A decorated Vietnam War veteran convicted of murdering a Georgia sheriff's deputy in 1998 was put to death on Tuesday, state officials said, becoming the first death row inmate executed in the United States this year.
Andrew Brannan, 66, was executed by lethal injection at 8:33 p.m. EST (0133 GMT on Wednesday) at a prison in Jackson, Georgia, the state Attorney General's Office said in a statement.
The Georgia Supreme Court rejected a stay of execution on Tuesday afternoon, and the U.S. Supreme Court later denied two petitions to block his execution.
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Brannan's lawyers did not dispute he shot Laurens County Sheriff's Deputy Kyle Dinkheller nine times during a traffic stop recorded by the deputy's patrol car video camera.
Kirk Dinkheller, the slain deputy's father, changed his Facebook profile picture on Tuesday to a photograph of his son's headstone.
"Nothing will ever bring my son back, but finally some justice for the one who took him from his children and his family," he wrote on the social media site earlier this month.
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Brannan had suffered from combat-related post-traumatic stress disorder and was prone to flashbacks of the war, his attorneys said.