Antione Williams worked as night janitor at the Burger King. He had just pulled into the parking lot to begin his shift at 1 a.m. when he witnessed Young's assault. According to Williams' August 19, 1989 statement to the police, he did not see the color of the shirt worn by the attacker, but he did see that the man with the gun “ran in front of [Young] and slapped him across the head with the gun.” Then shots ran out, causing Williams to seek shelter under the dash of his car.
For the next ten days, Williams looked at the wanted poster displayed at his place of employment before being asked to make a selection from the photo array which included the same photo of Davis. He selected Davis, but was only 60% sure.
When Williams recanted, he said he had “no idea what the shooter looked like” and “couldn’t really tell what was going on because he had the two darkest shades of tint that you could possibly have on the windows of [his] car” when the shooting occurred. “Even today I know that I could not honestly identify with any certainty who shot the officer that night. I couldn’t then either. At Troy Davis’ trial, I identified him as the person who shot the officer. Even when I said that, I was totally unsure whether he was the person that shot the officer. I felt pressure to point at him because he was the only one sitting in the courtroom.”
It would be extremely generous to call Williams' selection of Davis an "educated guess" when he had the answer to the test staring him in the face for 10 days prior to the test. How hard could it been to pick this photo from a group of five pictures after spending 10 days looking at this wanted poster? The fact that Williams was only 60% sure after such extensive pre-identification exposure should cause any reasonable person to treat this "identification" as highly unreliable.
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