SOUTH CAROLINA LAST MEAL
JERRY MCWEE
April 16, 2004

...another convenience store worker...

Last Meal: McWee was served a final meal of steak, jumbo fried shrimp, broccoli with cheese, french fries, lemon meringue pie and iced tea.

The skinny: McWee, 51, was executed for the 1991 shooting death of an Aiken convenience store clerk.

McWee was a former paramedic and construction worker, he served briefly as an Augusta police officer in the mid-1970s.

More skinny: Mr. McWee and an accomplice, George Wade Scott, robbed the Highway 19 Corner Shop on July 6, 1991. Mr. McWee led the victim into a back room, forced him to his knees and shot him twice in the head before stealing $350 from the cash register. A week later, Mr. McWee and Mr. Scott killed a roofing contractor at his Aiken County trailer during a robbery.

An Aiken County jury recommended the death sentence for Mr. McWee in 1994. Mr. Scott pleaded guilty to his role in the slayings and received a life sentence for both killings as part of a plea bargain and testified against McWee.

Last words and such: Jerry McWee glanced at the witnesses to his execution for only a moment - just long enough to blow two kisses to his mother.

In a final statement read by his lawyer, Mr. McWee apologized to the family of the victim and acknowledged the pain he had caused them.

"I know that there will never be complete closure for you, but with my execution, I only hope that a small part of the pain will be eased." "I only wished things could have been different. I would give anything if only that could have been the case."

Odd note in a newspaper..."Since his conviction, he's apparently stayed out of trouble, committing just one minor infraction in 10 years on death row, his lawyers say." I'm sure the two dead guys would be so proud.

Factoids: No governor has reduced a death sentence to life in prison in South Carolina since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976.

McWee was the....
23rd murderer executed in U.S. in 2004
908th murderer executed in U.S. since 1976
2nd murderer executed in South Carolina in 2004
30th murderer executed in South Carolina since 1976