Georgia Execution Rescheduled For Friday

ATLANTA, GA — After a rare stay of execution delayed his death for about a day, convicted murderer Robert Earl Butts, Jr., is set to die by lethal injection on Friday.

On Wednesday, the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles — the only institution constitutionally allowed to offer clemency or commute a death-row inmate's sentence in the state — imposed a stay of execution as they considered his case. About a day later, they denied him clemency and lifted the stay, rescheduling the execution.

Butts, convicted of killing an off-duty corrections officer in Milledgeville as part of a gang initiation, is now scheduled to die by lethal injection at 7 p.m. Friday at the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison in Jackson. He had been scheduled for execution on Thursday.

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Butts requested a last meal of a bacon cheeseburger with American and cheddar cheese, a ribeye steak, six chicken tenders, seasoned french fries, cheesecake and strawberry lemonade, according to the Georgia Department of Corrections.

Butts, 40, was just 18 in 1996, when he and another man killed Donovan Corey Parks, an off-duty prison guard, in Milledgeville. His lawyers have argued there was no proof Butts actually pulled the trigger and have disputed that the two men were members of the Folks Nation street gang, as prosecutors claimed.

The pardons and parole board took the extra time to study all that evidence more closely.

"Due to the considerable amount of additional information the board has received regarding the case and because the board understands the importance and seriousness of its authority and responsibility, a stay was issued," said Steve Hayes, a spokesman for the parole board. "The board will continue consideration of the case and at a later date make a final decision."

According to evidence and testimony in his case, Butts and Marion Wilson, who was also 18, asked Parks for a ride at a grocery store and he agreed. Butts pulled out a shotgun and forced Parks to drive to a nearby neighborhood, where he was shot in the head and left for dead, the jury ruled. Butts and Wilson stole Parks' car and drove to Atlanta.

They eventually took the car to Macon, where they burned it, and were arrested after they went back to Milledgeville. Butts was convicted in Baldwin County of murder, armed robbery, hijacking a motor vehicle, possession of a firearm during the commission of a crime and possession of a sawed-off shotgun. He was sentenced to death on Nov. 21, 1998.

Butts would become the second death-row inmate in Georgia to be executed in 2018.

In March, Carlton Gary, the so-called Columbus Stocking Strangler, became Georgia's first inmate to be executed this year. In Georgia, 71 inmates — 70 men and one woman — have been put to death since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976.

Butts would be the 49th inmate to be put to death by lethal injection in Georgia. There currently are 53 men on death row in the state.

The state only conducted one execution in 2017. In September, Keith Leroy Tharpe was scheduled to become the second, but the U.S. Supreme Court issued a last-minute stay in the case to study whether racist comments made by a juror in his case tainted the verdict.

Earlier this month, the 11th District U.S. Court of Appeals rejected Tharpe's argument.

Photo courtesy Georgia Department of Corrections