US state Georgia executes prisoner for murder despite some doubt over his conviction

Georgia has executed a man convicted of murdering a woman he met at a nightclub despite last minute pleas that his conviction was in doubt.

Marcus Ray Johnson, 50, was declared dead at 10:11pm last at the state prison in Jackson, Georgia Department of Corrections officials confirmed.

Johnson had been convicted in 1994 for the rape and murder of Angela Sizemore six years earlier. Johnson declined to make a final statement or have a prayer said for him. The warden left the execution chamber at 9.44 p.m.

Johnson's attorney,  Brian Kammer, asked the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles to commute Johnson's death sentence or delay his execution for 90 days to allow for additional DNA testing that could exonerate his client. The board denied the request last night, clearing the way for his execution.

"The US capital punishment system is costly and broken, and the death penalty itself is cruel and inhuman" Steven W. Hawkins, executive director of Amnesty International USA said.

"It risks taking the lives of the wrongly convicted and wastes resources without deterring crime. It's time to end the death penalty once and for all."

Four years before his execution, Ms Sizemore’s daughter spoke to the media and said that she forgave her mother's killer and hopes that he will find peace.

In a statement released after the execution was over, Kammer said it "deepens the moral stain on the State of Georgia." The application of the death penalty is characterized by arbitrary, inaccurate and morally bankrupt judgments, he said.

"Georgia should be erring on the side of caution, not rushing its citizens pell mell to the execution chamber," Kammer said.

A judge stopped Johnson's previously scheduled execution in October 2011 to allow for new DNA testing on some evidence but later denied Johnson's request for a new trial.

The prosecution at his trial said that Johnson left a nightclub with the victim and raped and stabbed her 41 times with a dull knife. She was found the next day in her car.

Johnson maintains he did not kill but said that the pair had sex and he punched her on the nose after an argument but then went home and collapsed on his front lawn.

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The only physical evidence linking Johnson to Sizemore supports his admission of consensual sex and her bloodied nose, Kammer argued. The rest of the state's case was circumstantial and based on unreliable and inconsistent eyewitness testimony, he said in court filings.

Investigators never found Sizemore's blood on Johnson's pocket knife, Kammer argued. They didn't find Johnson's DNA or fingerprints in Sizemore's car, which police believed he drove from the crime scene to a different part of town.

The US was one of only nine countries in the world that carried out executions each year between 2009 and 2013.