The New York Times reports, "U.S. Judge Denies Stay of Execution in Georgia," by Richard Fausset.
A federal judge on Monday rejected a Georgia inmate’s argument that his execution, scheduled for Tuesday evening, should be stayed because the state had refused to disclose details about the drug to be used in his lethal injection.
Marcus Wellons, 58, was sentenced to death in the 1989 rape and murder of a 15-year-old girl. Absent a court order issuing a reprieve, he will be the first person executed in the United States since the botched lethal injection in Oklahoma of Clayton D. Lockett on April 29.
The execution of Mr. Lockett, who writhed in apparent agony when he was supposed to be unconscious, raised new concerns about states’ lethal injection protocols, the drugs used and new laws in some states, including Oklahoma and Georgia, that keep details about those drugs secret.
"Federal judge won’t stop Wellons’ execution," is by Rhonda Cook for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
A federal judge and the state Board of Pardons and Paroles both rejected condemned murderer Marcus Wellons’ requests for clemency Monday in the death sentence for a 1989 murder of a Cobb County teenage girl.
Lawyers had argued before U.S. District Judge Timothy Batten that Wellons’ constitutional protections from cruel and unusual punishment could be violated if there was a problem with the compounded lethal injection drug produced by an unidentified pharmacist. They said here was no way to know in advance the quality of the drugs made specifically for his execution or the experience of the pharmacist who made the sedative.
And:
If Wellons is executed, he will be the first person Georgia has put to death using a massive dose of the sedative pentobarbital. This also will be the first time an execution is carried out since Georgia law made the source of lethal injection drugs a state secret.
MSNBC posts, "The death penalty rises again in Georgia," by Meredith Clark.
Besides being the first inmate executed since Lockett’s death brought capital punishment into the spotlight, Wellons will be the first inmate in Georgia to be executed using compounded drugs and the first since it became legal for officials to keep information about execution drugs secret from the public.
Earlier coverage from Georgia begins with the preceding post.
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