,” recalls Correia. “Then the Resource Center gave him a lawyer.”

The Florida Times-Union has the most complete report questioning the reasons given for rejecting each of the recantations.