Georgia was today set to execute a man convicted of murdering a police officer in one of the highest-profile US capital punishment cases in years.
Troy Davis was set to be executed by lethal injection at 7pm Wednesday local time but the execution was delayed for more than two hours while the US Supreme Court considered whether to hear a last-minute appeal by his lawyers.
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, 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.
The demonstrations, which began in the early afternoon, took place amid a heavy police presence and at least two people were arrested.
"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.
Once a death warrant was signed, Davis's best hope of avoiding execution had rested with the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles but on Tuesday it denied him clemency following a one-day hearing.
On Wednesday, his lawyers requested a polygraph in a bid to halt the execution and show his innocence, but prison officials rejected the entreaty.
The lawyers also filed a motion to stay in the county where the execution is set to take place. That was denied and Georgia's Supreme Court later turned down an appeal, according to media reports.
Defence lawyers appealed that ruling to the US Supreme Court, said Sara Totonchi, executive director of the Southern Center for Human Rights.
Defendants in capital cases in Georgia are much less likely to face the death penalty if they can afford legal counsel and Davis was assigned a court-appointed lawyer who was overworked and underfunded, Totonchi said.
"Davis was poor, from a poor neighborhood and was given a court-appointed lawyer at a time when Georgia was providing next to no funding (for the defence in capital cases) ... He slipped through the cracks," she said.
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.
