US set to execute first prisoner in seven months

Barring a last-minute intervention by the courts, a man in the state of Georgia who killed his girlfriend is likely to become the first inmate put to death since a US Supreme Court review halted executions last September.

The Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles denied William Earl Lynd's appeal for clemency, rejecting his lawyer's argument that forensic evidence at his 1990 trial was flawed and clearing the way for his execution, scheduled for 7pm (11pm Irish time) today.

On Monday two other states - Texas and Mississippi - also scheduled executions that had been on hold.

Lynd, 53, has a request for a stay before the Georgia Supreme Court, but preparations were moving forward for his execution. Death penalty opponents plan vigils around Georgia tonight.

He would be the first inmate put to death since the US Supreme Court ruled last month that Kentucky's method of executing inmates with a three-drug injection is constitutional. Roughly three dozen states, including Georgia, use a similar method.

Following the decision to review Kentucky's lethal injections, those states stopped executing inmates for seven months, the longest pause in 25 years.

Texas conducted the last execution, putting Michael Richard to death on September 25, 2007, the same day the Supreme Court agreed to consider the Kentucky case, brought by two prisoners who claimed the lethal injection method violated the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

Lynd was sentenced to die for kidnapping and shooting his live-in girlfriend, Ginger Moore, 26, in south Georgia in 1988, after the two consumed Valium, marijuana and alcohol.

Prosecutors said she suffered a slow, agonising death, regaining consciousness twice after being shot in the head.