The first execution in the southern US state in more than four years took place on Wednesday, when a Georgia man found guilty of kidnapping, raping, and killing his ex-girlfriend was executed.
In a Jackson, Georgia, prison, Willie Pye, 59, was put to death by lethal injection at 11:03 p.m. (0303 GMT) on Thursday.
The State Board of Pardons and Paroles and the US Supreme Court denied Pye's desperate plea for mercy.
In arguing for clemency, Pye's attorneys said he has an intellectual disability -- with an IQ of 68 -- and experienced a traumatic childhood of "profound poverty, neglect, constant violence and chaos in his family home."
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In addition, his lawyers said, Pye was poorly represented at trial by a "racist, overworked public defender," who has since died.
In 1996, Pye received his first death sentence for the 1993 killing of Alice Yarbrough, his ex-girlfriend.
Pye's death sentence was overturned by an appeals court in 2021 because his court-appointed attorney had provided him with inadequate representation.
Later on, the death penalty was again applied.
According to a statement from the Georgia Department of Corrections, Pye accepted a final prayer but did not record a final statement.
This year, there have been two additional executions in the US.
The nation's first nitrogen gas execution took place in Alabama in January, where convicted murderer Kenneth Smith was executed.
Ivan Cantu, another murderer found guilty, was put to death by lethal injection in Texas in February.
Last month, a second lethal injection execution was set to happen in Idaho, but it was called off when a medical team struggled to get an IV in.
Twenty-three US states have abolished the death penalty, and the governors of six more states—Arizona, California, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee—have suspended its application.
There were 24 executions in the United States in 2023, all of them carried out by lethal injection.
