Georgia executes shotgun murderer
Victim’s father: ‘After 22 years, he got what was coming to him.’
The state of Georgia executed a man yesterday for the killing of an off-duty prison guard who offered him a ride 22 years ago.
Robert Earl Butts Jr, 40, was declared dead by a prison warden after the compounded barbiturate pentobarbital was injected into his body.
Butts kept his eyes closed throughout the process. Prison officials said he declined a prayer and a sedative.
Asked if he had any final words, he said simply, ‘‘Yeah, I’ve been drinking caffeine all day.’’ The warden then left the room. About a minute later, a tube that administers the killing drugs through a wall appeared to pulse. Shortly thereafter, Butts groaned and said ‘‘It burns, man.’’
Then his feet, in white socks visible under a blanket, briefly twitched.
He yawned, then a short time later, opened his mouth again, noiselessly. His chest briefly rose as his back arched. Then he took about nine deep breaths, and after that, he lay still.
Butts was convicted along with 41-year-old Marion Wilson Jr in the March 1996 slaying of Donovan Corey Parks. The 24-year-old, who knew Butts as a Burger King coworker, agreed to give the men a ride outside a Walmart store in Milledgeville, Baldwin County, 150km southeast of Atlanta, on March 28, 1996.
The men ordered him out of the car and shot him in the back of the head. Parks, a Jehovah’s Witness, had just come home from Bible study.
Prosecutors said Butts and Wilson wanted to impress other Folks gang members. The 18-year-olds were charged with murder, armed robbery, carjacking and possession of a sawn-off shotgun.
Juries in separate trials found sufficient evidence to sentence both men to death because Parks was killed during the commission of an aggravating felony, armed robbery. Wilson remains on death row. Butts was put to death after the US Supreme Court, without explanation, denied his final appeal.
He was granted a brief stay of execution this week when the state Board of Pardons and Paroles, the only authority in Georgia with the power to commute a death sentence, said it had received ‘‘considerable amount of additional information’’.
But the board voted not to spare his life. He was the second Georgia inmate executed this year; Carlton Gary, known as the ‘‘stocking strangler’’ for raping and killing three older women, was put to death in March.
Butts’ lawyers insisted in a clemency application to the parole board that he was not the shooter, and did not expect Parks to be killed.
They also said he should not be executed because given the nature of the crime, they argued that he likely would not be sentenced to death if he were prosecuted today.
They said a death sentence was ‘‘grossly disproportionate,’’ and unconstitutional because although he was 18 at the time of the killing, his mental age and maturity lagged behind his actual age.
His lawyers also said his trial lawyers failed to thoroughly investigate his case or to present mitigating evidence such as childhood abuse and neglect that could have spared him the death penalty.
Parks’ father, Freddie, said he had been waiting 22 years to see justice.
‘‘I’ve been praying I’d see this day and they would get what’s coming to them,’’ Parks, 75, told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
His son became a prison guard after high school but had plans to study.