As reported in this AP piece, a person "convicted of killing a Georgia convenience store clerk 25 years ago was put to death late Wednesday night." Here is more:
Inmate Ray Jefferson Cromartie, 52, was pronounced dead at 10:59 p.m. Wednesday after an injection of pentobarbital at the state prison in Jackson. He made no last statement but requested a prayer to be recited before the drugs began flowing.
Cromartie was convicted and sentenced to die for the April 1994, slaying of Richard Slysz at a convenience store in Thomasville, near the Georgia-Florida line. The state said Cromartie also had shot and gravely wounded another convenience store clerk days before the killing.
Wednesday's execution came shortly after the U.S. Supreme Court, without explanation, rejected two appeals by the inmate's attorneys.... Cromartie had insisted through his attorneys that he didn't shoot either clerk. The defense lawyers had also recently asked state and federal courts to allow DNA testing of evidence collected from the shootings that they say could prove he wasn't the shooter. Lawyer Shawn Nolan called the denial of DNA tests "so sad and frankly outrageous" in a statement after the execution....
The state countered that the DNA evidence being sought couldn't prove his innocence. Evidence at trial showed Cromartie borrowed a handgun from his cousin April 7, 1994, entered the Madison Street Deli that night and shot clerk Dan Wilson in the face, seriously injuring him. Wilson couldn't describe his attacker and surveillance camera footage wasn't clear enough to conclusively identify the shooter.
Days later on April 10, Cromartie and Corey Clark asked Thaddeus Lucas to drive them to another store to steal beer, testimony showed. Lucas parked, and the other two entered the Junior Food Store. Cromartie shot Slysz twice in the head, prosecutors said. Unable to open the cash register, Cromartie and Clark fled after Cromartie grabbed two 12-packs of beer. In both cases, Cromartie told others he had shot the clerks, evidence showed.
Lucas and Clark testified against Cromartie at the September 1997 trial that concluded with his death sentence. Lucas and Clark each pleaded guilty to lesser charges, served prison time and were released....
Cromartie's attorneys filed a complaint in federal court challenging the constitutionality of the Georgia law governing post-conviction DNA testing and the way the state's courts apply it. That filing also sought an order to allow DNA testing. Last week, lawyers filed a statement from Lucas in federal court in Valdosta claiming he overhead Clark tell someone else he shot Slysz.
U.S. District Judge Mark Treadwell, in an order Tuesday, rejected that move, writing that Lucas' statement was "not new reliable evidence of Cromartie's actual innocence." A three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld Treadwell's decision late Wednesday before the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a request to intervene....
Cromartie was the third person executed by Georgia this year. The state says it uses the sedative pentobarbital for injections, but Georgia law bars the release of any information about the drug's source.
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