Inmate executed for 1996 Milledgeville murder

UPDATE: The U.S. Supreme Court has rejected a request to halt plans by the state of Georgia to execute an inmate for a 1996 murder in Milledgeville.

Lawyers for 42-year-old Marion Wilson Jr. had asked the nation’s high court to intervene in an 11th-hour request as the scheduled execution hour approached Thursday.

The Supreme Court rejected the request for a stay without explanation, after the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles also denied a request for clemency.

Wilson was executed by lethal injection at 9:52 p.m.

ATLANTA (AP) – The state parole board is holding a clemency hearing for a Georgia prisoner scheduled for execution this week for the killing of an off-duty prison guard.

Marion Wilson Jr. is scheduled to die Thursday. Wilson and Robert Earl Butts Jr. were convicted of murder and sentenced to death in the March 1996 slaying of Donovan Corey Parks.

Prosecutors say Wilson and Butts killed Parks and stole his car after asking him for a ride at a Walmart.

Butts was executed in March 2018.

The State Board of Pardons and Paroles was holding a closed-door clemency hearing Wednesday to consider arguments for and against clemency. The parole board is the only authority in Georgia that can commute a death sentence.

Wilson would be the second prisoner executed by Georgia this year.