GEORGIA (USA): JOHN WAYNE CONNER EXECUTED
July 14, 2016: John Wayne Conner, 60, White, was executed by injection of the barbiturate pentobarbital.
Conner didn't make a final statement and declined to have a prayer said for him.
Conner was sentenced to death on July 1982 in Telfair County in the January 10, 1982 murder of J.T. White. The two men were friend, but the pair got into a fight over Conner's girlfriend, Beverly Bates.
Lawyers for Conner had argued that imposing the death penalty after he's spent 34 years on death row was unconstitutional cruel and unusual punishment and amounted to double jeopardy, which is when someone is punished twice for the same crime. "Due to the extraordinary delay in this case, Mr. Conner has already been subjected, in effect, to a life sentence under exceptionally severe penal conditions," his lawyers wrote in a court filing. "To top this punishment with the permanently harmful indignity of execution would be excessive and disproportionate punishment, prohibited by the Eighth Amendment."
Conner becomes the 6th inmate to be put to death this year in Georgia, the 66th overall since the state resumed capital punishment in 1983, the 15th to be put to death this year in the USA and the 1437th overall since the nation resumed executions in 1977. (Source: myajc.com, Prince George Citizen, 14/07/2016)
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