Washington:
The US state of Oklahoma was set to execute a man Wednesday over the fatal beating of a motel owner after the Supreme Court rejected a last-ditch appeal by his lawyers.
Richard Glossip had been scheduled to die by lethal injection at 3:00 pm (2000 GMT) following a two-week reprieve to allow time for the consideration of new evidence in his murder conviction.
Pope Francis had appealed for clemency in the case.
Minutes before Glossip was due to be executed, a spokesman with the Oklahoma Department of Corrections said his lawyers had filed an appeal with the Supreme Court.
But that appeal was denied."The application for stay of execution of sentence of death presented to Justice Sotomayor and by her referred to the Court is denied," the high court said in a brief order without further explanation.
It was not immediately clear when the execution would take place.
Glossip's execution would be the second in quick succession in the United States.
Georgia went ahead with an execution - the first of a woman in 70 years in the southern state - in the early hours of Wednesday, several hours later than expected, despite a similar call for clemency from the pontiff.
Glossip - who had challenged the legality of the drugs used in Oklahoma for lethal injection - was found guilty of recruiting fellow motel employee Justin Sneed to carry out the 1997 murder of owner Barry Van Treese.
He was subsequently convicted based on the testimony of Sneed, who pleaded guilty and was able to negotiate a life sentence by claiming his co-worker had masterminded the plot.
In a letter sent September 21 to state Governor Mary Fallin, the pope's personal representative asked that Glossip's sentence be commuted, writing it would "give clearer witness to the value and dignity of every person's life."
In a speech to the US Congress during his six-day tour of the United States last week, the pontiff had called for the global abolition of the death penalty.
Celebrity outcryGlossip's case has also attracted other high-profile attention, with actress Susan Sarandon and billionaire Richard Branson among those who have voiced concern.
Branson had appealed to the public to call Fallin's office and request a fresh 60-day stay of execution. "To the Government & citizens of Oklahoma: your State is about to kill a man who may well be innocent," he tweeted Tuesday.
Glossip's lawyers produced new evidence earlier this month, but Fallin said it was not "credible evidence" of his innocence and refused to delay his execution.
The state's criminal appeals court however said it wanted more time to consider the evidence and granted a last-minute stay of execution on September 16.
Supporters argue that there is no physical evidence to link Glossip to the brutal murder and that Sneed had every motive to lie.
However, Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt has said he was confident that the criminal appeals court would conclude that there was "nothing worthy" that would lead it to overturn the guilty verdict.
Glossip's case has also sparked interest for his failed bid to ban a controversial drug used in lethal injections. The Supreme Court upheld the use of the drug midazolam in June, saying it does not violate the US Constitution.
Oklahoma and other states began using midazolam, a sedative, after pharmaceutical companies stopped selling the drugs previously used for lethal injections to US prisons.
Critics, however, say midazolam is not strong enough to prevent inmates from experiencing agonizing pain during executions.