Whether you agree or disagree with the death penalty, I really don’t see how the Troy Davis case (the latest: the prison officials won’t offer him a polygraph test, apparently out of fear it might contradict their plans to kill him) does anything but show that the Georgia system is flawed. When seven of nine eyewitnesses recant their trial testimony, that in itself should be enough to cause reasonable doubt as to Davis’s guilt.

Like most of these cases, I think this is the political system’s attempt to cover its backside by refusing to admit its district attorney and prosecutors got the case wrong in the first place.