If we don't do this now, he might die before we can kill him

Editor's Note:
This article was heavily edited to remove the writer's obvious glee at this outcome.

- prh, ed.

Georgia executes Brandon Astor Jones

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 on Tuesday evening, Feb. 2, 2016, where Brandon Astor Jones was set to be put to death. Ben Gray / bgray@ajc.com

Georgia has executed the oldest man on the state’s death row, Brandon Astor Jones.

At 12:46 a.m. Wednesday, Jones, just 10 days shy of his 73rd birthday, took his last breath, ending a decades-long journey.

The execution had been scheduled for 7 p.m. Tuesday. Jones, the fifth-oldest inmate executed in the nation, waited in a holding cell a few steps from the death chamber as the appointed time came and went amid a flurry of last-minute court filings for mercy.

After he died, about 15 of his supporters and death-penalty opponents, who were gathered about a mile from the execution building, held hands and prayed.

One supporter, Carole Butcher, said she had been writing Jones for about 15 years from her home in the United Kingdom. “We had our ups and downs. He supported me through my ups and downs,” Butcher said tearfully.

Jones’ attorneys waged a legal battle through the final hours to spare the 72-year-old from being executed for the 1979 murder of Roger Tackett, who managed a Tenneco convenience store and gas station in Cobb County.

The battle ended at about 11 p.m. Tuesday, when U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas denied requests for a stay, allowing the execution to go forward.

Cruel and unusual?
Earlier on Tuesday, the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta turned down Jones’ request for a stay so his lawyers could argue before all 11 federal appeals court judges, sitting as a group, the constitutionality of the Georgia law that keeps secret the identity of the pharmacist who makes the pentobarbital for executions.

Challenges to secrecy laws have failed repeatedly in Georgia and in other states with similar statutes.

These laws were adopted as it became increasingly hard to secure lethal injection drugs from makers who were under public pressure from death penalty opponents.

Opponents, however, say the laws make it impossible to ensure that the drugs made are pure and will not cause an unnecessarily painful death.

Jones also lost on Monday before the State Board of Pardons and Paroles despite his argument that the death sentence for this particular crime was disproportionate.

Co-defendant electrocuted
Jones and Van Roosevelt Solomon were both sentenced to die for murdering Tackett, who had stayed at the Tenneco convenience store after closing to finish paperwork so he would be free to attend Father’s Day Mass with his daughter and wife.

Jones worked for Solomon at his painting business. The two had set out to burglarize the Tenneco.

Solomon was electrocuted on Feb. 20, 1985, while Jones’ case lingered. 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. Jones was tried again in 1997 and was again sentenced to death.

More executions soon
There is already one other man scheduled to die after Jones and there could be as many as two others who will have execution dates set in the next few weeks.

On Monday, an execution warrant was signed for former Navy sailor Travis Hittson for the 1993 murder of fellow shipmate Conway Utterbeck while they were visiting Houston County in Middle Georgia.

Source URL