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 Brandon Astor Jones, the oldest inmate on the state's death row,
is scheduled to be killed by lethal injection at 7 p.m. at Georgia
Diagnostic and Classification Prison in Jackson.
His execution would be the fifth this year in the United States, and
the first in Georgia, according to the Death Penalty Information
Center, which monitors capital punishment nationwide. Texas, Alabama
and Florida executed inmates last month, the center said.
Jones would be the second man executed in the shooting death of
Roger Tackett, 35, inside a convenience store in June 1979,
according to court testimony.
 Jones was arrested inside the store, along with co-defendant Van
Roosevelt Solomon, by a police officer who heard four gunshots,
according to a Georgia Supreme Court case synopsis.
Jones later told another officer "there is a man in the back - hurt
bad," court records said. Police found a badly wounded Tackett in a
locked storeroom.
Solomon, also convicted of murder, was executed in 1985. Jones has
been appealing his death sentence for decades.
A federal district court overturned his death sentence in 1989.
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Another jury again sentenced Jones to death in 1997. Jones has
continued to appeal the verdict, claiming that his trial lawyers
failed to introduce evidence showing his history of mental illness
and childhood sexual abuse.
Jones declined to request a last meal and instead will be offered
the standard prison menu of chicken and rice, rutabagas, seasoned
turnip greens, dry white beans, cornbread, bread pudding and fruit
punch, according to the Georgia Department of Corrections.
(Editing by Letitia Stein and Sandra Maler)
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