The US Supreme Court rejected a last-ditch request to halt the execution on Wednesday of a Georgia death row inmate convicted of murdering a police officer in a high-profile death penalty case.
The nation’s highest court refused to stay the execution of Troy Davis, who had been scheduled to die by lethal injection at 7 p.m. EDT (2300 GMT) at a prison in Jackson, Georgia.
The case has attracted international attention and an online protest that has accumulated nearly a million signatures because of doubts expressed in some quarters over whether he killed police officer Mark MacPhail in 1989.
MacPhail was shot and killed outside a Burger King restaurant in Savannah, Georgia, as he went to the aide of a homeless man who was being beaten. MacPhail’s family say Davis is guilty and should be executed.
Outside Georgia Diagnostic and Classification prison earlier, hundreds of protesters chanted «Please don’t let Troy Davis die» and «I am Troy Davis» and other slogans and a cheer briefly went up when it was reported that the execution had been delayed.
But they greeted news from the Supreme Court with silence, prayers and tears.
It took the court more than four hours to issue its one-sentence order, an unusually long time in such cases.
Brian Kammer, a lawyer for Davis, said in seeking a stay from the Supreme Court that newly available evidence revealed false, misleading and inaccurate information was presented at the trial, «rendering the convictions and death sentence fundamentally unreliable.»
«Our hearts go out to them (MacPhail’s family). We have nothing but sympathy and prayers for them but they are not getting justice if the wrong person is paying for what happened to their son, their brother,» civil rights leader Al Sharpton told reporters at the prison.
Since Davis’s conviction, seven of nine witnesses have changed or recanted their testimony, some have said they were coerced by police to testify against him and some say another man committed the crime.
No physical evidence linked Davis to the killing.
A handful of supporters of capital punishment in the case also protested separately from Davis’ supporters.
«I came here today because I want to see justice done. I am very sensitive to law officers getting hurt and injured in the line of duty,» said Janet Reisenwitz, who said her daughter is a police officer in Georgia’s DeKalb County.
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