Troy Davis, the condemned Georgia inmate who maintains that he is not the man who murdered a Savannah Police officer 20 years ago, will stay alive long enough to try and prove his innocence, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Monday. Siding with Davis were Justices John Paul Stevens, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer. Sonia Sotomayor, who was sworn in earlier this month, did not vote on the inmate’s petition. Stevens ordered a federal judge to “receive testimony and make findings of fact as to whether evidence that could not have been obtained at trial clearly establishes petitioner’s innocence.” Davis, whose accusers have recanted their testimony against him in recent years, has found support among a diversity of high-profile figures, including the pope; former President Jimmy Carter; former South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu; actors Susan Sarandon and Harry Belafonte; and a host of current and former lawmakers from across the political spectrum. In recent years, Davis has seen his execution halted three times. In June, his supporters delivered petitions bearing about 60,000 signatures to Chatham County, Ga., District Attorney Larry Chisolm, demanding a new trial. Although there was no physical evidence tying the then 19-year-old Davis to the 1989 killing of Officer Mark MacPhail, he was convicted and condemned to death on the testimony of witnesses. Over the past 18 years, seven of the nine witnesses have withdrawn their claims. As expected Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, the high court’s only African-American, objected to the court’s decision Monday, calling it a “fool’s errand.” Wrote Scalia, “Petitioner’s claim is a sure loser. Transferring his petition to the [federal] District Court is a confusing exercise that can serve no purpose except to delay the state’s execution of its lawful criminal judgment.” Last October, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to intervene, and a federal appeals court in Georgia granted a temporary stay of execution.

Troy Davis’s life is spared again

. Troy Davis, a Black American who has spent 17 years on death row for the murder of a White policeman, was Friday granted a stay of execution, three days before he was scheduled to die. “Upon our thorough review of the record, we conclude that Davis has met the burden for a provisional stay of execution,” said the decision taken by three judges sitting on the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in the southern state of Georgia. Davis, 40, was to be put to death today (Monday) at 7 p.m. by lethal injection for the 1989 killing of 27-year-old White Savannah, Ga., Police Officer Mark Allan McPhail. He has repeatedly claimed he did not kill McPhail, and seven out of nine witnesses who gave evidence that was at the backbone of the prosecutor’s case at his trial in 1991 have recanted or changed their testimony. There was no murder weapon, fingerprints or DNA linking Davis to the crime. Other witnesses have since identified another man as the shooter. The appeals court on Friday gave Davis’ lawyers 15 days to file documents showing that Davis is being wrongfully held in prison. The court will then have 10 days to decide if the case should go back before a lower court, which could order a new trial. Friday’s stay announcement was the third for Davis, who was originally sentenced to die in July of last year, only to be granted a last-minute stay of execution then by the Georgia Board of Pardons and Parole. Last month, the same parole board denied Davis clemency, restarting the clock toward Davis’ execution. 

The state has set a time and date to execute Troy Anthony Davis, even as his advocates continue to insist Georgia is about to execute an innocent man, reports The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Davis’ case drew international attention after seven of nine key prosecution witnesses against him recanted their testimony. They claimed they had been pressured to say they saw Davis shoot MacPhail in a Burger King parking lot. On Wednesday  the Department of Corrections said on Oct. 27^th, Davis will be put to death for killing off-duty police officer Mark Allen MacPhail. This is Davis’ third execution date in little more than a year. The State Board of Pardons and Paroles stopped the first one the day before Davis was to die by lethal injection on July 17, 2007. The U.S. Supreme Court stopped Davis’ second execution two hours before he was to die on Sept. 23 so the justices could decide if they would hear Davis’ case. Tuesday, the high court declined to step into the contentious debate over whether Davis is the real killer. Read the rest at BET.com.

J.L. Chestnut Jr., the first Black lawyer in Selma and a prominent attorney in civil rights cases across a half century, has died at age 77, The Associated Press reports A Selma native who got his law degree at Howard University, Chestnut returned to his hometown in 1958 and became a key legal figure in the civil rights battles in Selma. Later, he defended Blacks in major voter fraud prosecutions and helped Black farmers make financial claims against the U.S. Agriculture Department. Read the rest at BET.com.

Ohio is ordered to verify eligible voters. A federal appeals court on Tuesday ordered Ohio’s top elections official to set up a system by Friday to verify the eligibility of newly registered voters and make the information available to the state’s 88 county election boards. Democrats see the move as a way of denying thousands of new voters, many of who are Black, their right to vote. Read more of what the stakeholders have to say here.

Supreme Court halts Troy Davis’ execution.

In dramatic fashion, the U.S. Supreme Court Tuesday night halted the execution of Troy Anthony Davis, the 39-year-old Georgia man whose life everybody from the Rev. Al Sharpton to Pope Benedict XVI had pleaded with the state to spare. The NAACP, Amnesty International, South African Nobel Prize-winner Archbishop Desmond Tutu and a host of other international human rights leaders and organizations had argued that it was the state of Georgia, and the United States in general, that actually was on trial. Although convicted in 1991 of killing a 27-year-old Savannah, Ga., police officer and sentenced to die by lethal injection, several of the prosecution’s lead witnesses have since recanted their stories, leaving the state with a conspicuously flimsy case to justify execution. Read more at BET.com/News.

With the world watching, Troy Anthony Davis’ is being dealt a classic case of Georgia justice. As the hours and minutes tick away, the 39-year-old Black man from Savannah moves closer to the death chamber, where, at 7 tonight, a potentially innocent man will be strapped to a gurney and injected with a lethal cocktail. On Monday, one of Davis’ last hopes to remain alive fizzled in the hands of Georgia’s Supreme Court. Justice Robert Benham was the lone dissenter in wanting to spare the life of Davis, who was convicted in 1991 of killing Mark Allen McPhail, a 27-year-old Savannah Police officer. Get more on the story at BET.com/News.