Marcus Ray Johnson, a Georgia man convicted of raping and killing Angela Sizemore, a woman he met at a nightclub, was executed despite his claims that the sex was consensual and that he did not torture or murder her.
Though Johnson agreed with parts of the prosecutor's version of what happened during the early hours of March 24, 1994, he said he was unable to remember much of what happened after he and Sizemore had sex since he drank too much alcohol, according to the Associated Press.
According to him, he met Sizemore, who had been drinking throughout the night, at the Fundamentals bar in Albany. They then danced, drank tequila and sat in a back booth kissing before going to a field to have "consensual" sex.
Johnson claims he left Sizemore alive, sitting in the field and crying after he punched her in the face for suggesting that they cuddle, reported the Atlanta Journal Constitution. He then arrived at his home and collapsed on the front yard, where he awoke the next morning.
A man walking his dog later found Sizemore's body inside her SUV behind an apartment complex with 41 stabs wounds and signs of having been sexually assaulted with a pecan branch.
The only evidence linking Johnson to the murder supports his admission of consensual sex and her bloodied nose, Johnson's attorney Brian Kammer argued, noting that the rest of the case was circumstantial and based on unreliable and inconsistent eyewitness testimony, according to The Washington Post.
Furthermore, Sizemore's blood was never on Johnson's pocket knife or on the branch that was used to sexually assault her. Nor were his fingerprints or DNA were found in Sizemore's SUV, which police believed he drove from the crime scene to a different part of town.
Despite an apparent lack of evidence, Johnson was put to death, becoming the fourth person Georgia has put to death this year, and the 36th to die since the state started using lethal injection.
Dougherty County District Attorney Greg Edwards, who was a prosecutor in the case, stated that the decision to execute Johnson was the right one, noting that all the arguments used in Johnson's defense had been rejected by courts and new DNA evidence didn't prove Johnson's innocence and didn't implicate anyone else.
