WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court has refused to grant a last-minute reprieve to a Georgia death row inmate who would be the first person executed in the United States since a botched lethal injection in Oklahoma seven weeks ago.
The justices turned down an appeal from Marcus Wellons, convicted in the 1989 rape and murder of a 15-year-old girl in suburban Atlanta.
Among his appeals was a challenge to the secretive process used by Georgia to obtain lethal injection drugs from unidentified, loosely regulated compounding pharmacies.
Wellons is one of three men scheduled to be executed in a 24-hour period starting Tuesday night.
No one has been executed in the U.S. since April 29.
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