Troy Davis executed by Georgia

UPDATE: Georgia executed Troy Davis Wednesday night, despite an 11th-hour legal appeal and an international campaign to save him from death row.

The U.S. Supreme Court rejected late Wednesday an appeal by Troy Davis to stay his execution in Georgia, The New York Times reports.

The inmate, whose case has stirred national debate on the death penalty, is expected to be executed Wednesday night, CNN reports.

Davis has been sentenced to death by the state of Georgia for the 1989 murder of an off-duty police officer. He filed an eleventh-hour plea Wednesday asking the Supreme Court to stop his execution.

Davis was scheduled to die by lethal injection at 7 p.m. but as the hour passed, Georgia prison officials were still waiting for the court's decision.

According to the AP:

Davis' supporters staged vigils in the U.S. and Europe, declaring "I am Troy Davis" on signs, T-shirts and the Internet. Some tried increasingly frenzied measures, urging prison workers to stay home and even posting a judge's phone number online, hoping people will press him to put a stop to the 7 p.m. lethal injection. President Barack Obama deflected calls for him to get involved. 

Davis' family, the Times reports, screamed of joy when they heard that the execution was delayed.

"This is an enormous victory for faith, for human rights," said a tearful Larry Cox, the executive director of Amnesty International minutes after the stay was announced. But knowing it might only be temporary tempered his reaction. 

The case of Troy Davis, a black man convicted of murdering police officer Mark MacPhail outside a Burger King restaurant in Savannah, has attracted international attention.

The pope, South Africa's Desmond Tutu and former President Jimmy Carter are among thousands of influential dignitaries, and more than 600,000 people in total, who have signed a petition seeking to stop Davis' execution.

An online protest that has accumulated nearly a million signatures because of doubts expressed in some quarters over whether he killed MacPhail, Reuters reports.

After Davis' death sentence was handed down, his lawyers filed a federal court appeal, insisting there was "no physical evidence linking" him to MacPhail’s murder.

According to CNN:

They called the testimony of a ballistics expert that shell casings from another shooting by Davis matched casings found at the murder scene an "unremarkable conclusion" since the murder weapon was not found.

However, the Georgia prosecutor who put Davis on trial in 1991, Spencer Lawton, the former Chatham County prosecutor, has lamented that there are two conflicting cases when it comes to Troy Davis. He told CNN:

"There is the legal case, the case in court, and the public relations case.

"We have consistently won the case as it has been presented in court. We have consistently lost the case as it has been presented in the public realm, on TV and elsewhere." 

The Times quoted Benjamin T. Jealous, the N.A.A.C.P. president, meantime as saying Wednesday that the delay was "a miracle itself."