Actual Innocence

I have donated to the NAACP fund for troy and will wear the T-Shirt.
I believe Troy Davis is innocent.

Is only waterboard everyones, is truth come out, yes?

The Troy Davis case and scenario is unfortunately not an isolated one!
Over 1500 people and counting, have been exonerated from wrongful convictions, and thousands are presently incarcerated for crime they did not commit. Recantations have been one of the factors freeing many aside DNA, confessions by true perpetrators, thorough and independent investigations, acknowledgement and recognition of police and prosecutors misconducts. Not to mention that some wrongfully convicted have died in jail or been executed before their exoneration's. Mis-identifications and coerced testimonies are one of the most common reasons for wrongful convictions. In this case, the ball is passed from Court to Court and finality seems to prevail over fairness, truth and/or innocence. There is much more behind this case that the sole fate of a man. The entire justice system has become more than questionable for thousands of innocents.
I now wonder, since focus is pointing to Mr Coles as the shooter, why we haven't heard from Mr Coles, living in

The american legal system, as designed, was superb. Now it is one of the world's worst -- as evidenced by the largest incarceration rate in all the world. Its focus was once the protection of the rights of the accused. Now its focus is on "getting the criminals off the street," as if they are a different species. The source of its recent failure? The individuals who hold public positions in our court system, i.e., judges and proseutors. More than any group, these individuals have virtually destroyed the Great Experiment in overnment set forth by our founding fathers. I suppose it was to be expected, that a group of inferiors would some time emerge and destroy the Experiment. It is unlikely, now that these inferiors have advanced to the supreme court level, that we can regain what we have lost. It may have been forseen by some, but it was a surprise to me, that this would occur. It constitutes the greatest political loss in the history of the western world. Truly a shame and embarrrassment that america, above all nations, would become The Great Incarcerator. Mr. Davis is one among so many -- and, no, not all citizen victims of this tyranny are of color, In the Kafka-esque society created by these inferiors any of us can be imprisoned at any time -- with no relationship at all, no knowledge at all, absolutely no awareness at all of the cause at hand. We simply live out our lives in the hope that in some court, somewhere in this land the roll of the court/prosecutorial dice, in all its randomness, doesn't come up with our number. Such is america today.

The burden of proof placed upon a convicted prisoner to overturn a jury verdict is, in most American jurisdictions, is evidence (1) that is so compelling that, had they heard it, no reasonable juror COULD have voted to convict him; AND (2) that was not discoverable by reasonable diligence at the time of the trial. This burden is almost insurmountable... virtually the only exception for many years has been DNA extracted from semen stains in rape cases... although verdicts of conviction in many other kinds of case rest upon evidence even more tenuous than those of the rape cases, sound, dispositive evidence of INNOCENCE is much harder to come by. Its almost a certainty that we have already executed people who were innocent of the crimes for which they were condemned. It IS a certainty that we currently imprison some thousands of people (we can argue the number...the US Dept of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics admitted that the number could be as high as 200,00 sentenced prisoners) who are also innocent of the crimes of which they were convicted, most of whose appeals have or will come to nothing.

This is only part of the reason that 20% of all prisoners on the planet are those held in U.S. jails or prisons.

Land of the Free. Right.