The Nation - News from June 22, 1989
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A robber who was convicted of shooting a convenience store clerk to death was executed in Mississippi’s gas chamber, insisting to the last that the verdict was unfair because of racial discrimination. A doctor at the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman said Leo Edwards Jr., 36, of New Orleans died at 12:15 a.m. Edwards, who was black, was convicted by an all-white Hinds County Circuit Court jury and was sentenced to death April 1, 1981. Defense attorneys protested that prosecutors deliberately excluded blacks from the jury, but four appeals courts disagreed.
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