Georgia executes inmate for 1996 shotgun slaying
Marion Wilson Jr. (Courtesy: Georgia Department of Corrections)
ATLANTA (AP) - Georgia has executed an inmate convicted of the 1996 killing of a man who agreed to give him a ride outside a Walmart.
Authorities say 42-year-old Marion Wilson Jr. was pronounced dead Thursday evening following an injection of the sedative pentobarbital at the state prison in Jackson. The state attorney general's office said in a statement that Byrd was pronounced dead at 9:52 p.m.
Wilson and Robert Earl Butts Jr. were convicted of murder and sentenced to death in the March 1996 slaying of 24-year-old Donovan Corey Parks. Butts was executed last year.
A Georgia Supreme Court case summary says Butts and Wilson asked Parks for a ride outside a Walmart store in Milledgeville, ordered him out of the car a short distance away and fatally shot him. Butts' lawyers argued Wilson killed Parks, while Wilson's lawyers said Butts fired the fatal shot.
Milledgeville is about 90 miles southeast of Atlanta.