'Devil's son' executed for 1975 murder
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JACKSON, Georgia (Reuters) -- A man described by his brother as "the devil's son" was put to death by lethal injection in Georgia Tuesday for the 1975 rape and murder of a topless dancer.
James Willie Brown, 55, was executed at the state prison in Jackson, Georgia after the U.S. Supreme Court refused to issue a last-minute stay, said Georgia Department of Corrections spokeswoman Peggy Chapman.
Brown declined to make a final statement and refused a prayer before a sedative, lung-paralyzing drug and the poison potassium chloride were injected into his arms. He was pronounced dead at 8:32 p.m. EST , according to Chapman.
For his last meal Brown had a foot-long hot dog with chili, french fries, a dill cucumber, strawberry ice cream and a soft drink.
Brown was originally sentenced to die in 1981 for the May 13, 1975, killing of Brenda Watson, a 21-year-old go-go dancer whom he met in a bar in Atlanta. A federal court overturned the conviction in 1988 due to questions about his mental fitness.
Brown, who claimed he was sexually and physically abused as a child and suffered from paranoid schizophrenia, was convicted and sentenced to die at a second trial in 1990.
Prosecutors said that Brown took Watson on a date to a motel restaurant and then later drove the victim to a logging road where he bound her wrists and ankles, shoved her panties down her throat and raped her as she suffocated to death.
Harold Brown, the executed killer's brother, said he doubted his brother was mentally ill.
"Knowing him, growing up with him, there's no doubt in my mind he was just a very mean, coldhearted person," Harold Brown told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution Friday. In a 2002 interview, Harold Brown called his brother "the devil's son."
Copyright 2003
Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
