Associated Press
ATLANTA — A Georgia death row inmate has been granted clemency by the state Board of Pardons and Paroles the day before he was scheduled to be executed.
The board said Wednesday evening it had decided to commute Tommy Lee Waldrip’s death sentence to one of life without parole. The 68-year-old inmate was scheduled for execution Thursday evening at the state prison in Jackson.
Waldrip was convicted and sentenced to death in the April 1991 slaying of 23-year-old Keith Evans in Dawson County. Evans was a store clerk in Forsyth County who was set to testify at a robbery trial involving Waldrip’s son.