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The only witnesses who fully recanted were two who recanted by affadavit but then were not put forward to offer live testimony by Davis at the evidentiary hearing, most likely because their recantations were written by lawyers and wouldn’t hold up under cross-examination. The other was a jailhouse snitch whose original testimony at trial didn’t match the large number of eyewitnesses who testified. In other words, he was lying at trial, so his recantation may be real, but it doesn’t matter because he wasn’t believable in the first place. Here are the people who “recanted”:

Antoine Williams - never said that his statements to police were false, but simply said he couldn’t remember what he said. He also claimed that he was pressured to say that Davis was the shooter, but at the evidentiary hearing, he backed off that claim and said nobody pressured him to say anything. He also said that his memory would have been better closer in time to the crime.

Kevin McQueen - the jailhouse snitch

Jeffery Sapp - a friend of the defendant. He recanted his prior testimony that Davis had confessed to him, but the judge found him not to be credible. For instance, he claimed not to know what RAH stood for, although long ago he had testified that it stood for Rough As Hell.

Darrell Collins - he recanted but did not recant his identification of Davis as the man in the white shirt. Because all the witnesses consistently agreed that the man in the white shirt was the shooter, the judge took this as a confirmation of Davis’ guilt. Plus, Collins never said that Davis was the shooter, and the judge made the point that if Collins’ testimony were truly coerced as he claimed, then surely he would have been coerced to claim Davis was the shooter.

Harriett Murray - recanted in an unnotarized affadavit, begrudgingly obtained, where she wouldn’t even wait for a notary to be found to swear to her affadavit. This recantation was only on a minor point - that she now thinks that the person who argued with Mr. Young was the one who slapped him and shot the officer. At trial, the person arguing with Young was a different person than the one who slapped him and shot McPhail. Oh, and Murray died before the evidentiary hearing, so she couldn’t testify in person. The judge made an important point - if she had any idea that her affadavit would result in an innocent man being released, she surely would have allowed them to get a notary. The judge took that to be an indication that she wasn’t really recanting at all in her identification of Davis as the shooter.

Dorothy Ferrell - completely recanted by affadavit, but Davis did not call her to testify at the evidentiary hearing despite the fact that she was there and waiting to be called. Because she had no connections to Davis at all, the judge actually said that she “should have been” his “star witness” if he’d called her to the stand. That raises questions about why she was not called to the stand.

Larry Young - the man who was assaulted that led to the shooting. He claimed that his testimony at trial was coerced. Again, his affadavit of recantation held little value, in the judge’s mind, because he was available to testify at the evidentiary hearing and was not called as a witness.

The overwhelming evidence is that Davis was the shooter, and the facts at the trial made that very clear. The recantations and other “evidence” offered by Davis do not exonerate him.