US inmate executed for murder of 11-year-old girl

A man convicted of raping and murdering an 11-year-old girl in 1984 was executed by injection after the US Supreme Court rejected his final appeals.

Byron Ashley Parker, 41, was executed yesterday at a state prison in Jackson, Georgia.

Parker was convicted of luring Christie Ann Griffith to a secluded area, raping her and strangling her.

Prosecutors said the girl was on her way to her brother’s high school graduation.

Prosecutors also said Parker left his two-year-old son in a car nearby while he carried out the murder.

Hours before the death sentence was carried out, the US Supreme Court denied Parker a stay on grounds that the state parole board had given him a tainted clemency hearing because of conflicts of interest.

His lawyers argued that one of the state parole board’s five members is being defended in a sexual harassment case by the state attorney general’s office, which also defends death sentences.

Parker was Georgia’s 27th execution since the death penalty was reinstated in 1973, and the state’s fourth in seven weeks - the most in such a short time.

It was also the fourth execution by lethal injection since the state Supreme Court threw out the electric chair in October, ruling that it amounted to cruel and unusual punishment.

Parker’s execution left 122 men and one woman on death row in the state.

‘‘I won’t have to hear his name any more,’’ said Hazel Griffith, mother of the murdered girl, before Parker was executed. ‘‘He will be wiped out, off the map.’’