EVEN IF TROY DAVIS IS INNOCENT, WHO CARES?

I haven't been able to get a copy of the Supreme Court's order to a Federal District Court in Georgia to take another look at the evidence in the Troy Davis case, but the dissenting excerpts from the New York Times are astonishing.

Here's Justice Stevens, who voted with the 6-2 majority:

“It ‘would be an atrocious violation of our Constitution and the principles on which it is based’ to execute an innocent person,” Justice Stevens wrote, quoting Judge Barkett’s dissent.

Justices Thomas and Scalia, on the other hand, described seven of nine witnesses recanting their testimony and fingering the ninth as the actual killer was a “a sure loser” of a claim and that the hearing would be a "fool's errand":

“This court has never held,” Justice Scalia wrote, “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.”

I'm not sure how a trial in which most of the witness testimony was the only evidence against the defendant, and most of those witnesses said they lied on the stand, some say due to police coercion, could be considered "fair". The Times explains that as a legal matter this question actually may be unresolved, and elaborates further on the legal questions relating to habeas cases and "showings" vs "demonstrations" of innocence. But here's your conservative jurisprudence, your defenders of individual rights and champions of the culture of life, arguing that a potentially innocent man should be executed because well, because.

-- A. Serwer