Ronald Keith Spivey, 62, was pronounced dead at 7:34 p

Ronald Keith Spivey, 62, was pronounced dead at 7:34 p.m. at Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison in Jackson. He was sentenced to die for killing police officer Billy Watson. Spivey was executed a few hours after the Medical College of Georgia president, Daniel Rahn, notified the Department of Corrections that its doctors would no longer participate in any more lethal injections.
MCG doctors provide most of the medical care to state prisoners and 1 of them was used to pronounce inmates dead at executions. Rahn said in letter to corrections Commissioner that conflict existed even though the prison doctors do not administer any of the 3 drugs that lead to an inmate's death."
Thursday was the 2nd death date for Spivey. He was scheduled to be electrocuted last March, but the Georgia Supreme Court called off the execution so it could review the use of the electric chair here. The court ruled in October that electrocution violated the constitutional protection from cruel and usual punishment, prompting the state to begin using lethal injection. Spivey becomes the 1st condemned inmate to be put to death in Georgia this year and the 4th condemned inmate to be put to death this year in the USA.