The Supreme Court refused to hear Troy Davis’s death penalty appeal. From SCOTUSblog:

In appealing to the Supreme Court, Davis’ lawyers urged the Court to issue a definitive ruling — something it had only assumed previously — that the Eighth Amendment creates a right of an innocnet person not to be executed.

Does that really not go without saying? Why doesn’t the court have the guts to say it?
Whenever I discuss the death penalty with people who are for it, they always say that there are so many appeals an innocent person would never be convicted.
Because clearly the real world works like that.