Authorities in Georgia have delayed the execution of a US death row inmate hours before he was due to die by lethal injection to allow officials to analyze evidence presented by defense lawyers.
The Georgia state parole board said late on Monday it granted a temporary stay of execution after a clemency hearing in the case of Troy Davis, 38, a black man convicted of killing a white police officer in 1989. Several witnesses who once testified against him now say they lied under oath.
The State Board of Pardons and Paroles "voted to grant a stay not to exceed 90 days" to allow members to review evidence submitted by defense lawyers and decide if the execution should go ahead, the board said on its website.
"I'm elated," Davis told reporters by phone after the decision, US media reported. "I'm blessed and thankful. I'm one step closer to my freedom."
Davis was sentenced to death in 1991 for the fatal shooting of off-duty police officer Mark McPhails, 27, who was killed when he tried to break up a melee in the parking lot of a fast-food restaurant in Savannah, Georgia while he was moonlighting as a security guard at a neighboring establishment.
Twenty years old at the time of the shooting, Davis, who was singled out by several witnesses as the triggerman, told investigators that although he had been at the crime scene, he had no role in the killing.
In the years since his conviction, seven of nine witnesses have changed their stories, and now insist Davis was not the gunman. They said earlier statements implicating him had been coerced by strongarm police tactics.
In his trial, prosecutors presented no murder weapon or physical evidence.
Despite the new evidence, no state or federal court has been willing to hear Davis's case again. The US Supreme Court denied his petition for an appeal in June.
Human rights advocates in the United States and abroad, who have urged Georgia's parole board to spare Davis's life, have denounced a criminal justice system unwilling to hear new evidence that could exonerate death row inmates who possibly have been falsely convicted.
"It is deeply troubling to me that Georgia might proceed with this execution, given the strong claims of innocence in this case," said Sister Helen Prejean, who gained international fame as the compassionate Catholic nun who counseled a death row inmate in the state of Louisiana in the book and film "Dead Man Walking."
"We must confront the unalterable fact that the system of capital punishment is fallible, given that it is administered by fallible human beings," she said.
Prejean called Davis's inability to have his conviction reviewed in court a "textbook case" for capital punishment reform -- if not an outright ban.
Amnesty International also lobbied on Davis's behalf.
"By refusing to review serious claims of innocence, the Supreme Court has revealed catastrophic flaws in the US death penalty machine," said Larry Cox, executive director of Amnesty International's US chapter.
Former FBI director William Sessions submitted a written clemency appeal on Davis's behalf, while a member of the US Congress, Representative John Lewis, testified in person before the parole board.
"Nobody should be put to death based on the evidence we now have in this case," said Lewis, a prominent civil rights activist since the 1960s.
"The case against Mr. Davis ... is a shambles," he said.
South African Nobel laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu also spoke out against the planned execution, while the Council of Europe Monday urged the United States not to commit what it said would be a error it would come to regret.
"The execution of Troy Davis ... could become famous as an irreversible mistake and a tragic miscarriage of justice," read a council statement Monday.
