Alderman’s death by lethal injection took 14 minutes

JACKSON — The 20th man executed in Georgia by lethal injection took 14 minutes to die Tuesday night.

Witness described Jack Alderman’s manner as calm, almost serene, his eyes closed the entire time. For a few minutes before he was declared dead, they said he smiled.

“There was no jerking,” said Jan Skutch, a media witness from The Savannah Morning News. “He was calm. It was almost antiseptic.”

Adlerman, pronounced dead at 7:25 p.m. Tuesday, has been on death row almost 35 years — longer than any of the 109 death row inmates in Georgia. He was convicted of the 1974 Chatham County murder of wife Barbara Alderman for $10,000 in insurance money.

When that conviction was overturned by a federal appeals court, he was convicted in a second trial in 1984.

An accomplice in the murder, John Arthur Brown, beat Barbara Alderman with a crescent wrench. Then he and Alderman choked her and put her underwater in a bathtub to be sure she was dead.

Brown was paroled in 1987 and died a free man in New York in 2000.

Alderman’s attorney, Michael Seiml, said Tuesday night — after he had exhausted his last appeals to the Georgia parole board for clemency and to the U.S. Supreme Court — that Alderman, 57, was a model prisoner who deserved to have his death sentence reduced to life.

“Brown didn’t have a lick of character and the same board that refused clemency for Alderman this morning offered Brown parole,” Seiml said. He [Alderman] has been the model prison for 34 years. If that’s not enough to get clemency, it’s hard to imagine what is.”

But David Lock, an assistant district attorney in Chatham County, said Alderman instigated the crime.

“He was more culpable, without him, the crime would not have taken place,” Lock said.

No members of Alderman’s family witnessed the execution, said Georgia Department of Corrections spokesman Paul Czachowski. Two members of Barbara Alderman’s family were at the prison but did not witness the execution.

Alderman made a recorded statement earlier in the day “thanking everyone who made his life better, considering the circumstances,” said Czachowski, paraphrasing the condemned man’s comment.

Alderman declined a final comment. A chaplain prayed for him, saying at one point “Jack, may Christ … free you from excruciating pain.” Alderman was administered the lethal injection with needles in each arm while he was strapped down.

Alderman did not make a special last meal request. Instead, at 4 p.m. Tuesday he was given the regular prison meal of baked fish, peas, cole slaw, carrots, cheese grits, bun, fruit juice and chocolate cake.

“He barely touched it,” said Czachowski.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.