JACKSON, Ga. -- Coed killer Roosevelt Green, insisting he is innocent, lost a last-minute bid for clemency Tuesday and was to die in Georgia's electric chair shortly after midnight with his mother watching.
The Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles refused to grant a reprieve for Green, a black man twice convicted of killing an 18-year-old white coed in 1976.
Green, 28, was to be executed at 12:15 a.m. EST Wednesday and prison officials said his mother, Annie B. Green, would be among the 14 official execution witnesses.
Prisons spokesman Freed Steeple said Green, after a lengthy afternoon visit with his mother, formally asked prison officials to allow her to witness his execution.
Steeple said warden Ralph Kemp then asked Green's mother if she wanted to witness the execution, 'and she said yes, which is surprising.'
Steeple said to his knowledge, no mother had ever watched her son executed in Georgia -- at least not in recent history.
Green requested no special last meal, Steeple said, and declined to eat the regular prison dinner of turkey pot pie.
Steeple said Green's visitors left the prison at 4:15 p.m. and the condemned man 'is just just watching television.'
The former migrant worker insisted he was not present when Theresa Carol Allen, an honors student from Cochran, Ga., was shot twice with a high-powered rifle -- a claim supported by his accomplice.
'We believe Roosevelt Green was an active participant in a continuing conspiracy and the logical conclusion of that conspiracy was murder,' said Michael Wing, chairman of the five-member parole board. 'Whether or not he pulled the trigger, we do not know.'
Green would be the fourth person executed in Georgia and the 34th in the nation since the Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment in 1976. He would be the third to die in the United States within two weeks.
The Supreme Court denied a stay of execution Monday in a rare 4-4 tie vote.
Prison spokesman Fred Steeple said Green spent most of his final hours visiting in his death watch cell with his mother, attorneys and the Rev. Murphy Davis, a prison minister. Steeple said Green made no special requests.
Davis said Green's mother had hoped the parole board would grant her son a reprieve, saying she believed the evidence was 'enough to grant clemency.'
Green visited Monday with his boyhood friend from Minter, Ala., William Daniels, Daniels' wife and their five children.
'They say he's the meanest man in prison,' said Davis, 'but if you could have seen him sitting with those children on his lap ...'
Green, was sentenced to death twice for the murder of Allen, who was abducted from a convenience store, raped, shot twice and her body dumped in a rural area.
Carzell Moore also was convicted of the slaying and sentenced to death. He remains on death row.
Moore, according to appeal testimony, told another inmate that after the abduction, he was left alone with Allen, a freshman nursing student at Middle Georgia College, while Green went to get gas. Moore said he then shot the woman.
The Georgia Supreme Court ruled in a 1980 appeal the conviction should stand because Green left the woman alone on a dark road witha man he knew to be dangerous.
Kenneth Allen, the victim's 25-year-old brother, said he had forgiven Green for the murder, but still thought the execution should be carried out.
'I am a born-again Christian, and even if the sentence isn't carried out, I forgive him,' said Allen. 'But capital punishment is part of our judicial system. If they're not going to carry it out, they should take it off the books.'