Death Row Inmate Wants Fourth Appeal

Georgia death row inmate Troy Davis has already been spared from execution three times. On Tuesday, his lawyers hope to push his extraordinary case one more step toward his exoneration when they ask a federal panel to let them file another appeal of his death sentence.

As they have argued before, Davis' lawyers will tell the three-judge panel of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals that their client was the victim of mistaken identity, and note that seven of nine key witnesses that testified against him in the 1991 trial have recanted their statements.

But the hearing likely won't focus entirely on whether Davis was rightly convicted of the 1989 murder of Savannah Police Officer Mark MacPhail.

Instead it could turn on whether federal law allows the 40-year-old's attorneys to call for a new trial at all. Davis' lawyers have struggled to convince a judge at any level to grant him another hearing on claims that he is innocent, partly because much of the evidence they say could lead to his exoneration was revealed after Davis was convicted.

The hearing offers them a ripe opportunity to argue that federal laws allow them to pursue such a challenge at this late stage in the process.

Attorneys for the state say this type of appeal, called a stand-alone innocence claim, could have been made long before Davis' team filed a motion for a new trial in Savannah's Chatham County last year.

And they say the courts reviewing the case have already ruled that Davis won't meet high legal standards for a new trial.