A man convicted of killing an Atlanta police officer and wounding a second officer with an AR-15 was executed late on Wednesday, becoming the seventh inmate put to death in Georgia this year.
Gregory Paul Lawler, 63, was pronounced dead at 11:49pm at the state prison in Jackson after he was injected with the barbiturate pentobarbital.
He was convicted of murder in the October 1997 slaying of John Sowa and for critically wounding Patricia Cocciolone.
Photo: Reuters
The Georgia Supreme Court on Wednesday said in a statement that it had unanimously denied defense requests to halt execution plans originally set for 7pm. Defense attorneys later appealed to the US Supreme Court, which also declined to stop the execution late on Wednesday night.
Lawler did not make a final statement and refused an offer of a prayer. Then he lay on the gurney with his eyes closed as the lethal drug flowed, taking several deep breaths and yawning before becoming still.
Cocciolone arrived in a wheelchair and sat in the front row of the witness area, as did Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard, whose office prosecuted Lawler.
SEVEN EXECUTIONS
The seven executions in Georgia this year are the most in a calendar year in the state since the death penalty was reinstated nationwide in 1976. Georgia executed five inmates last year and five in 1987.
Georgia is one of five states that have carried out executions this year for a total of 17 across the US. Texas has executed seven inmates, while Alabama, Florida and Missouri have executed one apiece.
Sowa and Cocciolone were responding to a report of a man hitting a woman on the evening of Oct. 12, 1997, and arrived at a parking lot to find Lawler trying to pull his drunken girlfriend to her feet. Lawler quickly left and went to his nearby apartment, and the officers decided to help his girlfriend get home.
When they knocked on the door, Lawler cursed, yelled and told the officers to leave. Once his girlfriend was inside, he tried to shut the door on them. Sowa put his hand up to keep the door from shutting and said they just wanted to make sure the girlfriend lived there and that she would be safe.
STANDOFF
Lawler grabbed an AR-15 and fired 15 times as the officers fled, using bullets that can penetrate body armor, prosecutors said.
When other officers responded to Cocciolone’s radio distress call, they found Sowa lying near the sidewalk and Cocciolone on the ground in the front yard.
Both officers’ pistols were still in their holsters.
The responding officers got Lawler’s girlfriend out of the apartment, and Lawler finally surrendered after a six-hour standoff.
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