Greg Edwards, Ken Hodges say justice finally served by Marcus Ray Johnson’s execution

JACKSON — Dougherty County District Attorney Greg Edwards and former county D.A. Ken Hodges were on hand to watch convicted murderer Marcus Ray Johnson draw his last breath late Thursday night in the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison’s (GDCP) death house.

Johnson, 50, was executed by lethal injection for the 1994 murder of Angela Sizemore. Convicted and sentenced to death in 1998, Johnson is Georgia’s 36th inmate put to death by lethal injection. Since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1973, Georgia has executed 57 men and one woman.

When GDCP Warden Bruce Chatman pronounced Johnson dead at 10:11 p.m., Edwards felt justice had been served.

“The verdict of a Dougherty County jury was finally carried out,” Edwards said Friday. “As a prosecutor it is my job to carry out the will of the people, and they wanted (the execution) to happen. I initiated the death penalty case (against Johnson) under (former D.A.) Britt Priddy. I sought the death penalty because of aggravated circumstances and the horrific facts of the case. It met all the legal requirements for the death penalty.”

Johnson met Sizemore at a west Albany bar named Fundamentals, in the early hours of March 24, 1994. The bar owner and its security officer, who both knew Johnson, testified they had seen Johnson and Sizemore kissing and behaving amorously.

Evidence at trial indicated that Johnson and Sizemore left Fundamentals together and authorities say they were seen walking toward 16th Avenue. Around 8 a.m. on March 24, 1994, a man walking his dog found Sizemore’s white Suburban parked behind an apartment complex in East Albany, her body lying across the front passenger seat. Later reports showed she’d been cut and stabbed 41 times with a small, dull knife.

He was convicted of Sizemore’s death in 1998 and sentenced to death by Judge Willie Lockette.

“The post-conviction appeals process takes far too long. The process is broken and needs to be fixed,” former Dougherty DA Ken Hodges, who was also an assistant under Priddy, said. “There was no doubt about his guilt. People deserve due process and all appeals, but it shouldn’t take 20 years. The appeals don’t have to linger like they do now.

“Twenty years is far too long. It’s too hard on the victim’s family.”

Johnson was scheduled to be put to death at 7 p.m. Thursday, but the execution was delayed for several hours after his attorney, Brian Kammer, filed a motion for a stay of execution with the U.S. Supreme Court. Justice Clarence Thomas denied the relief appeal and Johnson was immediately taken to the GDCP’s death house, arriving just after 9 p.m.

Earlier in the day, Johnson received visits from three paralegals, an attorney, five members of his family, one friend and two investigators. He had requested a six-pack of beer as a last meal, but was denied because the state considered the beer to be contraband.

At 3 p.m. he was given a routine physical, at 4 p.m. he refused a last meal. At 5 p.m. he declined to record a final statement and at 6 p.m. refused an optional sedative.

After he was prepared for execution, Chatman read aloud the death warrant and again asked if Johnson would like to make a final statement and have prayer read. Johnson refused both. A single drug, Phenobarbital, was administered at approximately 9:30 p.m.

The drug worked quickly and Johnson appeared to have died 10 minutes later, but officials waited until just after 10 p.m. to call in two physicians, who pronounced him dead at 10:11 p.m.

According to Edwards, Johnson was the first Dougherty County resident to be executed by the state since 1954. He added there are no Dougherty County residents currently on death row at the GDCP. Edwards, however, said that the county is currently pursuing a death penalty case against Albany resident Gregory Keith Evans, who is accused of killing 19-month-old Janaysia Arnoney Stevenson in March of 2011.

That case has yet to go to trial.