Georgia executes Army veteran

A decorated Vietnam War veteran convicted of murdering a Georgia sheriff's deputy in 1998 was the first death row inmate executed in the United States this year when his sentence was carried out Tuesday night.

Andrew Brannan, 66, died by a lethal injection of a single drug at a state prison in Jackson, Georgia, at 8:33 p.m. Eastern time. He was convicted of the January 1998 shooting death of Kyle Dinkheller, a 22-year-old sheriff's deputy in Laurens County in central Georgia.

"I extend my condolences to the Dinkheller family, especially Kyle's parents and his wife and his two children," Brannan said in a statement moments before the injection was administered.

Lawyers for the Vietnam veteran had argued unsuccessfully Brannan should be spared, saying the shooting was tied to mental illness stemming from his military service

They did not dispute that he shot Dinkheller, 22, nine times during a traffic stop recorded by the deputy's patrol car video camera.

But they sought to have his life spared because, they argued, the severe physical and mental toll from his service in Vietnam as an Army forward artillery observer was not fully explained to a jury.

Brannan had suffered from combat-related post-traumatic stress disorder and was prone to flashbacks of the war, his attorneys said.

Veterans Administration doctors had diagnosed Brannan with post-traumatic stress disorder in 1984 and determined that his condition had deteriorated to the point of 100 percent disability by 1990, the petition said. That mental illness was compounded by bipolar disorder diagnosed in 1996, his lawyers added.

Georgia's Board of Pardons and Paroles on Monday refused to commute Brannan's sentence to life in prison without parole.

"The death of Deputy Sheriff Kyle Dinkheller was a terrible tragedy," said Joe Loveland, one of Brannan's lawyers, after the parole board's decision. "Executing a 66-year-old decorated Vietnam veteran with no prior criminal record who was seriously ill at the time of the crime only compounds the tragedy."

Brannan received Army commendations and a Bronze Star, one of the highest individual military awards, for his service, according to his lawyers.

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.

Al Jazeera and Reuters