State executes pizza store killer

By Christian Boone

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Condemned inmate Mark McClain was killed by lethal injection at 7:24 p.m. Tuesday in Jackson.

He had no visitors Tuesday, though a Department of Corrections spokeswoman said he talked to two relatives by phone. McClain, 42, declined to eat his final meal and refused a sedative offered one hour before his execution. At around 6:15 he learned from his attorneys that the U.S. Supreme Court had denied a motion to stay, just as the Georgia Supreme Court had ruled earlier in the day.

McClain did not issue a final statement. When asked if he wanted a prayer said for him, he replied, "No, I'm fine." He lay expressionless and made no eye contact with the attorneys, prison officials and members of the media who witnessed his execution. As his death drew near McClain's ruddy complexion turned pale. His body lunged forward slightly as the potassium chloride raced through his veins, but otherwise his passing was quiet.

His execution, unlike most, kept to schedule.

There were no relatives present, which is not uncommon, according to Department of Corrections spokeswoman Joan Heath.

McClain was sentenced to death by a Richmond County jury for the 1994 murder of Kevin Brown, 28. The Domino's Pizza store manager was shot once in the chest for the $130 in his till.

McClain was at peace with his fate, said attorney Brian Kammer.

"Mark had become a person of deep religious faith, and he had a sense of equanimity through this whole process,"Kammer said. "He had hoped common sense would prevail."

McClain acknowledged shooting Brown, but claimed it was unintentional. Jurors sided with the prosecution, who labeled McClain an experienced criminal who "preferred to kill."

About a dozen capital punishment opponents held vigil outside the prison.

"We ask the state not to respond by taking another life and forcing another family to experience that same loss and grief," said James Clark, coordinator of Georgians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty.

McClain was the third person executed in Georgia this year and the 45th put to death since 1983, when the state resumed executions after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled them to be constitutional.

Georgia juries convicted 55 people of committing a murder during an armed robbery in 1995, the year McClain was sentenced. Prosecutors sought the death penalty in 16 of those cases, but McClain was the only one condemned to die.

"It's a crime that would not garner the death penalty these days," Kammer said.

Staff writers Marcus K. Garner and Rhonda Cook contributed to this article.