By the time you read this — Thursday, Sept. 22, 2011 — Troy Davis may already have been executed in Georgia. On Aug. 19, 1989, Mark MacPhail, an off-duty police officer in Savannah, Ga., ran across a parking lot to help a man being pistol-whipped. The man holding the handgun then fatally shot MacPhail.

Davis was arrested for the crime, charged, convicted and given the death penalty. A Georgia pardons board rejected his appeal for clemency this past Monday, much as other pardons boards and appeals courts have rejected Davis’ claims of innocence over the years.