Even if Davis had proved his innocence, the law was unresolved on whether that would have saved him from the death penalty if his original prosecution did not violate constitutional fair trial standards.
snip
Come again??
Respectfully snipped by me for relevance...
Perhaps I can shed a little light on this, having volunteered on several Innocence Project cases in the Commonwealth of Virginia.
Each state (and the federal government) has something called Procedural Rules and these rules have NOTHING whatsoever to do with innocence or facts in the case. If a person is taken to trial, sometimes the jury doesn't always get it right (See Casey Anthony Trial
). When the jury does not get it right, the burden of proof is no longer on the state and now shifts to the defendant. However, the defendant needs, not only to prove their innocence, but they must also get around whatever procedural rules are in place.
I admit up front that the procedural rules in GA are something that I am unfamiliar with, but just to give an example, one of the procedural rules in Virginia is Rule 1.1 of the Virginia Supreme Court, also known as the 21 day rule, which states:
"All final judgments, orders and decrees, irrespective of court, shall remain under the control of the trial court and subject to be modified, vacated, or suspended, for twenty-one days after the date of entry, and no longer. Notwithstanding the finality of the judgment, in a criminal case the trial court may postpone execution of the sentence in order to give the accused an opportunity to apply for a writ of error and supersedes such postponement, however, shall not extend the time limits hereinafter prescribed for applying for a writ of error. The date of entry of any final judgment, order or decree shall be the date the judgment, order or decree is signed by the judge."
In a nutshell, without the legal mumbo-jumbo, this means that if there is evidence that proves your innocence then you must find it and have it submitted to the original trial court within 21 days of your conviction. Anything that is discovered after that 21 days is inadmissible in court and forever barred from judicial review. You could be convicted of a murder, sentenced to death and if someone comes in on day number 22 and admits that they committed the crime and gives details that would only be known to the killer, that you did not know...you are sadly out of luck. The US Supreme Court is not even allowed to look at your evidence, because the appeals courts and the state and US Supreme Court are not allowed to look at anything that was not reviewed by the original trial court, which loses jurisdiction (meaning they lose the right to look) after the 21 days have passed.
Recently, there was a case here where two people were convicted of a murder. They each gave a different version of the events and blamed each other for the crime. Years later, one of the defendants claimed to have found God in prison and although he could care less if his former friend spent the rest of his life in prison, he had to come forward so that he could get right with God. He confessed fully to both the murder and framing the other defendant and the story he gave in his new confession matched the original story given by the other defendant. We have since changed the laws to allow a defendant one shot to prove their innocence, however, his request was denied because the VA Supreme court claimed that the innocent defendant could have had nefarious intent to do something to the person later on in the night had she not already been killed. They claimed that the guilty defendant's admission to the entire thing did not mean that a reasonable juror would not have thought that the innocent one might not have been guilty of something else that he wasn't even charged for and therefore, he was still guilty of felony murder and would sit there for the 82 years he was sentenced to--which I might add was 10 more years that the guilty defendant.
We actually used to have an attorney general here who said "Evidence of Innocence is irrelevant!" when speaking of a death row inmate whose evidence of innocence was found more than 21 days after trial.
Like I said above, this is just an example, because I don't know the procedural rules in GA. This is just to show how these things sometimes happen. There are procedural rules in every state that could cause an innocent person to languish in prison for year, if not be executed. Sometimes procedure trumps justice. This is why court appointed attorneys should have lighter cases loads and be able to investigate all of the evidence thoroughly before trial.