Marcus Ray Johnson is scheduled to die by lethal injection at 7pm Thursday and prison officials have denied his request to have a final six-pack of beer as his last meal because alcohol is contraband, Reuters reports.
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On Wednesday, the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles said it had rejected Johnson’s request for clemency. Johnson was convicted of a 1994 rape and murder and sentenced to death.
Brian Kammer, an attorney for Johnson, argues his client shouldn’t be executed because doubts remain about his guilt. The board held a hearing for Johnson on Wednesday and voted against granting clemency. Johnson was convicted and sentenced to death in April 1998.
Johnson declined a final prayer and refused to record a final statement, the state said. Prosecutors say there is no doubt Johnson killed Sizemore. That would be the lowest figure since 1991 before a movement to crack down on crime swept the country and executions hit 98 in 1999, the highest since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976.
The appointed time of his death was 7 p.m. EST, but actual execution nearly never comes until hours later, after all the courts have reviewed last-minute appeals and decided.
Johnson met Sizemore at a club and the two were spotted kissing and drinking heavily and were seen leaving together. Later reports showed she’d been cut and stabbed 41 times with a small, tiresome knife. Around 8 a.m. on March 24, 1994, a man walking his dog found Sizemore’s white Suburban parked behind an apartment complex in East Albany, her body lying across the front passenger seat. Johnson’s lawyers claimed that while he admitted having had sex with Sizemore, there wasn’t enough evidence to tie him to the killing.
All of the arguments Johnson’s defense team has raised have been heard and rejected by courts, he said.
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“Of all the death penalty cases I had, what happened to the victim in this case was the most vile and reprehensible of any”, Ken Hodges, who was Dougherty County district attorney during Johnson’s trial reportedly said.
