Georgia inmate scheduled for execution granted clemency

(CNN) - Two hours before he was scheduled to be executed and after he had eaten what was to have been his last meal, Samuel David Crowe was granted clemency for the murder two decades ago of a store manager, the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles and his lawyer said Thursday.

His sentence has been changed to life without the possibility of parole.

Crowe was convicted of the March 1988 murder in Douglas County of Joseph V. Pala, the retail manager at Wicks Lumber Company.

He had been scheduled to be executed at 7 p.m. Thursday by lethal injection at Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison in Jackson, 45 minutes south of Atlanta. He would have been the 19th inmate in Georgia executed by lethal injection.