A killer who murdered an off-duty prison guard has been executed in Georgia.
Marion Wilson, 42, was handed the death sentence after he was found guilty of killing the guard in 1996 in Atlanta, Georgia.
He has now been put to death, after Georgia Supreme Court judges yesterday declined a request to stay his execution by a vote of 7-1.
The murderer repeated 'about to be free' as he was given the lethal injection, according to an 11 Alive News journalist who witnessed the execution.
For his final meal, Wilson ordered a medium thin-crust pizza with all the toppings, 20 buffalo wings, a pint of butter pecan ice cream, apple pie and grape juice, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
The newspaper reports that Wilson was declared dead at 9.52pm local time (2.52am in the UK).
Wilson would be the 1,500th inmate executed in the country since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment in 1976.
The 42-year-old was convicted in 1997 of murdering off-duty prison officer Donovan Parks southeast of Atlanta, Georgia.
On March 28, 1996, Parks went into a Wal-Mart in Milledgeville to purchase cat food, leaving his 1992 Acura Vigor parked in the fire lane in front of the store, state prosecutors said.
After Parks left the store, Wilson and an accomplice, Robert Butts Jr., carjacked him.
Wilson pulled the victim by his tie out of the car and onto the pavement and Butts shot him in the head, the records said.
The two tried to sell the car at a shop in Atlanta that strips down vehicles, but were turned down.
Afterward, they set fire to the car, court records said.
Butts was put to death in 2018 for the murder.
