ST. LOUIS — Georgia and Missouri have carried out the nation's first executions since a botched lethal injection in Oklahoma in April revived concerns about capital punishment.
Neither execution had any noticeable complications. Another execution, the third in a 24-hour span, is scheduled for Wednesday evening in Florida.
Georgia inmate Marcus Wellons, 59, who was convicted in the 1989 rape and murder of a 15-year-old girl, received a single-drug injection late Tuesday night after the U.S. Supreme Court denied his late appeals. About an hour later, John Winfield, 46, was executed in Bonne Terre, Mo. Winfield was convicted in the 1996 killing of two women.
Nine executions nationwide have been stayed or postponed since late April, when Oklahoma prison officials halted the execution of Clayton Lockett after noting that the lethal injection drugs weren't being administered into his vein properly. Lockett died of a heart attack several minutes later.
Georgia, Missouri and Florida all refuse to say where they obtain their drugs, or if they are tested. Lawyers for Wellons and Winfield had challenged the secretive process used by some states to obtain lethal injection drugs from unidentified, loosely regulated compounding pharmacies.
Georgia and Missouri both use the single drug pentobarbital, a sedative. Florida uses a three-drug combination of midazolam hydrochloride, vecuronium bromide and potassium chloride.
