Marcus Ray Johnson on Georgia death row denied beer with last meal

On Wednesday, the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles said it had rejected Johnson’s request for clemency.

Marcus Ray Johnson was convicted on April 5, 1998 of malice murder, felony murder, aggravated assault, rape and aggravated battery in the March 1994 death of Angela Sizemore of Albany, Ga.

Georgia death row inmate Marcus Ray Johnson.

A Butts County Superior Court judge Wednesday rejected a constitutional challenge to Johnson’s sentence and conviction, and declined to stop his execution. That would be the lowest figure since 1991 before a movement to crack down on crime swept the country and executions hit 98 in 1999, the highest since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976.

Brian Kammer, an attorney for Johnson, argues his client shouldn’t be executed because doubts remain about his guilt.

Sizemore’s now 26-year-old daughter, Kathryn Barker, watched Johnson draw his last breath as she sat with former Dougherty County district attorney Ken Hodges, who kept a protective arm around her. Barker was in kindergarten when her mother was murdered.

The appointed time of his death was 7 p.m. EST, but actual execution nearly never comes until hours later, after all the courts have reviewed last-minute appeals and decided. He met her in a south Georgia nightclub.

Her body was found lying across the passenger seat of her vehicle the following morning by a man walking his dog. Johnson denied the allegations, saying that the pair had sex in a vacant lot and then that, during an argument, he punched her. He claimed that he then went home and passed out on his front lawn. Later reports showed she’d been cut and stabbed 41 times with a small, tiresome knife.

The day before he was scheduled to be executed in October 2011, it was stopped when his lawyers asked for new DNA testing on evidence. The rest of the state’s case was circumstantial and based on unreliable and inconsistent eyewitness testimony, he said in court filings.