Georgia’s parole board has temporarily halted the execution of convicted cop killer Troy Anthony Davis less than 24 hours before he was scheduled to die by lethal injection, says the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The board issued a 90-day stay of execution after a nine-hour closed-door clemency hearing in which last-minute questions of his innocence were raised. The board said it would “not allow an execution to proceed in this state unless and until its members are convinced that there is no doubt as to the guilt of the accused.”
The police officer’s widow told the Associated Press that the board was “setting a precedent for all criminals that it is perfectly fine to kill a cop and get away with it.” Davis still faces execution unless the parole board commutes his sentence to life in prison, with or without parole, before the stay is up. Seven of nine witnesses who helped implicate Davis have recanted their testimony while others have come forward to say it wasn’t Davis who shot Savannah officer Mark Allen MacPhail to death in 1989.