Georgia plans to execute John Wayne Conner on July 14 for a 1982 murder, making him the sixth person the state has put to death in 2016 which is more than any year since the death penalty was reinstated 40 years ago.
Conner, now 60, was sentenced to die for beating to death his friend, J.T. White, after the drinking buddy said he wanted to have sex with Conner’s girlfriend.
Conner, Beverly Bates and the 29-year-old White had spent an evening in January 1982 at a party in Eastman, Ga. At the end of the party, the group returned to Conner’s’ house but wanted to keep drinking, even though it was past midnight.
So they set out for a neighbor’s house in hopes of getting a ride to the liquor store for more bourbon. Unable to get a ride, they walked back to the house, and White “made the statement about he would like to go to bed with my girlfriend,” Conner told investigators. “So I got mad and we got into a fight.”
Conner, 25 then, beat White with an almost-empty liquor bottle and an oak tree stick he found nearby, leaving White for dead in a drainage ditch. He then went home to wake Bates and tell her they needed to leave town.
The last time Georgia carried out an execution was April 27 when Daniel Anthony Lucas died by lethal injection 18 years and four days after he murdered Steven Moss and his two children in their Jones County home.
This year Georgia has also executed Joshua Bishop, Kenneth Fults, Travis Hittson and Brandon Astor Jones.
The last time Georgia put to death as many as five people was last year and before that it was in 1987.
Except for Conner, no other Death Row has exhausted his appeals though some are close.
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