Man Facing Execution for 1986 Slaying

A Georgia man is scheduled to be executed for murder in the death of a woman who spurned his advances.

Sixty-five-year-old Robert Newland is scheduled to be put to death by lethal injection at 7 p.m. Tuesday.

He was convicted in 1987 and sentenced to die for the slaying of 27-year-old Carol Sanders Beatty, a former state and national amateur diving champion who was stabbed in the garden of her St. Simons Island home and died at a hospital hours later.

Newland's attorney has asked the Georgia Supreme Court to stay the execution on grounds it was disproportionate. The pardons board on Monday denied his bid to commute the sentence.

Newland would be the first Georgia death row inmate to be executed this year.

On the Net: http://www.pap.state.ga.us/

(AP)

Death penalty appeal denied

A federal appeals court rejected a Georgia inmate’s bid to overturn his death sentence in the 1986 murder on St. Simon’s Island.

Robert L. Newland was convicted of attempting to rape, and then murdering neighbor Carol Sanders Beatty.

Newland claimed his legal council was ineffective, that it failed to appeal what he says was a forced confession. He also says more should have been done to show the jury his past as they determined his punishment.