Last year, SCOTUS did an amazing thing. They accepted an original writ of habeas corpus from a man claiming he was on death row and innocent and could prove it in federal court. Now, generally, that sort of claim is raised in state court and dealt with through subsequent writs. SCOTUS issued an order for a federal district court judge to do some evidence collecting and find out if the man was innocent. It has been about 50 years since something like that has happened in SCOTUS. Here is that judge's answer (or part of it in the very long opinion):

"Ultimately," the judge concluded, "while Mr. Davis's new evidence casts some additional, minimal doubt on his conviction, it is largely smoke and mirrors. The vast majority of the evidence at trial remains intact, and the new evidence is largely not credible or lacking in probative value."

Details.

I read through part of the opinion, and the judge did a great job of detailing all of Davis's evidence and why none of it meant what his supports claimed it did. Especially the much-vaunted "seven of nine witnesses against him have totally recanted!" The judge lays out exactly how their new testimony varies from their old and why several of the "recantations" were completely incredible. My favorite were the two "star witnesses"...whose evidence only came from affidavits, even though they were sitting outside ready to testify at the hearing, because the defense didn't want to risk them being cross-examined.

Not that any of this matters to the anti-death penalty zealots, of course.

I'm just wondering when the TV and newspapers will be covering this case. Headline: Death Row Inmate Lied. Or when the anti-DP blogs will be apologizing.

This case is a good example of how the media bias against the DP works. If the federal judge finds innocence, that's news. If a DP inmate lies (and those lies are amplified and spun out by lawyers and anti-DP advocates), it's not news. It's just part of the game.

Why? Because it doesn't further the anti-DP agenda of the media.