Three days before his scheduled execution, condemned murderer Tommy Lee Waldrip lost an appeal filed in Fulton Superior Court while a federal judge is still considering the killer’s challenge that the state law that keeps secret information about the lethal injection drug and the identities of those involved with securing it.
Fulton Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney ruled late Monday the issues Waldrip raised in his appeal had already been decided by state and federal courts ruling in the case of another Death Row inmate — Marcus Wellons, who was executed June 17.
Waldrip had said without knowing the identity of the pharmacist who made a special batch of pentobarbital for his execution set for 7 p.m. Thursday or identity of the doctor who prescribed it, there was no way to verify the drug’s safety. That could put him at risk of a painful death, which would violate his Eighth Amendment protection from cruel and unusual punishment, his lawyers said.
U.S. District Judge William O’Kelley heard a similar argument from Waldrip’s lawyers Monday morning. O’Kelley had not ruled by late Monday afternoon.
Waldrip was sentenced to die for murdering a grocery store clerk on April 13, 1991, to keep him from testifying against his son in an upcoming armed robbery trial.
John Mark Waldrip had once been convicted of a 1990 armed robbery but it was overturned and a new trial ordered. Keith Evans, a college student working at a convenience store, was the only witness against John Mark Waldrip and was scheduled to testify again in his retrial.
But two days before the younger Waldrip was to go on trial a second time, the senior Waldrip; his brother Howard Livingston; and John Mark Waldrip killed Evans.
According to testimony, the three men intercepted Evans at a highway crossing in Dawson County as the store clerk was driving home from work. They ran Evans’ truck off the road, shot him in the face with birdshot and then Livingston and the younger Waldrip drove Evans in his truck to Hugh Stowers Road in Dawson County, followed by Tommy Lee Waldrip. It was there that they used a blackjack to beat Evans to death. They buried Evans in a shallow grave in neighboring Gilmer County and then set his truck on fire.
A Dawson County court sentenced the senior Waldrip, now 68, to death. The younger Waldrip and Livingston are serving life sentences.
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