JACKSON, Ga. — Georgia executed its first inmate in more than four years on Wednesday night, as Willie James Pye was put to death by lethal injection.

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According to the Georgia Attorney General’s Office, Pye, 59, was pronounced dead at the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison in Jackson at 11:03 p.m. EDT, WSB-TV reported.

He became the first Georgia inmate executed since Donnie Cleveland Lance, 66, was put to death by lethal injection on Jan. 29, 2020, according to The Associated Press.

Pye was convicted of the November 1993 abduction, rape and shooting death of Alicia Lynn Yarbrough, WSB reported.

The Georgia Parole Board denied clemency for the inmate on Tuesday, according to the television station. Pye’s attorneys filed late appeals urging the U.S. Supreme Court to block the execution, but the justices unanimously rejected the request, according to the AP.

Defense attorneys had argued that Pye was intellectually disabled and had an IQ of 68, WSB reported. They added that the inmate grew up poor and in a violent, chaotic family environment.

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