Two days before the next scheduled execution, attorneys and advocates for condemned murderer Marcus Ray Johnson are scheduled to meet with the State Board of Pardons and Paroles on Monday to ask for mercy.
Johnson is scheduled to die on Oct. 5 for raping and murdering Angela Sizemore by stabbing her 41 times a short time after they met at an Albany nightclub in 1994.
Superior Court Judge Willie Lockette signed Johnson's death warrant just hours after Troy Anthony Davis was executed last week amid worldwide protests of his lethal injection for murdering a Savannah police officer in 1989.
According to trial testimony, Johnson and Sizemore met at a bar called Fundamentals shortly after midnight the morning of March 24, 1994. She had been to a memorial service earlier and was drinking so heavily the bartenders refused to serve her after a while. Johnson was angry and frustrated because another woman had rejected him earlier.
The two left together and were seen kissing, but hours later a man walking his dog found Sizemore dead in her SUV. Johnson was arrested later that morning.
The meeting with the Parole Board is not open to the public and how each board member votes is secret. It takes three of the five to vote for clemency.
If he does not win, Johnson's execution is set for 7 p.m. at the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Center near Jackson.
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