Georgia to Execute John Wayne Conner Thursday

A Georgia death row inmate is set to become the sixth person put to death by the state this year.

John Wayne Conner, 60, is scheduled to die by lethal injection at 7 p.m. Thursday at the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison in Jackson.

The execution would set a new record for Georgia. The state has never executed more than five people in a year in the 40 years since the death penalty was reinstated.

The Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles on Wednesday denied a request for clemency by Conner's attorneys after hours of hearings and deliberations.

Conner was sentenced to death in 1982 for the murder of James T. White in Telfair County.

According to testimony, Conner, White and Conner's girlfriend had gone to a party in Eastman. After returning to Conner's house, Conner, then 25, and White, 29, walked to a neighbor's home to ask, unsuccessfully, for a ride to a liquor store.

While walking back to Conner's house, Conner claims, White made a comment about wanting to have sex with Conner's girlfriend. The men fought, and Conner hit White first with a glass bottle then with a stick he found.

After returning home, Conner told his girlfriend he may have killed White but that they needed to go back and make sure. The girlfriend testified that when they went back to the scene of the fight, she heard a thud, then Conner returned and told her White was dead.

The couple were arrested the next day in Butts County.

In their application to the pardons and paroles board, Conner's lawyers argued that during his 34 years in prison, Conner "has transformed himself from a violent young man with severe substance abuse problems into a peaceful and productive member of the prison community."

They argued that Conner grew up in impoverished conditions in a home "where vicious physical assaults, incest, sexual abuse and alcoholism were the norm" and that he has been denied a proper mental health evaluation.

A Superior Court judge in Butts County already had declined to halt Conner's execution.

For his last meal, Conner has requested 10 pieces of fried catfish, 10 hush puppies, two triple deluxe hamburgers with bacon, two pints of vanilla ice cream and one sliced raw onion.