The Georgia Board of Pardons and Parole has denied clemency for death-row inmate Troy Davis.
Davis was convicted of the 1989 killing of Savannah, Georgia, police officer Mark MacPhail.
Davis is scheduled to be executed by lethal injection at 7 p.m. Wednesday at a state prison in Jackson, Georgia.
"Monday September 19, 2011, the State Board of Pardons and Paroles met to consider a clemency request from attorneys representing condemned inmate Troy Anthony Davis. After considering the request, the Board has voted to deny clemency," the board said in a statement Tuesday morning.
The five-member parole board votes in a secret ballot.
Davis has gained international support for his long-standing claim that he did not kill MacPhail. International figures including Pope Benedict XVI, Desmond Tutu, and former President Jimmy Carter, entertainers such as Susan Sarandon, Harry Belafonte, and the Indigo Girls, and others have joined with Amnesty International, the NAACP and other groups in supporting Davis' efforts to be exonerated.
He has been scheduled to die three times before, most recently in October 2008, when the U.S. Supreme Court granted a stay two hours before he was to be executed.
Since Davis' conviction in 1991, seven of the nine witnesses against him have recanted or contradicted their testimony. There also have been questions about the physical evidence - and, according to some, the lack thereof - linking Davis to the killing.
Amnesty International reacted angrily to the clemency denial on Tuesday.
"It is unconscionable that the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles has denied relief to Troy Davis. Allowing a man to be sent to death under an enormous cloud of doubt about his guilt is an outrageous affront to justice," Amnesty International said in a statement Tuesday.
"Should Troy Davis be executed, Georgia may well have executed an innocent man and in so doing discredited the justice system," the statement said.
But the victim's mother, Anne MacPhail, said she's satisfied that Davis will be executed.
"Well, justice is done, that's the way we look at it. That's what we wanted," the mother told CNN. "I am very convinced that he is guilty."
She said she would not attend Davis' execution but family members would be there.
Anne MacPhail said she has not forgiven the convicted of killing her son.
"Not yet, maybe sometime," she said.
The NAACP and Georgians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty had joined Amnesty International in organizing support for Davis, setting up about 300 rallies, vigils and events worldwide in the past week or so. In addition, they said that more than 1 million people have signed a petition in support of Davis' bid to be exonerated.
In a 2008 statement, then-Chatham County District Attorney Spencer Lawton described how Davis was at a pool party in Savannah when he shot another man, Michael Cooper, wounding him in the face. Davis was then driven to a nearby convenience store, where he pistol-whipped a homeless man, Larry Young, who'd just bought a beer.
Soon thereafter, prosecutors said, MacPhail - who was working in uniform, off-duty, at a nearby bus station and restaurant - arrived. It was then, the jury determined, that Davis shot the officer three times, including once in the face as he stood over him.
Davis' lawyers, in a federal court filing, insisted that there is "no physical evidence linking" Davis to MacPhail's murder. They point, too, to "the unremarkable conclusion" of a ballistics expert who testified that he could not find definitively that the bullets that wounded Cooper and killed MacPhail were the same.
Georgia's attorney general, in an online statement, claimed that the expert said the bullets came from the same gun type and noted that casings at the pool party shooting matched - thus came from the same firearm as - those found at MacPhail's murder scene.
Two decades ago, a jury convicted Davis on two counts of aggravated assault and one each of possessing a firearm during a crime, obstructing a law enforcement officer and murder. The latter charge led, soon thereafter, to his death sentence.
While reviewing Davis' claims of innocence last year, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Georgia found that Davis "vastly overstates the value of his evidence of innocence."
"Some of the evidence is not credible and would be disregarded by a reasonable juror," Judge William T. Moore wrote in a 172-page opinion. "Other evidence that Mr. Davis brought forward is too general to provide anything more than smoke and mirrors."
The parole board denied had denied Davis clemency once before. The board has never changed its mind on any case in the past 33 years.
Read more CNN coverage on the Troy Davis case
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Congrats, white people of Georgia. Keeping lynching legal thru 2011.
stop playing the race card here. I dont believe in the DP but race has nothing to do with this. Anyway if Amnesty Internation fought for clemency for him, then its probably true that he is innocent – after all, they dont step up to the plate for someone they believe is guilty of a murder.......
Don't be a fool – if everyone in Georgia was happy about this you wouldn't be reading this story. Savannah has a decent justice system and isn't known for railroading, and that's why this case stands out.
Wow @ some of these comments. When issues like this come up it shows just how divided we really are as americans. It seems as long as we pass bad values down to our childrens there will always be the blk and white issue. This case should not been seen as a race issue, rather if someone is being put to death that may be innocent. I for one do not believe in the DP, becasue what gives the state the right to kill someone if we preach that killing is wrong. The gentleman has made some horrible decisions in his life, there is not doubt about that. The question at hand is did he kill the officer. We need to teach our children right from wrong, that way they are never put in postions where there innocence is in doubt. At the end of the day Mr. Davis fate here in this hateful world has been decided. His focus not should be how he will be juged in the next world. God be with us all.
LOL
I don't know if he did it or not, but you can't "unkill" a person. You better be 1000% sure.
What happened to democracy? With almost a million signatures, the Pope, and major human rights organizations like Amnesty International rallying for another trial, FIVE people get to decide this man's fate?? Sickening.
Remind me never to step food in Georgia. If someone can look at me dirty and have me executed despite having reasonable doubt in this day an age...
No wonder America has become such a laughingstock to other countries. They are progressing while we are slowly bleeding out, perpetuating ignorance and supporting senseless murders and all the things we used to abhor and scold other 'backwards' and 'less developed' nations for taking part in.
Juice him get closure for that family. I'm so sick of the race finger pointing! Who cares we are all the same...human! Now juice his ass!
When the history books are written, will those who had an opportunity to right a wrong be viewed as having done so? It seems that it might be better to allow a guilty person to serve a life sentence than to kill an innocent man.....
regardless of whehter it was a cop killed or another random individual his track of violence is evident and should not be ignored. Shooting someone in the face is bad enough. We should go back to an eye for an eye justice system...
This is nothing more than a modern day lynching. may the most high send more tornadoes, floods fires, and drop more planes and stages on these wicked people.
So according to you any person who is Black, and due to the color of their skin, is automatically innocent no matter if they commit a crime but you would still wish disasters anyway for others to contend with when justice has been served. What kind of a person are you other than extremely biased in favor of a person's race!
Murder someone, get executed. Race has nothing to do with it.
Do sloppy and unprofessional police work, be you a cop or a prosecutor, and you should be held accountable. Guilt or innocence has nothing to do with it.
"Old times there are not forgotten look away look away look away Dixie Land". Heck we'll just keep killing people until we get one right!! Especially them black ones!!
Why did 7 of 9 witnesses recant their statements? When did they recant? What was their justification? Perhaps they were pressured by all the media attention. Perhaps they realized they had some influence? 7 of 9 witnesses said they lied before, what makes everyone so positive their not lying now? Who knows how many people this useless POS would have killed or maimed had he not been put in jail back.
What really gets me is the media and defense lawyers posting pictures of these bespectacled, cleaned up gang-bangers when they should be showing them in their normal street attire. Anyone can put lipstick on a pig.
"Why did 7 of 9 witnesses recant their statements? When did they recant? What was their justification? Perhaps they ..."
Rather than speculate, why don't you look it up? This article said, at one point today (though it doesn't any longer for some reason), that at least some of the witnesses claim that the prosecution and the police pressured them (e.g. threatened to jail them on minor infractions because they were on parole if they didn't finger Davis in court), and also that one of the two witnesses that has not yet recanted may actually be the shooter.
This garbage, already had shot one person and then viciously attacked a homeless person for no reason, but you racists want to say he's innocent of killing a police officer? Get a life, the criminal is getting what he deserves. The NAACP should be sued to recover tax money used to stay this creatures life.
Read carefully what the Judge had to say about this case. Then also read carefully what Georgia's Attorney General had to say after reviewing the evidence. This is why we have the DEATH PENALTY in the United States of America, to administer JUSTICE to those who have been convicted of committing crimes. We cannot judge a person by how they look or their skin color or who seeks to protect them solely on that basis but for what they did and if a jury found them guilty, those are the people who listened to every shred of the evidence presented and who know the *facts* about the case and have ruled from those facts which were presented. May God have mercy on his soul.
Am I reading this correctly? He admits, or at lease there is no doubt, that he shot a man in the face at a pool party, then pistol-whipped another man? Not an upstanding young man, is he? Execute him...long overdue.
I shot the sheriff, but I did not shoot no deputy...