Brandon Astor Jones

Brandon Astor Jones was an American criminal who was executed by lethal injection by the state of Georgia on February 3, 2016. Jones, age 72, was the oldest person on Georgia's death row at the time he was executed.

Crime and sentencing

Jones was first sentenced to death in October 1979 for his involvement in the murder of Roger Tackett earlier that year during a robbery of a Tenneco convenience store, of which Tackett was the manager. Jones was convicted in relation to this murder along with Van Roosevelt Solomon, who was executed in 1985 by electrocution. In 1989, a federal court ordered Jones to be re-sentenced because the jurors who had convicted him had improperly brought a Bible into the deliberation room. He was re-sentenced to death in 1997. In January 2016, Jones' attorneys asked the Butts County Superior Court to stop his execution by challenging the state's injection drug secrecy law, and arguing that the death penalty was too harsh a punishment for his crime. Both arguments were rejected by the court. On February 2, 2016, the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit voted 6-5 not to hear Jones' challenge of Georgia's drug secrecy law. Jones was executed early on February 3, 2016. He was pronounced dead at 12:46 AM.

See also

• Capital punishment in Georgia (U.S. State)
• List of offenders executed in the United States in 2016
• List of people executed in Georgia (U.S. state)