Troy Davis update: Supreme court denies stay; Davis executed at 11:08pm ET.

Update on a post from earlier this evening: The US Supreme Court has denied Troy Davis a stay of execution.

The official statement, in its entirety [PDF], reads:

The application for stay of execution of sentence of death presented to Justice Thomas and by him referred to the Court is denied.

The Georgia death row inmate, in a high-profile case that led to renewed worldwide debate over the death penalty, is expected to be killed by lethal injection by 11pm Eastern US Time.

"This case has really revealed to the world that we cannot continue with this system," Amnesty International USA Executive Director Larry Cox said just now. "I think people know in their hearts that this is shameful."

Terry Moran, who covers the Supreme Court for ABC News: "Another man confessed. Seven eyewitnesses recanted. Police accused of coercing witnesses. No DNA. No murder weapon. Justice?"

Former FBI Director William S. Sessions on this case: "When it comes to the sentence of death, there should be no room for doubt."

Update, 11:13pm ET: The execution began at 10:53pm. Troy Davis was reported dead at 11:08PM ET. Media witnesses say that he refused a final meal; he refused a final prayer; he did not take an anti-convulsive, anti-anxiety, hypnotic drug called Ativan that was offered to him to ease the procedure. As is customary with prisoner executions in the United States, his death certificate will be marked "homicide."

The final words of Troy Davis at his execution, according to media witnesses:

The incident that took place that night was not my fault. I did not have a gun. [Addressing the victim's family] I did not personally kill your son, father, brother; I am innocent. Look deeper in this case, so you can find the truth. To the people who are about to take my life: May God have mercy on your soul. May God bless your soul.

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US: Georgia denies clemency for Troy Davis, execution imminent in hotly debated death row case

From the Guardian, via RichardDawkins.net:

One of the most hotly contested death row cases in recent years looks set to go ahead with the execution of Troy Davis in Georgia on Wednesday.

He lost a final plea for clemency despite overwhelming evidence indicating his conviction for murder is unreliable.

Snip from related coverage in the New York Times:

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

But as a friend notes, the justice system in the United States is supposed to require proof of guilt, not innocence.

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Guardian denies responsibility for unredacted cables

The file has been available on file-sharing networks for several months, but has only recently been publicized in the mainstream media. The Guardian published the password in its book WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange's War on Secrecy.

The tl;dr? It looks like Wikileaks screwed up somehow by letting the unredacted cables get into the wild, and that The Guardian screwed up by publishing the password to it. Apportion blame according to preference.

The full text of the statement follows after the jump.

Guardian statement in response to WikiLeaks

The Guardian calls on WikiLeaks not to carry through its plan to release the unredacted state department cables. We believe this would be grossly irresponsible.

The paper utterly rejects any suggestion that it is responsible for the release of the unedited cables.

It has been our consistent position that the material should not be released in unredacted form. It was out of concern over security that we ended our partnership with WikiLeaks on December 23 2010. The Guardian was told that the file to which it was given access in July 2010 would only be on a secure server for a few hours and then taken off.

It appears that two versions of this file were subsequently posted to a peer-to-peer file sharing network using the same password. One version was posted on December 7 2010 – a few hours before Julian Assange was arrested following an extradition request.

The unencrypted version of the cables published on the web last night (WEDS) was not the one accessed by the Guardian last year. The Guardian’s book about WikiLeaks was published last February. No concerns about security were expressed when the book was published or at any stage during the past seven months.

A WikiLeaks “editorial” says “knowledge of the Guardian disclosure has spread privately over several months… for the past month WikiLeaks has been in the unenviable position of not being able to comment on what has happened.”

But on 4 August 2011 – at Julian Assange’s request – the Guardian’s editor, Alan Rusbridger, met Assange. The two hour meeting, which was filmed by Assange’s colleague, was cordial. Not only did Assange never mention the supposed security leak, he proposed working with the Guardian again on specific future projects. Since that date WikiLeaks has been in contact with the Guardian’s deputy editor, Ian Katz, to discuss collaboration. There were two further contacts during the week of August 8.

It should be noted that this is the third time that Assange has claimed he is suing the Guardian or its journalists. The first claim was made on November 1 2010 – and was for supposed loss of earnings. Secondly, he claimed he was suing the Guardian for libel in February 2011 over the Guardian’s book. Separately, he threatened to sue the author and Freedom of Information campaigner, Heather Brooke, for “criminal deception.” None of these actions ever materialised.

The Guardian and its partners went to great lengths to protect potentially vulnerable sources identified in the WikiLeaks documents throughout their collaboration with the organisation.

Initially, as has been widely reported, Assange was unwilling to remove material to protect informants but the Guardian and its media partners persuaded him that the diplomatic cables should be carefully redacted before release, and this editing process was carried out by the newspapers. We are deeply concerned that the release of the unredacted files could put at risk sources we and our partner newspapers worked very hard to protect.

WikiLeaks published 130,000 apparently unredacted cables last week. Until Wednesday of this week very few people had the required information to access the full cables, but over the last few days

WikiLeaks has published more and more hints about how they could be accessed and are now carrying out their own “online poll” about whether they should publish all the cables.

WikiLeaks should take responsibility for its own pattern of actions and not seek to deflect it elsewhere.

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Wikileaks: Guardian journalist negligently published password to unredacted cables (Update: Guardian denies)

Wikileaks, facing criticism after unredacted versions of diplomatic cables escaped into the wild, today accused a Guardian journalist of negligently publishing the password required to decrypt them.

A Guardian journalist has negligently disclosed top secret WikiLeaks’ decryption passwords to hundreds of thousands of unredacted unpublished US diplomatic cables.

Knowledge of the Guardian disclosure has spread privately over several months but reached critical mass last week. The unpublished WikiLeaks’ material includes over 100,000 classified unredacted cables that were being analyzed, in parts, by over 50 media and human rights organizations from around the world.

For the past month WikiLeaks has been in the unenviable position of not being able to comment on what has happened, since to do so would be to draw attention to the decryption passwords in the Guardian book. Now that the connection has been made public by others we can explain what happened and what we intend to do.

Wikileaks also says it is in touch with the U.S. State Department and will be taking legal action.

UPDATE: The Guardian, in a story about the availability of the unredacted cables, denies that its journalist disclosed the password. [Thanks, Douglas!]

But further down in the story it seems to admit it, instead blaming Wikileaks for letting it do so:

"Our book about WikiLeaks was published last February. It contained a password, but no details of the location of the files, and we were told it was a temporary password which would expire and be deleted in a matter of hours."

Interesting! Now you may go and check the timelines again to find out when certain password-protected files might have left Wikileaks' exclusive custody. Go right ahead! No-one's going anywhere.

UPDATE: the book passage in question may be read at Google books. Just like that, for all the world to see, since the day it was published.

WIKILEAKS EDITORIAL - Guardian disclosure [Wikileaks]

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