A 41-year-old man scheduled to be put to death on Thursday has asked for barbecue for the last meal he gets before his lethal injection scheduled for 7 p.m.
According to the Department of Corrections, Joshua Bishop’s last meal request is a barbecue sandwich, Brunswick stew, potato chips, coleslaw, lemonade and purple candy.
Bishop, 41, is to be put to death for the 1994 beating death of 35-year-old Leverett Morrison. Bishop and his co-defendant Mark Braxley confessed to Morrison's murder, as well as the murder of another man, within hours of detectives finding Morrison's body between two dumpsters near Braxley's trailer. Investigators didn't even know Ricky Lee Wills was dead until Bishop confessed to killing him two weeks before Morrison's death.
Though Bishop, 19 at the time, confessed, he still went to trial. He was convicted and sentenced to die.
Braxley, however, pleaded guilty and was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole.
Bishop, Braxley and Morrison had spent much of the day on June 25, 1994, drinking at a Milledgeville bar and then at Braxley’s trailer. Morrison fell asleep and that’s when Braxley decided he wanted to visit his girlfriend. Braxley and Bishop decided to just take Morrison’s Jeep without asking. But Morrison woke when Bishop tried to fish the car keys from his pocket. They struggled and Bishop and Braxley beat him to death with a curtain rod.
After dumping Morrison’s body, the two set fire to his Jeep in some nearby woods.
Bishop told investigators he and Braxley killed Wills because he boasted about sexually assaulting Bishop’s mother. He said they had to bend Wills’ legs in unnatural directions to make his body fit into a makeshift grave.
Neither Braxley nor Bishop went on trial for Wills' death even though they confessed. Prosecutors used Wills' death when to argue that Bishop should get the death penalty.
Bishops’ advocates as well as those who want his sentence carried out will meet separately with the state Board of Pardons and Paroles on Wednesday.
If Bishop is put to death by lethal injection, he will be the third man Georgia has executed this year.
Another execution has been scheduled for April 12.
Kenneth Fults is scheduled to die next month for the 1996 murder of his 19-year-old neighbor. Fults was on a crime spree, hoping to get guns to kill his former girlfriend's new boyfriend, when he broke into the Spalding County house of Cathy Bounds, who was home alone. Fults pleaded guilty to placing a pillow over her head and firing five shots so he went to trial only a jury could decide his punishment.
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