Ga. executes man who slew pair of women
JACKSON, Ga. — A man who killed his ex-girlfriend and another woman nearly 25 years ago was executed Thursday evening in Georgia.
The Georgia attorney general’s office said in a statement that 52-year-old Scotty Garnell Morrow was pronounced dead at 9:38 p.m. following an injection of pentobarbital at the state prison in Jackson.
Morrow was convicted of the fatal shootings of ex-girlfriend Barbara Ann Young and her friend Tonya Woods at Young’s home in Gainesville in December 1994. Prosecutors said at trial that Morrow shot the two women and another woman when they turned him away as he tried to get Young to take him back. The third woman survived.
Strapped to a gurney before he received the lethal injection, Morrow apologized to the families of the victims. He also apologized to his own family and friends and told them he loved them and added he hoped the families of the victims would find peace and forgiveness.
Morrow was the first inmate put to death in Georgia this year. His execution came shortly after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a last-hour bid to block the death sentence from being carried out.
Morrow’s attorneys argued he was beaten and raped as a child and that lingering effects from that abuse have left him unable to properly process and express his emotions. When Woods told him that Young had just been using him for money and companionship while her “real man” was in prison, he snapped, his lawyers said.
In a clemency petition, Morrow’s attorneys had asked the State Board of Pardons and Paroles to spare his life. The board rejected that request after a hearing Wednesday. The board is the only authority in Georgia that can commute a death sentence.