The state parole board on Friday denied clemency to Melbert Ray Ford Jr., who is scheduled to be executed next week for the 1986 killings of a his former girlfriend and her 11-year-old niece.

Ford is scheduled to be put to death by lethal injection on Wednesday at 7 p.m. at the Georgia Diagnostic Classification Prison in Jackson. He was sentenced to death for the murders of his former companion, Martha Matich, and her niece, Lisa Chapman, during a grocery store robbery in Newton County.

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University System of Georgia Chancellor Sonny Perdue said joining neighboring states to form a new accreditation agency will “keep Georgia’s universities among the best in the nation." (Jason Getz/AJC)

Credit: Jason Getz/AJC