No decision on Davis clemency request

ATLANTA — The State Board of Pardons and Paroles spent much of Monday listening to evidence about whether it should grant clemency to Troy Anthony Davis, sentenced to death for the 1989 shooting death of an off-duty Savannah police officer.

However, the  board will not hand down a decision today, according to reports on ajc.com and savannahnow.com.

Davis, 41, faces a Sept. 21 execution at the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison in Jackson.

Davis was sentenced to death for the August 1989 shooting death of off-duty Savannah police Officer Mark Allen MacPhail. However, his execution has been postponed several times pending appeals, and his supporters have organized countless vigils and marches, contending that he has been wrongly convicted. They point to a number of prosecution witnesses who have recanted their testimony since the original 1991 trial, according to published reports.

The board has the power to commute a sentence to life or life without parole or it could take no action.

Arguments over the testimony that led to Davis’ conviction and death sentence prompted the U.S. Supreme Court in August 2009 to order a federal court judge to “make findings of fact as to whether evidence that could not have been obtained at the time of trial clearly establishes (Davis’) innocence.” A federal judge in August 2010 ruled Davis “is not innocent.”