JACKSON, Ga. — Lawyers for Georgia’s oldest death row inmate filed last-minute appeals before the US Supreme Court urging the justices to block the scheduled Tuesday evening execution of the 72-year-old man, who was convicted of the 1979 killing of a convenience store manager.

Brandon Astor Jones was originally scheduled to receive an injection of the barbiturate pentobarbital at 7 p.m. at the state prison in Jackson. He was convicted in the shooting of a suburban Atlanta convenience store manager.

In late filings to the court, the lawyers asked the justices to block Jones’s planned execution for either of two reasons: he is challenging Georgia’s lethal injection secrecy law and also because he says his death sentence is disproportionate to his crime.

There was no immediate response from the court in Washington more than 1½ hours after the scheduled execution time had passed.

The Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles, the only entity in Georgia authorized to commute a death sentence, on Monday declined to grant Jones clemency. On Tuesday, the Georgia Supreme Court rejected an appeal that claimed Jones’s death sentence was disproportionate to the crime.

Also Tuesday, the 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals declined to give a full-court hearing to a challenge to the constitutionality of the state’s execution secrecy law.

Associated Press