Polygraph for Troy Davis blocked, attorney says

Troy Anthony Davis enters a courtroom for a hearing Jan. 16, 1991, during his trial for the shooting death of off-duty police officer Mark MacPhail. / AP Photo/The Savannah Morning News

ATLANTA - A defense attorney says Georgia prison officials have blocked inmate Troy Davis from taking a polygraph test before his scheduled execution.

Attorney Stephen Marsh told The Associated Press on Wednesday that the Georgia Department of Corrections has denied his request to allow Davis to take a polygraph test. Davis is scheduled to die at 7 p.m. EDT Wednesday.

Davis has long claimed he is innocent of killing Mark MacPhail, an off-duty police officer working as a security guard in Savannah, Ga. But state and federal courts have repeatedly upheld his conviction.

Prosecutors and MacPhail's relatives say they have no doubt the right man is being punished.

Marsh had said he hoped the polygraph test would convince the state pardons board to reconsider a decision against clemency.

Troy Davis' lawyers filing execution-day appeal
Troy Davis clemency bid denied on execution eve

On Wednesday, supporters planned vigils outside Georgia's death row prison in Jackson and protests at U.S. embassies in Europe. Davis' attorneys planned another late appeal, this one aimed at blocking the execution by convincing a judge that some of the original evidence was questionable.

After winning three delays since 2007, Davis lost his most realistic chance at last-minute clemency this week when the state pardons board denied his request.

(At left, watch a "CBS Evening News" report on efforts to exonerate Davis)

Some witnesses who fingered him at trial as the shooter later recanted, and others who did not testify came forward to say another man did it. But a federal judge dismissed those changed and new accounts as "largely smoke and mirrors" after a hearing Davis was granted last year to argue for a new trial, which he did not win.

Davis didn't want a last meal. He planned to spend his final hours meeting with friends, family and supporters. According to an advocate who met with him late Tuesday, he was upbeat, prayerful and expected last-minute wrangling by attorneys.

Davis has received support from hundreds of thousands of people, including a former FBI director, former President Carter and Pope Benedict XVI. Some of his backers resorted to urging prison workers to strike or call in sick Wednesday, and they considered a desperate appeal for White House intervention. And some of Davis' supporters were considering whether to ask President Obama to intervene, a move that legal experts said was unlikely.

In Europe, where the planned execution has drawn widespread criticism, politicians and activists were making a last-minute appeal to the state of Georgia to refrain from executing Davis. Amnesty International and other groups planned a protest outside the U.S. Embassy in Paris later Wednesday and Amnesty also called a vigil outside the U.S. Embassy in London.

Parliamentarians and government ministers from the Council of Europe, the continent's human rights watchdog, called for Davis' sentence to be commuted. Renate Wohlwend of the Council's Parliamentary Assembly said that "to carry out this irrevocable act now would be a terrible mistake which could lead to a tragic injustice."

The U.S. Supreme Court gave him an unusual opportunity to prove his innocence last year, but his attorneys failed to convince a judge he didn't do it. State and federal courts have repeatedly upheld his conviction.

MacPhail's family lobbied the pardons board Monday to reject Davis' clemency appeal. The board refused to stop the execution a day later.

"He has had ample time to prove his innocence," said MacPhail's widow, Joan MacPhail-Harris. "And he is not innocent."

Spencer Lawton, the district attorney who secured Davis' conviction in 1991, said he was embarrassed for the judicial system that the execution has taken so long.

"What we have had is a manufactured appearance of doubt which has taken on the quality of legitimate doubt itself. And all of it is exquisitely unfair," said Lawton, who retired as Chatham County's head prosecutor in 2008. "The good news is we live in a civilized society where questions like this are decided based on fact in open and transparent courts of law, and not on street corners."

Davis supporters said they will push the pardons board to reconsider his case. They also asked Savannah prosecutors to block the execution, although Chatham County District Attorney Larry Chisolm said in a statement he was powerless to withdraw an execution order for Davis issued by a state Superior Court judge.

"We appreciate the outpouring of interest in this case; however, this matter is beyond our control," Chisolm said.

Davis' lawyers drew up a late appeal asking a local judge to block the execution over evidence they object to. Defense attorney Brian Kammer told The Associated Press he would file the appeal in Superior Court in Butts County, home of the state's death row, when it opens Wednesday.

The motion disputes testimony from a ballistics examiner who claimed that the bullets fired in a previous shooting that Davis was convicted of may have come from the same gun that fired at MacPhail. And it challenged eyewitness testimony from Harriet Murray, a witness who claimed at the trial to have identified Davis as the shooter.

It asks the court to vacate Davis' execution, or at least delay it by 90 days, on grounds that it was "based on false, misleading and materially inaccurate evidence."

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[bigcnote8]

the problem that comes to mind is when someone says a person is guilty no one looks for another person, they just stop at that. i have a friend locked up because they said he was identified as the person but guess what he was out of town when the situation went down, now is he guilty since they said he was...if so why? none of us really know what happened that day.

[JusticeIsNeeded]

I believe he was innocent! How could they give that man all them charges when they couldn't find a murder weapon or DNA?? its something fishy about that case!

[JusticeManforthis]

Execute the guy. Evidence is there. Shell Casings, blood on shorts, witnesses (some who 20 years later of coercion from relatives have changed their story (huh, I wonder why?), running from the scene, conviction of an earlier shooting, etc. Read the facts and see the light. Don't be fooled by all the hype.

[MZ_DIAMOND22]

SOME OF U PPL DNT GIVE A DAMN UNTIL IT HAPPENS TO SOMEONE CLOSE TO U HAVE A RUN IN WITH THE LAW AND U R NOT TREATED FAIRLY. WHY DENY THE LIE DETECTOR WOULDNT THAT TELL IT ALL I PRAY IT DOESNT HAPPEN CLOSE TO HOME WITH U.IGNORANCE IS NOT COOL

[noloyalisti]

If they were going to jump to conclusions about criminal guilt, half of the corporate CEOs in America and all of the Bush Crime Family would be gone by now.

[bobsniffer]

The truth about Davis is out and slaps the liberals in their stupid faces:

http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2011/09/20/prosecutor-says-he-has-no-doubt-about-troy-davis-guilt/

[noloyalisti]

Yeah, believe that ridiculous right wing corporate mainstream media propaganda!

[Mootoes]

Oh so THAT convinced me...not. He is the prosecutor...what on earth do you expect him to say? Anyway, I always say people who have to call names to get their point across have nothing intelligent to say. That is uncalled for and childish. Now if you can put on your big boy pants and look at the issues on your own instead of reading the words of one side, you might be able to understand.

[bobsniffer]

Davis has been on trial and re-trial, appeal and re-appeal, state courting and supreme courting, NAACPing and Amnesting for the last 20 years! Why don't we just keep tying it up until everyone including the victim's families die of old age so that the death penalty awarded by the court, and by state laws of Georgia are AVOIDED. Forget about the victim's rights and recompense. Why ? Because the convict is BLACK? It all about the color of the skin ain't it? Then why even arrest any black people at all for any crime at all ? Let the anarchy rule America. Because might and mob is RIGHT in the land of the liberal looneys.

[noloyalisti]

We are a barbaric backward country that deserves the 3rd world status we have attained. Why don't they get rid of the corporate CEOs, Banksters and Bush Crime Family war criminals instead. Now THAT would do good for America.

[belai123]

Shame on all of you for thinking this guy hasn't had justice. 4 appeals and a trial he was found guilty. Shame on those who have recated. I say make a trade: set him free and put those 8 who are recating in jail and watch their tune change.

[noloyalisti]

That's why they need to retry him, because of all those that we coerced by the police department to convict the wrong person. They now recanted their coerced testimony.

[qtom946]

Georgia prison officials, State of Georia---(Killer's)
Hope you sob's are happy now.....

[MZ_DIAMOND22]

RACIAL ALL DAY THE LAW SUCKS

[Candide8]

Georgia must be proud - Texas is no longer the only state to execute indiscriminately.