A black man who insisted he was unjustly convicted by an all-white jury was executed in the gas chamber early Wednesday for a five-day robbery spree in which three people were slain.
Leo Edwards Jr., 36, of New Orleans, appeared to gasp for breath and shrug his shoulders several times as the cyanide gas swirled around him.He was declared dead at 12:15 a.m., minutes after being strapped into a chair in the gas chamber.
Edwards was the fourth person executed at the state penitentiary at Parchman and the 113th in the nation since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976.
Edwards was executed for the June 14, 1980, shooting death of Jackson convenience store clerk Linzy Don Dixon. The robbery netted $111 and came during a spree in Hinds and Madison counties in which two other people were killed and two were wounded.