WASHINGTON - The US Supreme Court rejected a last-ditch request to halt the execution on Wednesday of a Georgia death row inmate convicted of murdering a police officer in a high-profile death penalty case.

The nation's highest court refused to stay the execution of Troy Davis, who had been scheduled to die by lethal injection at 7 pm EDT (2300 GMT) at a prison in Jackson, Georgia.

It took the court more than four hours to issue its one-sentence order, an unusually long time in such cases.

Brian Kammer, a lawyer for Davis, said in seeking a stay from the Supreme Court that newly available evidence revealed false, misleading and inaccurate information was presented at the trial, "rendering the convictions and death sentence fundamentally unreliable."  

Davis, convicted of the 1989 killing of a police officer, was put to death by lethal injection at a prison in central Georgia after the US Supreme Court declined to hear a final appeal.