A 52-year-old man convicted of killing his ex-girlfriend and her friend in a 1994 argument was killed by lethal injection on Thursday, officials of state corrections said.
At 9:38 p.m. Scotty Garnell Morrow was declared dead. Local time (2538 GMT) at Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison in Jackson, Georgia Corrections Department reported in a statement.
Morrow, whose last appeal was dismissed about two hours earlier by the U.S. Supreme Court, “accepted a final prayer and recorded a final statement” prior to his execution, the department of corrections said.
His final statement’s content was not immediately released.
Morrow went to Barbara Young’s home on the morning of December 29, 1994, weeks after she ended a relationship with him, according to court documents.
According to court documents, an argument followed as Young’s friends Tonya Woods and LaToya Horne and her two children looked on.
During the altercation, Morrow pulled a gun out of his waistband and shot Woods in the abdomen and Horne in the arm. Young fled to a bedroom where, before he shot and killed her, Morrow beat her. He shot and killed Woods, as shown by court papers.
Horne fled to the house of a neighbor as police responded to the shooting and the assassination weapon was later found hidden in Morrow’s house backyard. After his arrest, Morrow confessed to the killings.
During his trial he admitted that he had shot the victims because he “wanted [ Ms ]. Woods ] to shut up,” said court papers.
On June 26, 1999, a jury found Morrow guilty of several charges, including two counts of murder of felony. Three days later, the judges recommended the death sentence.
Several state and federal courts have, on various grounds, denied Morrow’s appeals since 2001. In February, the Supreme Court denied Morrow’s application to appeal.
Morrow was the fifth prisoner to be executed in the U.S. and the first to be executed in 2019 in Georgia. In 2018, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, Georgia executed two prisoners.
