JACKSON, Ga. -- A Georgia inmate convicted of rape and murder has become the first person executed in the U.S. since the botched lethal injection of a prisoner in Oklahoma in April.
Shortly afterward, Missouri executed an inmate.
Marcus Wellons, 59, was executed by injection Tuesday night after last-minute appeals were denied. A corrections spokesman says he was pronounced dead at 11:56 p.m. The execution seemed to go smoothly with no noticeable complications.
It was 35 minutes from the time he was brought into the room until the the drugs were administered with tubes. Wellons was lying still with his eyes shut while the drugs went in him.
Wellons was convicted and sentenced to death in 1993 for the 1989 slaying of his 15-year-old neighbor, India Roberts, a high school sophomore from the Atlanta suburbs.
Two other convicted killers, in Missouri and Florida, were also facing execution within a 24-hour period starting Tuesday night. All three states have refused to say where they get their drugs or whether they are tested. Lawyers for two of the condemned inmates have challenged the secretive process used by some states to obtain lethal injection drugs from unidentified, loosely regulated compounding pharmacies.
Nine executions nationwide have been stayed or postponed since late April, when Oklahoma prison officials halted the execution of Clayton Lockett after noting that the lethal injection drugs weren't being administered into his vein properly. Lockett's punishment was halted, and he died of a heart attack several minutes later.
Late Tuesday night, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to grant a last-minute reprieve to Georgia inmate Wellons, and the state moved forward with his execution. It had been scheduled for earlier in the evening but was delayed while the appeal was pending. In Missouri, John Winfield was executed shortly after midnight. The U.S. Supreme Court had refused late Tuesday to halt his execution, and moments later, Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon denied clemency.
John Ruthell Henry's execution is scheduled for 6 p.m. today in Florida.
"I think after Clayton Lockett's execution everyone is going to be watching very closely," Fordham University School of Law professor Deborah Denno, a death penalty expert, said of this week's executions. "The scrutiny is going to be even closer."
Georgia and Missouri both use the single drug pentobarbital, a sedative. Florida uses a three-drug combination of midazolam hydrochloride, vecuronium bromide and potassium chloride.
Despite concerns about the drugs and how they are obtained, death penalty supporters say all three convicted killers are getting what they deserve.
In Missouri, Winfield was convicted of shooting his former girlfriend, Carmelita Donald, and two of her friends in the head. Arthea Sanders and Shawnee Murphy died. Donald survived but was blinded.
Symone Winfield, the daughter of Donald and John Winfield, is among those who asked Nixon for clemency.
In Florida, the state was moving ahead with the execution despite claims that Henry is mentally ill and intellectually disabled. The state has said anyone with an IQ of at least 70 is not mentally disabled. Testing has shown Henry's IQ at 78, though his lawyers said it should be re-evaluated.
Henry stabbed his estranged wife, Suzanne Henry, to death a few days before Christmas in 1985. Hours later, he killed her 5-year-old son from a previous relationship. Henry had previously pleaded no contest to second-degree murder for fatally stabbing his common-law wife, Patricia Roddy, in 1976, and was on parole when Suzanne Henry and the boy were killed.
Asked Tuesday if he had discussed with the Department of Corrections what happened in Oklahoma and whether any changes were needed in Florida, Gov. Rick Scott said, "I focus on making sure that we do things the right way here."
Florida and Missouri trail only Texas as the most active death penalty states. Texas has carried out seven executions in 2014. Florida has executed five men in 2014, and Missouri has executed four. Combined, the three states have performed 16 of the 20 executions this year.
Information for this article was contributed by Kate Brumback, Tamara Lush and Gary Fineout of The Associated Press.
A Section on 06/18/2014