Clemency hearing set for condemned Georgia inmate

ATLANTA (AP) - Georgia's parole board has scheduled a hearing to consider clemency for an inmate who is scheduled for execution next month.

The State Board of Pardons and Paroles plans to hold a closed-door clemency hearing for Robert Earl Butts Jr. on May 2. That's a day before the 40-year-old Butts is scheduled to be put to death at the state prison in Jackson.

Butts and 41-year-old Marion Wilson Jr. were convicted and sentenced to death in the March 1996 slaying of Donovan Corey Parks in central Georgia. The two men asked Parks for a ride outside a Walmart store and then ordered him out of the car and fatally shot him a short distance away.

The parole board is the only authority in Georgia with power to commute a death sentence.