Radio personality Neal Boortz Tuesday opined that we ought to be able to execute some criminals within weeks of their crimes, after some sort of presumably half-hearted administrative hearing.

It's a good bet that if Boortz had his way, Troy Davis would have been dead long ago.

It seemed so clear 18 years ago that the Georgia death row inmate was guilty, guilty, guilty of gunning down off-duty police officer Mark MacPhail in Savannah, Ga., after the part-time security guard came to the aid of a homeless man being accosted.

But since then, seven witnesses against Davis have recanted, and some have pointed to the prosecution's star witness as the possible killer.

Yes, the case has been debated for nearly two decades. Yes, several courts have turned away Davis' appeals.

But we should be prepared to go to the moon and back in order to avoid executing an innocent man. Every stone must be turned, every possibility fully explored, every alternative narrative put to rest to the extent possible. Justice demands no less of us.

So we welcome the U.S. Supreme Court's effective stay this week of Davis' sentence while a federal court investigates his claims of innocence.

"The substantial risk of putting an innocent man to death clearly provides an adequate justification for holding an evidentiary hearing," wrote Justice John Paul Stevens. "It 'would be an atrocious violation of our Constitution and the principles on which it is based' to execute an innocent person," he added, quoting another judge.

With doubts about this case both chronic and acute -- and an international coterie of luminaries such as the pope and former President Carter supporting Davis -- neither the state of Georgia nor capital punishment supporters worldwide need to have Davis made into a martyr.

Nor should we lose sight of the fact that a young family man was shot in cold blood precisely 20 years ago today.

No one is more adamant in pursuit of justice and just punishments than this editorial page. As such, we sympathize deeply with the family of Officer MacPhail. It must be beyond maddening to see this case draw out even beyond 20 years.

And yet, we shouldn't want retribution so much as justice. The former suffers more from lengthy delays than the latter. Injustice is available at the snap of a finger; justice takes much longer.

The U.S. Supreme Court's historic intervention -- it rarely plucks a case that has yet to work its way through the federal appeals court system -- means that the Davis case will be played out to a sane and just conclusion while Davis still draws breath.

Neither side should be discouraged by that.