In re Davis

Background

Troy Anthony Davis is a state prisoner convicted eighteen years earlier of murdering an off-duty police officer after a parking lot beating. A unanimous jury convicted him; Davis admits being present but says a companion fired the shot. He now asks a federal court to consider new affidavits that he says support his claim of actual innocence.

Reasoning

A majority of the Court directs a federal district court to adjudicate Davis’s original federal habeas petition despite prior state and federal bodies having examined the same evidence and found it unpersuasive. Justice Scalia’s dissent argues that federal courts cannot grant relief unless Congress’s statute limiting federal habeas review (the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, 28 U.S.C. §2254(d)(1)) is shown not to apply; he says the Georgia Supreme Court, a state clemency board, and the federal appeals court all reviewed and rejected Davis’s evidence.

Real world impact

Under the Court’s order, a district judge will reexamine evidence that state and federal tribunals already found inadequate. The dissent warns this will likely delay the state’s execution timetable while producing procedural confusion about whether the district court could lawfully grant relief under §2254(d)(1). The dissent also notes the clemency board had spent more than a year reviewing witnesses, transcripts, and retested evidence before denying clemency.

Dissents or concurrances

Justice Scalia criticizes a concurrence that suggests a district court might declare §2254(d)(1) unconstitutional as applied to actual-innocence claims; Scalia says that policy question should be decided by this Court, not sent to a district court.