Georgia Execution 2017: JW Ledford Jr., First Convict To Be Executed This Year, After 9 Executions Last Year

Georgia carried out the maximum number of executions last year and this year, it carried out its first execution, Wednesday. The state put to death a man, J.W. Ledford Jr., convicted of stabbing his 73-year-old neighbor to death in January 1992, in Murray County, northwest Georgia, reports said.

Ledford Jr., 45, who was originally scheduled to receive a lethal injection at 7 p.m. EDT, Tuesday, was executed around 1 a.m. EDT, and pronounced dead at 1:17 a.m. EDT at the state prison, more than six hours after his initial execution time. Ledford Jr.'s lawyers had asked the State Board of Pardons and Paroles to spare him citing a rough childhood, substance abuse and intellectual disability.

Read: Everything To Know About Arkansas' First Lethal Injections Since 2005

The Board, which is the only authority in Georgia with the power to commute a death sentence, refused to grant clemency; however, authorities had to wait for a Supreme Court ruling, resulting in the delay, CBS News reported.

Ledford Jr. appeared calm as witnesses entered the execution viewing area. His final words was a quote from the movie "Cool Hand Luke." He said: "What we have here is a failure to communicate. Some men you just can't reach," he said, later adding: "I am not the failure. You are the failure to communicate."

"You can kiss my white trash ass," he added, and kept smiling.

After the warden left the execution chamber, Ledford Jr. began talking but it was not audible as microphones had been cut off. Minutes after, he was pronounced dead, ABC News reported.

Ledford Jr. had asked last week to be executed by a firing squad because his lawyer claimed that the lethal injection would cause him a lot of pain. Ledford Jr. was under medication to treat some types of seizures and for postherpetic neuralgia, which has changed his brain's chemistry so much that the lethal injection drug pentobarbital might not make him unconscious and would cause him “to suffer an excruciating death,” according to documents filed by his lawyer in District Court, Fox6 News reported.

“Mr. Ledford proposes that the firing squad is a readily implemented and more reliable alternative method of execution that would eliminate the risks posed to him by lethal injection,” his lawyers said in court papers filed last week.

However, Georgia attorney general’s office rejected Ledford Jr.'s request stating there was no proof that a firing squad would be less painful and also pointing out that the timing of his request was too close to the day of the execution.

“Plaintiff has waited until the eve of his execution to suddenly claim that he has been treated for pain with medication that will allegedly interfere with his execution. …” the state’s lawyers wrote. “If plaintiff really thought the firing squad was a reasonable alternative he could have alerted the State years, instead of 5 days, before his execution," reports said.

Lethal injections have been a topic of debate in the U.S., especially after some mishandled executions occurred while using the drug midazolam.

In December, officials in Arizona agreed to stop using the drug midazolam, citing a botched execution of 2014 in which the execution took almost two hours to complete, instead of 15 minutes. Witnesses described that the inmate gasped more than 600 times during the procedure, reports said.