ATLANTA (AP) – Lawyers for a Georgia inmate set to die this week for a 1979 killing urged the state’s highest court on Monday to throw out his death sentence, calling it disproportionate to his crime.
Brandon Astor Jones was convicted of killing of convenience store manager Roger Tackett in greater Atlanta’s Cobb County and is scheduled to receive an injection of pentobarbital at 7 p.m. Tuesday at the state prison in Jackson.
At the time of Jones’ 1979 conviction. a death sentence for a murder committed during a robbery at a business was rare and that penalty hasn’t been applied at all in any similar case in Georgia in the past 20 years, Jones’ lawyers argued to the state’s Supreme Court.
The state and federal constitutions “prohibit a criminal sentence that is excessive, or that is arbitrarily or rarely imposed,” the lawyers wrote in their filing.
Jones’ lawyers say they reviewed other cases of murders committed during armed robberies in Georgia, including some that were more brutal or involved more victims. Dozens of those defendants served their sentences and have been released on parole, his lawyers wrote. At 72, Jones is the oldest inmate on Georgia’s death row.