With about eight hours to spare before a man convicted of killing a convenience store clerk was to be put to death Wednesday, Georgia's highest court stepped in and temporarily halted the execution.
Ray Jefferson Cromartie, 52, was to receive a lethal injection at 7 p.m. Wednesday at the state
prison in Jackson.
Cromartie was convicted of malice murder and sentenced to death for the April 1994 killing of 50-year-old Richard Slysz in Thomasville, just inside Georgia's southern border.