The Troy Davis case concerns the case of Troy Anthony Davis, a former sports coach from the U.S. state of Georgia, who was convicted and sentenced to death in 1991 for the August 19, 1989 murder of off-duty Savannah police officer Mark MacPhail solely on the basis of eyewitness testimonies. No physical evidence linked him to the murder, and the weapon used in the crime was never found. Throughout the trial and subsequent appeals, Davis maintained his innocence, claiming he was wrongfully convicted of the crime as a result of false identification.

After the trial and first set of appeals, seven of the nine prosecution eyewitnesses who had linked Davis to the killing recanted or contradicted their original trial testimony, claiming police coercion and questionable interrogation tactics. The witness who first implicated Davis and has remained consistent, Sylvester "Redd" Coles, was initially a suspect in the crime. Coles was seen acting suspiciously the night of MacPhail's murder and has been heard boasting that he killed an off-duty police officer. There is only one witness who did not recant his testimony and is not himself a suspect in the murder, but he made an in-court identification of Davis two years after the crime. Whereas on the night of the shooting the witness stated that he could not recognize the shooter, but two years later the witness made an in court identification of Davis.

Davis has repeatedly asked the courts to examine the new exculpatory evidence, but so far has not been successful in persuading a majority of judges to grant him a new trial or conduct a hearing in which the recanting eyewitnesses could be cross-examined to determine the credibility of Davis’ innocence claims.