The Death Penalty May Resume on Tuesday

The nation's first inmate to be put to death since the U.S. Supreme Court held that lethal injection is constitutional may be convicted Georgia killer William Earl Lynd.

On Monday, the five-member Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles denied Lynd's clemency bid, after hearing from defense lawyers who argued that the medical evidence presented at his 1990 trial was flawed and that the jury that sentenced him to death never learned of a possible mitigating factor (he had been sexually molested by neighbors at age 8).

Lynd, 53, is scheduled to die by lethal injection on Tuesday at 7 p.m., unless the Georgia Supreme Court grants his request to stay the execution. Lynd was sentenced to death for shooting his live-in girlfriend, Ginger Moore, three times in the face at their Berrien County home in 1988.

Lynd's execution would be the first since the U.S. Supreme Court last month upheld Kentucky's lethal injection protocol, clearing the way for executions to resume in the roughly three dozen states that use that method.