Georgia's oldest death row inmate, 72, is finally given lethal injection after 37 years of waiting to be executed Geo...
Georgia's oldest death row inmate, 72, is finally given lethal injection after 37 years of waiting to be executed
Georgia's
oldest death row inmate has been executed aged 72 after the Supreme
Court denied his last ditch plea for mercy. Brandon Astor Jones was
sentenced to death after he was convicted of killing a shop manager
during a robbery. (right when he was arrested at 35)
He received the lethal injection at 12.46am today Wednesday Feb. 3rd at the state prison in Jackson.
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| Jones in 1992 |
The
last person he saw before dying was the man who prosecuted him in 1979 -
former Cobb County District Attorney Tom Charron - who was sitting on
the front row.
His execution had been delayed by several hours after his lawyers filed a last-minute appeal with the Supreme Court.
He had
claimed his death sentence was disproportionate to his crime and was in
the process of challenging Georgia's lethal injection secrecy law.
But Justice Clarence Thomas denied the requests at 11pm on Tuesday.
Three friends and 11 family members visited Jones just before his death, as did his lawyer and an investigator.
The inmate, who has spent almost four decades on death row, had declined a last meal request.
Instead
he ate the standard prison menu of chicken and rice, rutabagas,
seasoned turnip greens, dry white beans, cornbread with a dessert of
bread pudding and fruit punch, according to the Georgia Department of
Corrections.
The 72 year
old - the fifth oldest inmate to be executed in America - took a final
prayer and recorded a statement, state corrections officials said
according to the Washington Post.
Jones
and another man, Van Roosevelt Solomon, were both convicted of the
killing of store manager Roger Tackett during a robbery in 1979.
Solomon was executed in 1985.
Culled from UK Mail Online
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