somberly, and heaven knows texas carts them off some mistakes have definitely been made. if we execute troy davis tonight and i say we for good reason. these executions are carried out in the public s name, we could well be making another mistake. reverend sharpton, i have great respect for your passion. i don t always agree with you, but let me ask you about this case. when you got into this case and sympathized enough to visit with the accused. when you sat down with this fella. i remember shaw sharon redemption they say everybody says they re innocent. when he told you he was innocent, what made you believe him? what made me believe him was
go back and look at. i guess it s the arguments that we non-lawyers don t get, that when you appeal a case you re not looking at a view of the guilt or innocence, but whether he had a fair trial. if it looks like a fair trial, you re stuck with it, right? that s the limits of our system. exactly. okay. thanks, pete. we ll be watching with you. thanks so much. we ll be back to you, probably. bob barr was a longtime conservative republican congressman who i don t believe you have a theoretically objection to execution, right? i think that properly applied and with proper safeguards, it is an appropriate punishment. what do you think of this case? in this case, i don t think it s present to carry out the execution, because there has been very substantial evidence of innocent that has been raised in this case.
overwhelming evidence in this case was eyewitness testimony. not only is eyewitness testimony among the most unreliable of testimony, but in the circumstances of this case, it really does race substantial questions, and when you couple that with the vast majority of the witnesses, not just one or two, but the vast majority of witnesses have recanted. certainly in my mind and the minds of other that have joined in this effort raises a sufficient sequel to implore the board of pardoning and paroles to stop the execution or at least have the courts stop it. hold on, congressman. this whole idea of recanting, it s a very sort of miss evil term, recanting. sounds like something to do with
penchant point of view. it seems to me thanh did a great job there. the facts presented at trial. under oath, with a jury watching, the guy was convicted with nine witnesses saying show. all it sounds like an easy case to be a jury on, then all these years later, it s like disappearing ink. the pen was wet back then, it happened, he was convicted. he was. you know, look, flat-out i think this is an illustration of why the death penalty is wrong. and it took me a while to get to that position, and you have to say it s wrong not just for troy davis, but it s also wrong for the other gentleman who was excused tonight in texas, the guy that killed james byrd. a famous case. a horrific case.
it. he also communicated to the board of pa rolls and pardon here, that he had a lot of trouble with this case. you know, the saved gan are not working. to finish that story that i was telling you, we can now prove, we have a dna test, in the case of claude jones that shows that the evidence does not support of conviction of this guy. the tragedy of it is that president bush on december 7th, 2000, was not even told by his legal staff that this guy, jones lawyers had been seeking the dna test. we finally found it through a press lawsuit years later. this issue is not going to die, chris, because it s coming up in the campaign. there s very substantial evidence that governor rick perry in 2004 excused todd willingham, notwithstanding the fact that he had an expert