The state of Georgia spared the life of a 68-year-old inmate one day before he was scheduled to be put to death. The state parole board on Wednesday commuted the sentence of the inmate, Tommy Lee Waldrip, to life in prison without parole.
Waldrip was convicted in the 1991 slaying of a store clerk who was scheduled to testify against Waldrip’s son in an armed-robbery trial. The parole board did not explain its decision. Waldrip had argued that he was vulnerable to a cruel and excruciating death because of a Georgia law that keeps secret the source of the state’s lethal injection drugs and details about its execution team. In June, the execution of another convicted killer in Georgia, Marcus Wellons, was the first in the nation after a botched lethal injection in Oklahoma.
