A new investigative report by the Columbia Human Rights Law Review reveals that Carlos DeLuna, who was executed by the state of Texas in 1989, was likely innocent as well. The full report, titled “Los Tocayos Carlos: An Anatomy of a Wrongful Execution,” can be viewed at CHRLR’s newly launched interactive website where readers can view all of the evidence cited in the article.

DeLuna, a poor Latino man described as having the intelligence of a child, was convicted of murdering Wanda Lopez, a 24-year-old single mother who was stabbed to death with a folding knife in 1983 while working behind the cash register at a gas station in Corpus Christi, Texas.

Lopez called 911 when her killer entered the store, leaving behind a recording of the encounter. She is heard answering a series of yes or no questions asked by the dispatcher about the creepy customer with the knife in his pocket and then whispering that he’s “standing right here at the counter” and “can’t talk,” followed by “Okay. This? Eighty-five,” in response to the customer. After more questions from the dispatcher, Lopez is heard pleading for her life and the line cuts off.

For all that, however, “Anatomy of Injustice” is also a blistering indictment of the death penalty. Assuming, dear reader, that you are yourself an opponent of capital punishment, it will only further cement your objections. It’s also a great book to hand to your less reflective or informed friends and relatives, the ones who may still support executions. Bonner, a Pulitzer-winning reporter who has long covered the issue for the New York Times and other publications, delivers a crackerjack feat of storytelling that steadily administers the truth about capital punishment like a slow, toxic IV drip.

The story begins with the discovery of a body in 1982: Handsome, well-off Dorothy Edwards, a 76-year-old widow and resident of rural Greenwood, S.C., who “could have passed for 56.” Her battered corpse was found in her closet by a neighbor. He helpfully pointed out to the police a beeping alarm clock, a full pot of automatically brewed coffee and an open copy of TV guide — all conspicuously pointing to a time of death — before suggesting that the 23-year-old man who’d recently washed Edwards’ windows seemed a likely culprit. Within days, the police had arrested Edward Lee Elmore, a soft-spoken, docile laborer of very limited intelligence, with the feeblest excuse for probable cause: Edwards had written Elmore a check and one of his fingerprints was found on the windows she’d paid him to clean. Do I even need to tell you that Edwards was white and Elmore black?

After that came a mockery of criminal investigation followed by a mockery of justice. The police failed to photograph the bed where they claimed Edwards had been brutally raped or to retain the bedsheets as evidence. Other evidence passed through an unusually large number of hands (some of them unaffiliated with the investigation), or disappeared and then eventually reappeared (or not). No one bothered to check out that so-helpful neighbor who discovered the body and recommended a suspect. The medical examiner delivered a convenient but highly improbable time of death in a report that an expert would later liken to the work of a “first-year intern.”

As for the public defenders initially assigned to Elmore’s case, one was a racist who referred to his client as “a red-headed nigger.” The other was, in the words of a detective convinced of Elmore’s guilt, “drunk through the whole trial.” The judge made no secret of wishing to wrap things up quickly. He allowed the father of a prosecutor’s best friend to sit on the jury and incorrectly informed the jurors that those who didn’t support the death penalty were obligated to recuse themselves. He also plainly indicated that he considered Elmore to be guilty. The locally powerful lead prosecutor engaged in a colorful array of misconduct. In a week, Elmore was sentenced to death.

Elmore’s advocates succeeded in overturning his conviction twice. He was awarded two additional trials. In the first he was assigned the same incompetent defense attorneys (Bonner describes it as a “video replay” of the original trial) and in the second (which was allowed to contest the sentencing only) a committed but inexperience defender was unable to outwit a wily, unscrupulous prosecutor to mitigate the penalty. Elmore’s case changed that young lawyer’s views on capital punishment by showing him a legal system plagued by outright finagling: “not human error,” he told Bonner, “but human manipulation … We don’t have the right as a civilized society to pass this judgment.”

Eventually, Elmore’s case came to the South Carolina Death Penalty Resource Center and Diana Holt, a freshly minted attorney at age 36. Holt had overcome a childhood and youth marred by sexual abuse, drugs and divorce. She was convinced of Elmore’s innocence and the further she and her colleagues pursued inquiries that should have been made by his original defense team, the more convinced they became.

Bonner is clear that most convicts on death row are guilty; at issue is not whether they committed the crime, but whether mitigating circumstances — in particular, mental deficiency — argue for life without parole. That death sentences will be appealed is taken for granted, but what Bonner underlines is the institutional defensiveness and inertia that makes those sentences so difficult to overturn. South Carolina judges were extremely reluctant to admit that South Carolina state attorneys and law enforcement could be negligent or deceitful, or their fellow judges remiss. A state attorney (like the one assigned to Elmore’s appeal) might one day expound on a prosecutor’s solemn duty to pursue justice not just victories, then battle fiercely to uphold a conviction even he can see is unjust.

Perhaps most appalling to the average citizen, the emergence of persuasive evidence of innocence after a conviction is often irrelevant to the appeals process. A condemned man’s defenders must instead rely on persuading judges that his constitutional rights were violated during his arrest or trial. “Innocence alone does not entitle a defendant to a new trial,” Bonner explains. While there are good reasons for this principle, it has led to such grotesqueries as a state lawyer arguing before the Missouri Supreme Court that an innocent man ought to be executed even if the court found “absolute” evidence exonerating him of the crime. (To their credit, the justices on that court ruled that “It is difficult to imagine a more manifestly unjust and unconstitutional result than permitting the execution of an innocent person.” Conservatives on the U.S. Supreme Court apparently disagree.)

In Bonner’s expert hands, the twists and turns of Elmore’s appeals, and the gradual discovery of the travesties in the original investigation and trial by Holt’s team, make for excruciatingly suspenseful reading. Perhaps some observers might object to the application of true-crime-style narrative devices to an issue so grave. But we love crime novels and courtroom dramas for the same reasons that we ought to care about the perversion that is capital punishment in America; all of us, deep down, want to see justice done. If it takes a Hollywood story line to get us to pay more attention to the contrast between our favorite fictions and the world we live in, then that seems fair enough.

Nor does Herzog directly address the question of how people like that should be punished, or whether it accomplished anything for the state of Texas to put the jug-eared, boyish Perry to death, eight days after Herzog interviewed him. You might call “Into the Abyss” a forensic film about murder in America, and it’s definitely and perhaps intentionally reminiscent of Truman Capote’s “In Cold Blood.” But while Herzog does explore the gruesome details of the crime, he is ultimately more interested in the emotional and philosophical forensics of the Conroe case. He wants us to confront the fact that Perry and Burkett (who was spared execution and is now serving a 40-year sentence) were human beings despite their terrible crimes, and also to face the human damage they inflicted on an entire community.

With his usual uncanny skill as an interviewer and eye for eccentric detail, the director of “Cave of Forgotten Dreams,” “Grizzly Man” and the Oscar-nominated “Encounters at the End of the World” talks to the murderers and to their victims’ families, to a longtime Texas executioner who now has second thoughts and to a death-house chaplain who is brought to tears by recounting a golf-course encounter with a squirrel as a metaphor. Both Michael Perry and Jason Burkett proclaim their innocence in the face of overwhelming evidence, and while I don’t support the death penalty either, I’m grateful that neither of them is walking the streets. “Into the Abyss” goes from farce to tragedy, sometimes in the same moment, as when Herzog interviews the, um, intriguing young woman who married Burkett in prison and mysteriously became pregnant by him. (He isn’t permitted conjugal visits; they evidently found a way to smuggle out a viable semen sample.)

There is no farce, however, in Herzog’s conversation with Jason Burkett’s father, Delbert, himself a convicted murder who is literally housed in a prison across the street from his son. When Herzog hounds Delbert Burkett to discuss an incident when he and Jason were transported together on a prison bus, handcuffed wrist to wrist, I at first felt angry at the director. Why not leave the poor old bastard alone? He’s evidently suffered enough. But finally Herzog’s tough-love therapy turns out all right. Delbert Burkett may never have another chance to tell the world that he’s a man with a moral vision of the universe, not a murderous monster, that he was capable of imagining a family life that didn’t turn out this way, and that he felt authentic guilt and shame.

Herzog is an avowed atheist, but in a certain sense his films, especially in recent years, have become highly spiritual in focus. Thanks to its subject and its characters “Into the Abyss” is suffused with a Christian religiosity that the director treats with great respect. Although he’s lived in the United States for many years, Herzog remains an outsider, an observer, who comes to a quintessentially American event like the Conroe murders with no judgment and no preconceptions. In our telephone conversation, he refused to bash America for our high rates of crime and incarceration, and spoke eloquently about the openness with which the state of Texas handles executions. Texas has put 11 people to death so far this year, and executed 18 last year, including Michael Perry, who died by lethal injection on July 2, 2010.

Werner, it isn’t quite accurate to call this a film about the death penalty, is it? I mean, that subject certainly plays a role, but it’s not your central concern.

Yes, that’s true. In many cases people make films that try to prove the innocence of an inmate. For example, in the case of Errol Morris’ film ["The Thin Blue Line"] the inmate was actually released. And recently there was the case where the three young men in West Memphis got out. [As seen in Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky's "Paradise Lost 3."] Well, that’s a very fine or legitimate kind of film; it has a real issue and that’s the guilt or innocence of someone.

In my case, I’m not after guilt or innocence, and all the people with whom I talk know it in advance. I tell them, this is not my business. Guilt or innocence is a question that can be solved only by a court of law and by a jury. And in this case, Perry-Burkett, guilt, in my opinion — and I’ve read all the court transcripts and read the entire case file — was pretty much beyond doubt. Both of them maintain their innocence, and I give them the chance to do so and say so.

You see, it’s not an issue film for or against capital punishment. I, the filmmaker, am not in favor of capital punishment. I respectfully disagree with this practice. But let’s face it — as a German I should be the last one to tell anyone how to handle justice!

You interviewed both of the convicted murderers in this case, but it’s important to note that you also spent a lot of time with family members of the victims. In fact, the film is dedicated to Lisa Stotler-Balloun, whose mother and brother were both killed, and Charles Richardson, whose younger brother was one of the victims.

What is quite often overlooked in the fascination with senseless, monstrous crimes is the side of the families of the victims. I really wanted to give them a voice, and I wanted to show the repercussions of these senseless murders. That’s why they’re in there. It was very moving and compelling to me, and ultimately the film is dedicated to Lisa and to Charles Richardson, who both lost family members and are still suffering, are still living as if in a void. Their voices are very important in the film.

When you say they’re living in a void, is that what the title “Into the Abyss” refers to?

In a way, yes. Wherever you look, there is another abyss, and you as an audience can look into the deepest recesses of the human soul. Literature or poetry often tries to look deep inside ourselves, and many of my films offer this kind of vertical look into our condition. I have said, as a joke, that “Into the Abyss” could have been the title for many of my films!

What was it that drew you to this case in particular?

I think it was the senselessness of the crime. A triple homicide so senseless that it gives you vertigo. You see, there are murders — a shootout with police, or somebody stalks a young woman, sexually assaults her and murders her — where you can sense there was an aim. It doesn’t make it better or worse, but sometimes the utter senselessness of a murder is so staggering, like in this case. And then, of course, all the ramifications. For the families of the victims it was very, very intense. It’s a film about families of victims of violent crime, and it’s a little bit of an American gothic. When you listen to the young man [a former acquaintance of Jason Burkett] who was stabbed with a screwdriver, and who was illiterate until very recently and struggled out of it — it’s a wonderful, wonderful story, a great achievement.

Well, yeah. It struck me that you’re telling a very intimate story about people’s lives in a part of the country that isn’t often shown in the movies, and where most people who go to see documentary films have probably never been.

Yeah. Cinema doesn’t normally look at these parts of the country and these types of people. But it’s good that they have a presence, they have a voice. When you see a man like Fred Allen, who was the former captain of the tie-down team in the death chamber, who would strap you to the gurney. And after 125 executions, of which he was a proponent, he has a breakdown and cannot do it anymore. He has such a wonderful presence and credibility and integrity. I have the feeling this man is a national treasure.

That’s an extraordinary interview. It sort of sneaks up on you, the fact that this very ordinary, macho-seeming Texas guy has been profoundly traumatized.

He describes it very well. In a way, the fact that he cannot really describe what happened to him is even more compelling. He speaks about the fact that he started to shake uncontrollably and I asked him how bad a shake. He looks at me and says, “It was a shake.” It’s very good.

I know you’ve said repeatedly that you don’t believe in God. A lot of the people you’re interviewing here do believe in God, and there’s a strong element of spirituality in this film.

Well, I try to look into the deepest recesses of the human soul. It’s always then that the real spirit of human beings is becoming evident. You see, when you have exactly 50 minutes on death row to have a conversation with someone who is expecting his execution, there is no small talk. You go immediately as deep as it gets.

You open the film by interviewing the death-row chaplain, who at first seems like this strange, kind of off-putting guy with weird hair and a bad suit. And then it all changes.

Yeah, well I met him for only 25 minutes in my entire life. When he arrived at the cemetery he tapped at his wristwatch and said, “Quick, quick. I have to be at the death house in 40 minutes.” So you don’t have any time for introductions. He appeared to be someone almost like a TV preacher, speaking about the beauty of creation and how we have a forgiving, loving God who in paradise awaits everyone. I thought, no, I need to crack him open. So very cheerfully, from behind the camera, I ask him to tell me about an encounter with a squirrel. And all of a sudden he unravels. Fifteen seconds later he is close to tears. He unravels, and you look deep inside him. And this question about an encounter with a squirrel, that’s something you really do not learn in film school. How does it function? It’s inexplicable. That’s why I’m a filmmaker.

Talk a little bit about Delbert Burkett, Jason’s father, whom you interviewed in prison. He seems so full of regret and wisdom at this point in his life. I feel tremendous compassion for him, and at the same time you have to say: It’s kind of late for that, isn’t it?

He’s such a tragic figure in a way, the whole human tragedy somehow comes across. When I ask him about being on a prison bus with his son, handcuffed wrist to wrist with him, and I asked him how it felt, after so many years, to feel the hand of your son. And he said, “No, I can’t.” I say, please, explain it to us. He again says, “No, I can’t.” I keep insisting and what he finally says is very profound and very tragic. What is also significant is that it’s not only him. I’ve heard it many times from other death-row inmates who are not in this film, but will be in other television films. Asking them about children, and how we should raise children, and they always talk about small family values, which we have a tendency of deriding easily. No! It’s something wonderful and serious, and death-row inmates tell you about family values more convincingly than anyone else ever could.

It’s a basic tenet of sociology: Even people who have violated social codes, generally speaking, still believe in them. You go into death row, and maybe you expect hardened, vicious criminals who hate society. But it isn’t like that.

They are all much more compelling than any preacher or anyone who educates you. It sounds like a contradiction, but it’s at least a statistical fact that I have come across.

The film can’t possibly answer this question, but it does make you consider the fact that we live in such a violent society, compared to other developed nations.

No, I would say America is, let me put it in quotes, “average.” Of course, let’s say that per capita there are too many people in prison, but that’s another story. When it comes to capital punishment, all the real populous nations in the world have capital punishment: China, Japan, Russia, Pakistan, you name it. I simply respectfully disagree with the practice, in my case because I come from a quite different historical background. That’s the only reason; I don’t even have a philosophical argument. I only have a story, and that’s a story about the barbarism of the Nazi time, when there was an excessive amount of capital punishment. There was euthanasia, where you would be killed by the state for being insane or retarded, and on top of that there was the genocide of 6 million Jewish people. End of story. I cannot be an advocate of capital punishment. For me, it’s a question of principle: A state should not be allowed to kill anyone for any reason. The only exception would be warfare.

OK, but only a few nations execute more people than we do, and I don’t know that any of them are democracies. Possibly South Africa. And then, even by American standards, Texas is a special case.

I’m sorry, I’m not in the business of Texas-bashing. Being quite convinced as a state about the justice of capital punishment, Texas makes it more transparent than any other state. And you should not forget that Texas is the only state in the United States where a jury can find you guilty of first-degree murder, of capital murder, and then in the punishment phase can let you walk free. Of course there have to be massive mitigating circumstances, and you must have never committed a previous felony. So there are rules, but they can convict you of murder and let you walk.

Well, it’s interesting that the Texas Department of Criminal Justice allowed you to interview Michael Perry, and also allowed you to film inside the execution chamber. Which is a tremendously chilling piece of footage.

Exactly, yes. They make it transparent, they do not hide it. They tell you, this is how we do it, these are our procedures, you have access. They are not hiding anything.

Did you have any emotions about shooting inside the death house? Or were your concerns purely technical at that point?

That’s a good question, but again, I had exactly 50 minutes. You have to perform from the first second, you have to deliver. You have to hit the right tone. There’s not much time for emotion and reflection. That comes later, during the editing, and then that footage became so intense that both my editor and I started smoking again. We would scramble out into the street every hour and a half or so and hang onto a cigarette.

What distinguishes death-row inmates, and what makes their perspective unique, is that they know exactly how they will die and exactly when they will die, and we do not. That makes the conversation so intense, but it’s very much about us as well. Secretly, it’s about us.

About how we face death and mortality, you mean?

Yes, but not only that. How we face life, how we forget to cherish the fantastic privilege that we can open and close a door behind us. That we get to see the magnificence of the world, of creation. It can be an abandoned gas station or a cow in a field, and the film makes it clear that these moments are priceless. They are a phenomenal gift, and we overlook it. My senses toward the world are very, very sharpened by this.

We learn a great deal about Jason Burkett’s family and background in the film, but very little about Michael Perry, beyond your interview with him.

Well, the reason was that he was executed eight days after my conversation with him. I had no chance to speak with him again. Unfortunately his father had just died, and his mother refused to appear on camera. Months after the execution I cautiously asked again, and she categorically declined. I did not want to bother her any further. You have to leave them in peace; you have to know when to push and when not to. So we did not have anyone from the family who could tell us about him.

He’s an enigma, which may serve the film in some ways.

Yes, but you also see a real human being. He seems completely oblivious to his situation. He tells me about a canoe excursion he took to the Everglades when he was 13. At the end he thanked me, he said, “Man, I didn’t sense that I was in a cage and I was gonna die in eight days. I was free like a child for an hour.” When he tells me about seeing alligators and monkeys in the Everglades, it’s as if he were not locked away in a tiny cage.

I must say, however, that of all the men and one woman I have seen on death row, my instincts tell me he was the most dangerous of all of them.

That’s fascinating. Well, it’s very difficult to connect the person we see you speaking to — who seems like a kid, really — to the horrible crimes he apparently committed. Brutally murdering an old woman to steal her car. It’s incomprehensible.

Yeah. And of course I allow him, and allow everyone, to be a human being. It’s so easy to say, and I hear it all the time, “They are monsters. Just get rid of them.” No, the crimes are monstrous but the perpetrators are human. And they never lose the humanness that is in them.

“Into the Abyss” is now playing in New York and Los Angeles, with wider national release to follow.

I looked for right-wing responses to the execution and found that it simply wasn’t much of a story on their side. The National Review Online and the Weekly Standard seem wholly uninterested in it, leaving the defense of the execution to the conservative movement’s left-baiting id. Like Ann Coulter, who endlessly repeated the shibboleth “cop-killer,” and former HuffPo troll Greg Gutfeld, who focused, as always, on the true villains in this story: Hollywood celebrities who surely only adopted a cause because it’s fashionable. (It is fashionable to oppose the execution of a man whose guilt is in doubt!)

Erick Erickson wrote a couple of posts on Davis last night, including an open thread asking how the execution would affect “the horserace” and one revisiting the prosecution’s case and declaring it airtight, without actually addressing any of the flaws in how that case was put together and presented. There was evidence that implicated Davis — he might have been guilty! — but the point, the entire argument, is that by no means was this man so patently, self-evidently guilty that Georgia should feel comfortable killing him. The point is doubt, but one side believes “doubt” is a moral failing.

The New Republic, meanwhile, reprinted an old magazine piece criticizing death penalty opponents for focusing on death-row inmates whose guilt is in doubt rather than “devoting more time and energy to more significant … problems with capital punishment.” (There’s a case to be made that anti-death penalty activists should behave more like antiabortion organizations, attacking the policy by lobbying for state-by-state piecemeal restrictions rather than campaigning nationally for a blanket ban. There is also a case to be made that they’re already doing this, with notable success in most states that aren’t part of the old Confederacy.)

The sad fact is, the Davis case is an example of the system working precisely as it was designed to work. This is why the Supreme Court and the Georgia Board of Pardons denied his pleas for clemency. There was no violation of the rules governing capital punishment — the rules simply don’t protect people who may have been wrongfully convicted, if a jury was convinced by meager and questionably obtained “proof.”

Here it devolves again into debates between tribes that aren’t speaking the same language. The liberal argument that it’s hypocritical to call yourself pro-life and support the death penalty is facile — an evangelical Christian quite easily distinguishes between an innocent person killed before birth and a man who had a chance at life and failed to live righteously — and while the argument that those who don’t trust the government to regulate business or provide healthcare shouldn’t trust it to put men to death is a bit more compelling, guilty verdicts are meted out by juries of citizens, not “bureaucrats,” and even the most staunch anti-government conservative respects the state’s right to enforce “law and order.”

So, sadly, I don’t think the execution of Troy Davis will have much effect on the national “conversation” about the morality of capital punishment or the glaring flaws in America’s system of justice. Because while it’s very reasonable to argue that “we” should only kill someone if we’re really, really, really sure they did it, the modern American conservative is really, really, really sure about everything.

Shortly before, the Supreme Court late Wednesday had rejected an 11th-hour request to block the execution.

The court did not comment on its order, four hours after receiving the request. Davis’ execution had been set to begin at 7 p.m., but the high court’s decision was not issued until after 10 p.m.

Though Davis’ attorneys said seven of nine key witnesses against him disputed all or parts of their testimony, state and federal judges had repeatedly ruled against granting him a new trial. As the court losses piled up Wednesday, his offer to take a polygraph test was rejected and the pardons board refused to give him one more hearing.

Davis’ supporters staged vigils in the U.S. and Europe, declaring “I am Troy Davis” on signs, T-shirts and the Internet. Some tried increasingly frenzied measures, urging prison workers to stay home and even posting a judge’s phone number online, hoping people would press him to put a stop to the lethal injection. President Barack Obama deflected calls for him to get involved.

“They say death row; we say hell no!” protesters shouted outside the Jackson prison where Davis was to be executed. In Washington, a crowd outside the Supreme Court yelled the same chant.

The crowd outside the prison swelled to more than 500 as night fell and a few dozen riot police stood watch. About 10 counterdemonstrators also were there, showing support for the death penalty and the family of Mark MacPhail, the man Davis was convicted of killing in 1989.

“He had all the chances in the world,” his mother, Anneliese MacPhail, said of Davis in a telephone interview before the execution. “It has got to come to an end.”

At a Paris rally, many of the roughly 150 demonstrators carried signs emblazoned with Davis’ face. “Everyone who looks a little bit at the case knows that there is too much doubt to execute him,” Nicolas Krameyer of Amnesty International said at the protest.

Davis’ execution has been stopped three times since 2007, but on Wednesday the 42-year-old ran out of legal options.

As his last hours ticked away, an upbeat and prayerful Davis turned down an offer for a special last meal as he met with friends, family and supporters.

“Troy Davis has impacted the world,” his sister Martina Correia said at a news conference. “They say, ‘I am Troy Davis,’ in languages he can’t speak.”

Correia, who is battling breast cancer and using a wheelchair as she helps coordinate rallies and other events, called on people to push for change in the justice system. Then she said, “I’m going to stand here for my brother,” and got up with help from people around her.

Amnesty International says nearly 1 million people had signed a petition on Davis’ behalf. His supporters included former President Jimmy Carter, Pope Benedict XVI, a former FBI director, the NAACP, several conservative figures and many celebrities, including hip-hop star Sean “P. Diddy” Combs.

“I’m trying to bring the word to the young people: There is too much doubt,” rapper Big Boi, of the Atlanta-based group Outkast, said at a church near the prison.

The U.S. Supreme Court gave Davis an unusual opportunity to prove his innocence in a lower court last year, though the high court itself did not hear the merits of the case.

He was convicted in 1991 of killing MacPhail, who was working as a security guard at the time. MacPhail rushed to the aid of a homeless man who prosecutors said Davis was bashing with a handgun after asking him for a beer. Prosecutors said Davis had a smirk on his face as he shot the officer to death in a Burger King parking lot in Savannah.

No gun was ever found, but prosecutors say shell casings were linked to an earlier shooting for which Davis was convicted.

Witnesses placed Davis at the crime scene and identified him as the shooter, but several of them have recanted their accounts and some jurors have said they’ve changed their minds about his guilt. Others have claimed a man who was with Davis that night has told people he actually shot the officer.

“Such incredibly flawed eyewitness testimony should never be the basis for an execution,” Marsh said. “To execute someone under these circumstances would be unconscionable.”

State and federal courts, however, repeatedly upheld Davis’ conviction. One federal judge dismissed the evidence advanced by Davis’ lawyers as “largely smoke and mirrors.”

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

Davis’ best chance may have come last year, in a hearing ordered by the U.S. Supreme Court. It was the first time in 50 years that justices had considered a request to grant a new trial for a death row inmate.

The high court set a tough standard for Davis to exonerate himself, ruling that his attorneys must “clearly establish” Davis’ innocence — a higher bar to meet than prosecutors having to prove guilt. After the hearing judge ruled in prosecutors’ favor, the justices didn’t take up the case.

The execution has drawn widespread criticism in Europe, where politicians and activists made last-minute pleas for a stay.

Spencer Lawton, the district attorney who secured Davis’ conviction in 1991, said he was embarrassed for the judicial system — not because of the execution, but because it has taken so long to carry out.

“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.”

Associated Press reporters Russ Bynum in Savannah, Kate Brumback and Marina Hutchinson in Jackson, Eric Tucker and Erica Werner in Washington and Sohrab Monemi in Paris contributed to this report.