In 1989, a federal judge ordered that Jones get a new trial because the jurors who convicted and condemned him had a Bible in the room during deliberations.
Advertisement
Jones is one of 76 men on death row in Georgia.
Solomon, who was also convicted and sentenced to death, was executed in Georgia’s electric chair in February 1985. He entered and drew his weapon after hearing four shots.
In late Tuesday filings to the court, the lawyers asked the justices to block Jones’ planned execution for either of two reasons: he is challenging Georgia’s lethal injection secrecy law and also because he says his death sentence is disproportionate to his crime.
Jones was convicted in October 1979 and sentenced to death.
“Jones’s case raises questions of proportionality and discriminatory application of the death penalty”, the Death Penalty Information Center said in a statement.
Following last minute appeals, the execution of Brandon Astor Jones was carried-out at 12:46am Wednesday Morning.
Should Jones’s execution proceed on Tuesday, he would be the oldest person to be executed in Georgia. Lawyers for Georgia’s oldest death ro…
Seventy-two-year-old Brandon Astor Jones is scheduled to receive a lethal injection at 7 p.m. Tuesday. “He and his co-defendant Van Solomon – both African American – were sentenced to death… for killing a white gas station store clerk during a robbery”.
The Georgia Supreme Court and the Georgia State Board of Pardons and Paroles rejected his petition to commute his sentence to life without parole.
The majority cited a Monday panel decision denying a motion to stay the execution.
Jones later told another officer “there is a man in the back – hurt bad”, court records said.
Georgia along with other states relies on small compounding pharmacies to produce the drugs, and the state instituted a secrecy law in order to keep supply lines open.
“Today Brandon Jones will be executed, possibly in violation of the Constitution”.
Jones’ lawyers argued the state’s execution method carries “a substantial risk of significant harm”, violating his constitutional right against cruel and unusual punishment. Attorney Daniel Kolber uses a megaphone to voice his opposition to the death penalty while standing just outside the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification State Prison grounds in Jackson, Ga., Tuesday, Fe…
Advertisement
The Supreme Court ruled 5-2 to dismiss Jones’ claim that his execution would be unconstitutionally “cruel and unusual and “an arbitrary and disproportionately severe sentence”.
