A last-minute round of appeals remained pending Thursday evening as a man convicted of killing a woman he met in a south Georgia nightclub was set to be put to death.
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Marcus Ray Johnson, 50, was sentenced to death for the murder of Angela Sizemore, a woman he picked up at a bar in 1994.
A Butts County Superior Court judge Wednesday rejected a constitutional challenge to Johnson’s sentence and conviction, and declined to stop his execution. The court also dismissed his claims that new evidence showed eyewitness testimony was unreliable and prosecutors had failed to disprove that someone else could have killed Sizemore.
Johnson was pronounced dead at 10:11 p.m.
Since the State Board of Pardons and Paroles did not accept his request for mercy and leniency, Thursday’s execution will continue as scheduled.
Johnson’s lawyer, Brian Kammer, said in a statement before the execution that Georgia has a “shameful, disturbing record of executing the mentally ill and disabled, in addition to those for whom there are serious questions as to their guilt”. The Georgia Supreme Court on Thursday upheld that ruling.
Sizemore’s now 26-year-old daughter, Kathryn Barker, watched Johnson draw his last breath as she sat with former Dougherty County district attorney Ken Hodges, who kept a protective arm around her. Barker was in kindergarten when her mother was murdered.
Johnson has had a tumultuous appeals process: One day before he was scheduled to die in 2011, a court delayed the execution after new evidence was found. But DNA testing of the new evidence did not exonerate him. They drank, danced and kissed before leaving for a nearby empty lot where they had sex. She was stabbed 41 times with a small, boring knife.
Johnson told police that the last time he saw the victim she was sitting in a field and crying.
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Prison officials denied Johnson’s request for beer on the grounds that alcohol is a contraband item.
