Another Follow Up of the Day: Despite a slew of last-ditch efforts, including an appeal to the Supreme Court of the United States, death row inmate Troy Davis was executed by lethal injection at Georgia Diagnostic Prison near Jackson, Georgia, at precisely 11:08 PM tonight.
A moment of jubilation for supporters came and went as the Supreme Court temporarily delayed the execution so that it could issue its ruling. At around 10:20 PM it was officially announced: There would be no stay.
Doubts about Davis’s guilt stemming from potentially flawed ballistic evidence and the recantations of several witnesses who blamed police pressure on their initial statement were not enough to persuade neither Georgia’s Supreme Court nor its national counterpart to halt the execution of the man convicted in 1991 of murdering off-duty police officer Mark MacPhail.
An earlier request for an additional pardons board hearing was also denied, as was a request to allow Davis to take a polygraph test. “He has had ample time to prove his innocence,” said MacPhail’s widow Joan MacPhail-Harris, “and he is not innocent.”
The White House declined to comment, saying “it is not appropriate for the President of the United States to weigh in on specific cases.”
According to the Georgia Department of Corrections, Davis is the 29th inmate to be put to death by lethal injection since the state reinstated the death penalty in 1973. There are presently 99 men and one woman on Georgia’s death row.
[ajc / ap / reuters / @jaketapper / gdc / photo: ap via cbsnews.]
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