A U.S. appeals court has rejected a Georgia death row inmate's motion that his scheduled Tuesday execution by lethal injection be halted and that he be put to death instead by a firing squad, which his lawyers said would be less painful for him. J.W. Ledford, 45, has spent about a quarter century on death row after being convicted of the 1992 robbery and murder of a doctor who lived near him. Lawyers for Ledford said he wanted to be executed by firing squad because a drug he takes for nerve pain would lead to an “excruciating death” under Georgia’s lethal injection protocol.



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