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.
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