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.
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.
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