State board issues stay of execution for former high school football star

ATLANTA — The State Board of Pardons and Paroles has granted a stay of execution for a former high school football player who was set to be executed on Thursday for the 1991 stabbing death of a 19-year-old at a convenience store in Reynolds, Ga.

Daniel Greene in September 1991 went on “a spree of murder and mayhem that covered three counties of rural Georgia,” as a federal appeals court called it. The spree started on Sept. 27, 1991, when Greene went to the Suwanee Swifty convenience store in Reynolds and threatened at knife point the store clerk, then stabbed to death another man, Bernard Walker, who subsequently entered the store.

Convicted on Dev. 7, 1992, Greene was sentenced to death two days later. His conviction and sentence have been upheld a number of times, and the U.S. Supreme Court earlier this month declined to hear a new appeal.

“After considering the request, the Board has issued a stay not to exceed 90 days in the case,” the board said in a statement. “The purpose of the stay, as stated in the order, is to allow for additional time to examine the substance of claims offered by Greene’s representatives at today’s clemency appointment and any additional information that becomes available. The Board may lift the stay at any time and grant clemency, commuting the death sentence to life or life without parole, or deny clemency.”

The former football star also stabbed cashier at a convenience store in Warner Robins. If he is put to death, Greene would be the 30th inmate executed in Georgia by lethal injection, according to the state’s Department of Corrections.