KATE BRUMBACK
Associated Press

JACKSON, Ga. (AP) — A Georgia inmate convicted of rape and murder has become the first person to be executed in the U.S. since the botched lethal injection of a prisoner in Oklahoma in April.

Fifty-nine-year-old Marcus Wellons was executed by injection Tuesday night after last-minute appeals were denied. A corrections spokesman says he was pronounced dead at 11:56 p.m. The execution seemed to go smoothly with no noticeable complications.

From the time he was brought into the room and the tubes with the drugs were administered took about 35 minutes. Wellons was lying still with his eyes shut while the drugs were administered.

Wellons was convicted and sentenced to death in 1993 for the 1989 slaying of his 15-year-old neighbor, India Roberts, a high school sophomore from the Atlanta suburbs.

Georgia uses one drug — the sedative pentobarbital — for executions..

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