Georgia's first execution in almost a year has been set next month for William Earl Lynd, who shot and killed his girlfriend in Berrien County in 1988.

The Department of Corrections has yet to schedule the specific date and time for Lynd's execution. But the death warrant, signed Tuesday, says Lynd is to be put to death by lethal injection between May 6 and May 13.

On Dec. 23, 1988, Lynd got into an argument with his live-in girlfriend, Ginger Moore, and shot her in the face with a .32-caliber derringer.

Moore regained consciousness and followed Lynd outside, where he was smoking a cigarette. He shot her again, put her into the trunk of his car and drove away, parking near a farmhouse and dozing off for a few minutes. After hearing Moore thumping around in the trunk, Lynd opened the trunk and shot her a third time, killing her, according to court records.

Lynd later buried Moore's body near Tifton. He then drove to Ohio, where he killed another woman. Before the victim, Leslie Joan Sharkey, died, she gave a full account to police.

Lynd fled to Florida, but he left a trail of evidence tying him to the crimes, according to court records. Lynd eventually turned himself in to the Berrien County Sheriff's Office and confessed.

Lynd's lawyers say the scientific evidence does not fit the state's version of the case. Lynd fired the first shot after Moore began striking him in the chest and face, and he killed her instantly by firing two more shots into her head when she attacked him from behind, say court motions filed by Lynd's attorneys. The filings contend Lynd never fired a third shot into Moore after she was in the trunk.

Executions in Georgia had been on hold until the U.S. Supreme Court issued a decision last week upholding the constitutionality of lethal injection in Kentucky.

The executions of two other Georgia death-row inmates, Jack Alderman and Curtis Osborne, were put on hold in October while the Kentucky lethal-injection challenge was pending. The state Attorney General's Office has asked the Georgia Supreme Court to lift stays of execution in those two cases.

Alderman, condemned to die for killing his wife in Chatham County in 1974, has filed a federal lawsuit in Atlanta that contends Georgia's method of execution by lethal injection is cruel and unusual punishment. U.S. District Court Judge Beverly Martin has scheduled a May 30 hearing on that challenge.

The last person executed in Georgia was triple murderer John Hightower, who died by lethal injection June 26, 2007. He was convicted in Baldwin County in 1988 for killing his wife and her two daughters in their sleep.

—- Staff writer Rhonda Cook contributed to this article.