Marcus Ray Johnson Executed in Georgia for 1994 Murder

Georgia death row inmate Marcus Ray Johnson is proven in this undated photo offered by the Georgia Department of Corrections.

The state Supreme Court has also denied his request to appeal a ruling yesterday by the Butts County Superior Court.

Johnson’s execution is scheduled for tonight at the Jackson Diagnostic Prison. The 50-year-old was convicted in the March 1994 rape and murder of Angela Sizemore in Albany.

Johnson’s attorneys argue he shouldn’t be executed because doubts remain about his guilt.

Johnson’s lawyer said that the state’s case only relied on eyewitnesses who claimed to see a “white man” in the vicinity of where Sizemore was found. These “wholly unreliable cross-racial eyewitness identifications obtained through the shoddiest, most discredited ad-hoc police methods” were the only links tying Johnson to the murder, according to the appeal. (Under Georgia law, the board has that power, not the governor.) Johnson’s lawyer is now appealing to the state’s supreme court.

Sizemore’s blood was found on Johnson’s leather jacket, and he had scratches on his hands, arms and neck, the synopsis said. Had the death sentence been commuted, the Board of Pardons and Parole would have explained why, in writing.

Prison guards and K9s checked cars as people came through the gates for Johnson’s execution, an execution that Mary Catherine Johnson says doesn’t have the facts to support it. “There’s a lot of evidence that Ray Johnson is innocent and the courts have denied him in every step of the way”, she said.

Johnson is accused of stabbing an Albany woman 41 times with a small, boring knife.

A man walking his dog later that morning found Sizemore’s body inside her SUV behind an apartment complex.

A judge stopped Johnson’s previously scheduled execution in October 2011 to allow for new DNA testing on a few evidence but later denied Johnson’s request for a new trial.