Courts consistently ruled against him, however, and the officer's family says they finally have justice after 22 years.

Davis was pronounced dead at 11:08 p.m. Wednesday. He was put to death for the 1989 killing of Mark MacPhail. The officer was shot to death while rushing to help a homeless man being attacked by Davis and others.

Davis' global support came from high-profile advocates, including a former U.S. president, the pope and celebrities.

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.

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The state Pardons and Paroles Board said in a statement Wednesday it would not review its decision to allow the execution to go forward.

Davis is set to die at 7 p.m. for the 1989 killing of off-duty Savannah officer Mark MacPhail, who was slain while rushing to help a homeless man being attacked.

Davis' lawyers have long argued Davis was a victim of mistaken identity. Prosecutors say they have no doubt that they charged the right person with the crime.

Supporters planned vigils outside Georgia's death row prison in Jackson and protests at U.S. embassies in Europe.

Earlier, defense lawyer Stephen Marsh told The Associated Press that the Georgia Department of Corrections denied his request to allow Davis to take a polygraph test. Marsh had said he hoped the polygraph would convince the state pardons board to reconsider a decision against clemency.

After winning three delays since 2007, Davis lost his most realistic chance at last-minute clemency this week when the state pardons board denied his request. He was set to be executed by injection at 7 p.m. Wednesday for the 1989 killing of Mark MacPhail, an off-duty police officer who was working as a security guard in Savannah when he was shot dead rushing to help a homeless man who had been attacked.

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Davis is set to die on Wednesday for the killing of off-duty Savannah officer Mark MacPhail, who was slain while rushing to help a homeless man being attacked. It is the fourth time in four years his execution has been scheduled by Georgia officials.

Steve Hayes, spokesman for the Board of Pardons and Paroles, said the panel decided to rejected Davis' request for clemency after hearing hours of testimony from his supporters and prosecutors.

The decision appeared to leave Davis with little chance of avoiding the execution date. Defense attorney Jason Ewart has said that the pardons board was likely Davis' last option.

Davis' lawyers have long argued Davis was a victim of mistaken identity. But prosecutors say they have no doubt that they charged the right person with the crime.

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The divided three-judge panel of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals struck down the so-called individual mandate, siding with 26 states that had sued to block the law. But the panel didn't go as far as a lower court that had invalidated the entire overhaul as unconstitutional.

The states and other critics argued the law violates people's rights, while the Justice Department countered that the legislative branch was exercising a "quintessential" power.

The decision, penned by Chief Judge Joel Dubina and Circuit Judge Frank Hull, found that "the individual mandate contained in the Act exceeds Congress's enumerated commerce power."

"What Congress cannot do under the Commerce Clause is mandate that individuals enter into contracts with private insurance companies for the purchase of an expensive product from the time they are born until the time they die," the opinion said.

Circuit Judge Stanley Marcus disagreed in a dissent.

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Now the tea party favorite wants to be president.

"In case you accidentally listen to a skeptic or doubting Thomas out there, just to be clear ... I'm running for president of the United States, and I'm not running for second," he told a crowd at Centennial Olympic Park on Saturday. Chants of "Herman" erupted from the crowd of thousands in downtown Atlanta.

The announcement by the businessman, author and talk radio show host that he was joining the expanding Republican field came after months of traveling around the country to introduce himself to voters.

Now the 65-year-old will see if he can use that grass-roots enthusiasm to turn a long-shot campaign into a credible bid.

Cain supports a strong national defense, opposes abortion, backs replacing the federal income tax with a national sales tax and favors a return to the gold standard. He said President Barack Obama "threw Israel under the bus" because he sought to base Mideast border talks partly on the pre-1967 war lines, and criticized the Justice Department for challenging Arizona's tough crackdown on illegal immigration.

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Emergency buildings are wiped out. Bodies are stored in refrigerated trucks. Authorities are begging for such basics as flashlights. In one neighborhood, the storms even left firefighters to work without a truck.

The death toll from Wednesday's storms reached 337 across seven states, including at least 246 in Alabama.

The largest death toll ever was on March 18, 1925, when 747 people were killed in storms that raged through Missouri, Illinois and Indiana. The second deadliest day had been in March 1932, when 332 people died, all in Alabama.

The 1925 outbreak was long before the days when Doppler radar could warn communities of severe weather. Forecasters have said residents were told these tornadoes were coming. But they were just too wide and powerful and in populated areas to avoid a horrifying body count.

Hundreds if not thousands of people were injured Wednesday -- 990 in Tuscaloosa alone -- and as many as 1 million Alabama homes and businesses remained without power.

The scale of the disaster astonished President Barack Obama when he arrived in the state Friday.

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His guns were in the ruins of a neighbor's home. A Christmas heirloom shared space in a ditch with broken glass and jagged nails. And his 7-year-old son's bike -- one of the few toys he could salvage -- was pinned under a car a block away.

"I've been going from lot to lot finding stuff," he said as he rifled through debris in Concord, Ala., in search of a family photo album. "It's like CSI."

As crews combed the remains of houses and neighborhoods pulverized by the nation's deadliest tornado outbreak in nearly four decades, survivors were left trying to figure out how to put their lives back together.

At least 297 were killed across six states in Wednesday's outbreak.

President Barack Obama planned a trip to Tuscaloosa on Friday to view storm damage and meet Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley and shattered families. Late Thursday, Obama signed a disaster declaration for the state to provide federal aid to those who seek it.

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The deadline for complying with the three-year-old law was last month. But nine states haven't supplied any names to the database. Seventeen others have sent in fewer than 25, meaning gun dealers around the U.S. could be running names of would-be buyers against a woefully incomplete list.

Officials blame privacy laws, antiquated record-keeping and a severe lack of funding for the gap the AP found through public records requests.

Eleven states have provided more than 1,000 records apiece to the federal database, yet gun-control groups have estimated more than 1 million files are missing nationwide.

"If the mental health records are not current from our sister states, the quality of our background check is going to be compromised," said Sean Byrne, acting commissioner of the Division of Criminal Justice Services in New York, a state that has submitted more than 100,000 records.

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U.S. Attorney Sally Quillian Yates said Thursday authorities seized the Ecstasy worth more than $2.8 million at a house in Chamblee in northeast Atlanta.

Customs agent Devon Samuels is charged with laundering drug money, smuggling cash and attempting to bring weapons onto an aircraft.

Prosecutors say an officer posing as a money launderer gave the 45-year-old Samuels $22,000, which they say he smuggled to Jamaica.

Samuels is also charged with conspiracy to commit marriage fraud. Authorities say he was paid $900 to help a couple in a sham marriage deceive customs officials.

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Bishop Eddie Long did not directly mention the accusations to thousands of cheering supporters during services at New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in suburban Lithonia. But his remarks seemed directly addressed to his accusers.

"In times of challenge, there are several things that come out. Your faith will be strengthened or weakened," he said, to growing applause. "My faith is being strengthened."

Long told supporters at New Birth Missionary Baptist Church that he is "not going to be pulled into a street fight" and that he doesn't hate anyone. But he directed his listeners to turn to a passage in the Book of Job that read: "Those who hate you will be clothed with shame, and the tent of the wicked will be no more."

As his devoted flock cheered, Long joked that he accidentally led them to the wrong page. "That was the Holy Ghost," he said, flashing a smile as the sanctuary echoed with laughter.

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Long, a married father of four, has planned a news conference Thursday to speak about the lawsuits filed this week by the three New Birth Missionary Baptist Church members who say that they were coerced into sexual liaisons by the prominent pastor.

The lawsuits say the young men were 17 or 18 years old at the time, enrolled in New Birth's ministry for teen boys.

A lawyer for Long, who writes books on heterosexual relationships and has strong ties to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s family, adamantly denied the allegations.

B.J. Bernstein, an attorney representing the plaintiffs, said she opened her investigation after getting a call from one of the men. The Associated Press normally does not name people who claim they are victims of sexual impropriety, but Bernstein said all three -- Maurice Robinson, 20, and Anthony Flagg, 21, and Jamal Parris, 23 -- have consented to making their identities public.

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The government stopped just short of pronouncing the well dead, cautioning that cement and mud must still be pumped in from the bottom to seal it off for good.

President Barack Obama declared that the battle to contain one of the world's worst oil spills is "finally close to coming to an end."

Yet after months of living with lost income, fouled shorelines and dying wildlife, some Gulf Coast residents weren't so sure.

"I don't think we've finished with this," said 59-year-old Harry "Cho-cho" Cheramie, who grew up in Grand Isle, La. "We haven't really started to deal with it yet. We don't know what effect it's going to have on our seafood in the long run."

Still, it appeared there might finally be an end in sight to the disaster that closed vast stretches of fishing areas, interrupted the usually lucrative tourist season, and cost BP's CEO his job and the company's shareholders millions of dollars.

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BP PLC reported that mud forced down the well overnight was pushing the crude back down to its source for the first time since the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded off Louisiana on April 20, killing 11 workers.

And a federal report being released Wednesday indicated that only about a quarter of the spilled oil remains in the Gulf and is degrading quickly, with the rest having been contained, cleaned up or otherwise disappeared.

President Barack Obama, while noting that people's lives "have been turned upside down," declared in Washington that the operation was "finally close to coming to an end."

The containment effort isn't over. Crews performing the so-called "static kill" effort overnight now must decide whether to follow up by pumping cement down the broken wellhead. Federal officials said they won't declare complete victory until they also pump in mud and then cement from the bottom of the well, and that won't happen for several weeks.

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Engineers began probing the well with an oil-like liquid around 1 p.m. Central time in a test that, if successful, will allow engineers to spend several days pumping the mud down the well.

Once the hours-long testing is declared complete, crews will then spend several hours analyzing the results before launching the latest effort, dubbed the static kill, BP said.

"This is a really positive step forward," retired Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen said earlier of the pending static kill. "It's going to be good news in a time where that hasn't been very much good news, but it shouldn't be a cause for premature celebration."

The static kill is meant as insurance for the crews that have spent months fighting the spill. The only thing keeping oil from blowing into the Gulf at the moment is an experimental cap that has held for more than two weeks but was never meant to be permanent.

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President Barack Obama was set to visit the Louisiana coast Friday, his second trip in a week and the third since the disaster unfolded following an April 20 oil rig explosion.

Meanwhile, waves of gooey tar blobs were washing ashore on the white sand of the Florida Panhandle and nearby Alabama beaches Friday as a slick from the spill moved closer to shore.

Spotters who had been seeing a few tar balls in recent days found a substantially larger number starting before dawn on the beaches of the Gulf Islands National Seashore and nearby areas, a county emergency official said. The park is a long string of connected barrier islands near Pensacola.

The government's point man for the crisis, Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, said the cap's installation atop a severed pipe late Thursday was a positive development but it was too early to tell if will work. The funnel-like lid is designed to channel oil for pumping to a surface tanker.

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BP sliced off the main pipe on the leaking oil well with giant shears Thursday in the latest bid to curtail the worst oil spill in U.S. history, but the cut was jagged, and a looser fitting cap will be needed.

The inverted funnel-like cap slightly wider than the severed pipe will be placed over the spewing oil. A rubber seal on the inside will attempt to keep oil from escaping, though engineers acknowledge some crude will still come out.

"We'll have to see when we get the containment cap on it just how effective it is," said Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, the government's point man for the disaster.

BP PLC turned to the giant shears after a diamond-tipped saw became stuck in the pipe halfway through the job, yet another frustrating delay in the six-week-old spill. The cap could be set over the gusher as early as Thursday night.

If the cap can be put on successfully, BP will siphon the oil and gas to a tanker on the surface.

"It's an important milestone, and in some sense, it's just the beginning," BP CEO Tony Hayward said.

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Allen said Thursday that the cap was over the gusher and expected to be lowered in the next couple of hours.

This is BP's latest attempt to contain the oil. The best chance to plug the leak is still two months away.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.

PENSACOLA, Fla. (AP) -- BP's top executive acknowledged Thursday the global oil giant was unprepared to fight a catastrophic deepwater oil spill as engineers were forced yet again to reconfigure plans for executing their latest gambit to control the Gulf of Mexico gusher.

BP PLC planned to use giant shears to cut a pipe a mile below the sea after a diamond-tipped saw became stuck halfway through the job, another frustrating delay in six weeks of failed efforts to stop or at least curtail the worst oil spill in U.S. history. The government's point man for the disaster, Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, said on the NBC "Today" show the cut would be made later Thursday.

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BP CEO Tony Hayward had projected a resolution to the so-called "top kill" as soon as Thursday afternoon, but an 18-hour delay in the injection of heavyweight mud scuttled those plans. Though engineers had stopped pumping hours earlier, BP and coast Guard officials assured the public Thursday morning that the process was going as planned.

Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen said Friday that heavyweight mud was able to push down the oil and gas coming up at great force from underground, but it has not overwhelmed the gusher or stopped the flow.

President Barack Obama arrived in the Gulf, where he stood on Fourchon Beach in his shirt-sleeves and called reporters to the water's edge to point out some small clumps of oil. The beach, one of the few sandy stretches along the Louisiana coast, was sealed off with crime-scene-style yellow tape.

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News that it would be at least 24 more hours before officials know if the procedure called a "top kill" will work came as dire new government estimates showed the disaster has easily eclipsed the Exxon Valdez as the biggest oil spill in U.S. history.

As the world waited, President Barack Obama announced major new restrictions on drilling projects, and the head of the federal agency that regulates the industry resigned under pressure, becoming the highest-ranking political casualty of the crisis so far.

BP started shooting heavy drilling mud into the blown-out well 5,000 feet underwater on Wednesday afternoon, then stopped later that night to monitor the work and bring in 630,000 more gallons of mud, said BP Chief Operating Officer Doug Suttles, who insisted nothing had gone wrong.

"The fact that it's taken more than 24 hours is not a big surprise," he said. "We'll stay at this until we're successful or we determine we can't be successful."

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A team of scientists trying to figure out how much oil has been flowing since the offshore rig Deepwater Horizon exploded April 20 and sank two days later found the rate was at least twice and possibly up to five times as high as previously thought.

Even using the most conservative estimate, that means the leak has grown to nearly 19 million gallons, surpassing the size of the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster, which at about 11 million gallons had been the nation's worst spill. Under the highest estimate, nearly 39 million gallons may have spilled.

U.S. Geological Survey Director Marcia McNutt said two different teams of scientists calculated that the well has been spewing between 504,000 and more than 1 million gallons a day.

BP and the Coast Guard estimated soon after the explosion that about 210,000 gallons a day was leaking, but scientists who watched underwater video of well had been saying for weeks it was probably more.

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