Georgia executes killer of off-duty prison guard

JACKSON, Ga. – A Georgia inmate executed for a 1996 shotgun slaying twitched briefly as the lethal injection flowed into his body and groaned.

Forty-year-old Robert Earl Butts Jr. was declared dead by a prison warden at 9:58 p.m. Friday after the compounded barbiturate pentobarbital was injected into his body. Prison officials said he had declined to take a sedative.

Strapped to a gurney with his arms out to his sides, Butts kept his eyes closed throughout the procedure. A tube that delivers the killing drugs through a wall appeared to pulse soon after the warden left the death chamber at 9:42.

“It burns, man,” Butts said in a low voice. Those were his final words.