Convict denied a polygraph test as his execution draws near

AUTHORITIES rejected an attempt by a convict — set to be executed in a high-profile case last night for killing a Georgia police officer — to show his innocence by taking a polygraph test.

Lawyers for Troy Davis, scheduled to die by lethal injection at 7pm local time, requested a polygraph for their client but prison officials turned them down, the lawyers were quoted by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution newspaper as saying.

Davis’s case has attracted international attention and an online protest that has accumulated nearly one million signatures because of doubts expressed in some quarters over whether he killed police officer Mark MacPhail in 1989.