Georgia executed a man on Wednesday night, the first time the state has used the death penalty in over four years.

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Willie James Pye, 59, was killed by an injection of pentobarbital, a sedative, and was pronounced dead at 11.03pm at the state prison in Jackson.

Pye was sentenced to death in 1996 for his role in the murder of his ex-girlfriend Alicia Lynn Yarbrough three years earlier.

The execution, the first in Georgia since January 2020, came after the supreme court rejected an appeal by Pye’s legal team.

Pye’s lawyers had argued that the state had not met necessary conditions for resuming executions after the Covid-19 pandemic, and reiterated arguments that Pye was ineligible for execution because of an intellectual disability.

His attorneys said that Pye’s court-appointed attorney in the 1996 trial had “effectively abandoned his post” while representing Pye, and had failed to present evidence regarding Pye’s intellectual disability and troubled childhood, the Death Penalty Information Center reported.

“Had defense counsel not abdicated his role, the jurors would have learned that Mr Pye is intellectually disabled and has an IQ of 68,” Pye’s lawyers argued in their appeal.

Pye had been in an on-and-off romantic relationship with Yarbrough, but at the time she was killed, she was living with another man.

Pye and two others forced their way into Yarbrough’s home and drove her to a motel before raping her, according to court filings. Pye then shot Yarbrough three times.

Since the supreme court reinstated the death penalty in 1976, 75 men and one woman have been executed in Georgia. Pye was the 54th inmate put to death by lethal injection. There are presently 35 men and one woman under death sentence in Georgia.