Georgia puts convicted killer to death

JACKSON, Ga., Oct. 20 (UPI) -- A Georgia man was put to death Tuesday for killing a Domino's Pizza manager during a 1994 robbery that brought him $130.

Mark McClain, 42, died at 7:24 p.m. EDT, officials at the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison in Jackson said. He had declined to make any last statement, The Augusta (Ga.) Chronicle reported.

During his 1995 trial, McClain admitted shooting Kevin Brown, 28. But he said he did not intend to kill him.

McClain was on parole at the time of the robbery after doing time in South Carolina for a holdup. Prosecutors called him a hardened criminal.

Both the U.S. and Georgia supreme courts rejected last-minute appeals to delay the execution. Brian Kammer, McClain's lawyer, called the decisions "an intolerable result which institutionalizes a fundamental arbitrariness within Georgia's capital punishment system," The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.

Death penalty opponents held vigils outside the prison, in Atlanta and elsewhere in the state. The execution was the third in 2009 and the 45th under Georgia's 1983 capital punishment law.

As Georgia prepared to execute his killer, friends in Augusta remembered Brown as a shy friendly man who loved playing the bass guitar. Stoney Cannon, a friend, began holding annual Kevin Scott Brown Rocking the Stocking concerts with live local bands in December 2004.

"Kevin loved music, Kevin loved helping people and that had a lot to do with what I've become," Cannon told WAGT-TV, Augusta.