STATE BRIEFS: Pylon member dies after van crash in Athens

Randy Bewley, guitarist and co-founder of the influential Athens band Pylon, died Wednesday in an Athens hospital after suffering a heart attack behind the wheel Monday night. He was 53.

Bewley died about 5 p.m. Wednesday at Athens Regional Medical Center, where he was admitted after he flipped his van on Barber Street early Monday night.

“We are so very saddened to hear the news of Randy’s passing,” R.E.M. frontman Michael Stipe said in a statement to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “Pylon have always been an inspired catalyst to R.E.M. and the Athens music and art scene, and beyond.”

Funeral arrangements are pending.

—- Richard Eldredge

Execution date set for murderer

A March 10 execution date has been set for Robert Newland, who was sentenced to death for the 1986 murder of a St. Simons Island woman.

Newland is to be put to death by lethal injection at 7 p.m. at the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison in Jackson, home to death row, according to the Georgia attorney general’s office.

Newland, at the time a drywall finisher, was sentenced to die by a Glynn County jury in August 1987 for the fatal stabbing of his 27-year-old neighbor, Carol Sanders Beatty. She was killed in the garden of her home.

Newland was found guilty of murder and aggravated assault with intent to rape.

In a ruling last year upholding the death sentence, the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said Newland confessed to the killing.

—- Bill Rankin

Slaying suspect pleads not guilty

One of the two suspects accused in the death of a University of North Carolina student body president from Athens has pleaded not guilty to a federal kidnapping charge.

During a hearing Wednesday in federal court in Greensboro, N.C., attorneys for 22-year-old Demario Atwater also asked for a January 2010 trial date. But Judge James A. Beaty Jr. left that set for November.

Atwater faces other charges and could face the death penalty. Eve Carson, 22, of Athens was shot five times last March.

—- Associated Press