British Native Granted Stay Hour Before Scheduled Georgia Execution

A British native won a stay of execution an hour before he was to die in the electric chair Thursday as the archbishop of Canterbury and others pleaded for leniency.

U.S. District Judge Horace T. Ward delayed the execution of Nicholas Lee Ingram until this afternoon while he considers an appeal.

Ingram’s lawyer had argued that Ingram should be granted a new trial because he was under the influence of the antipsychotic drug Thorazine during his 1984 trial, making him appear emotionless and remorseless. The state Supreme Court rejected that argument earlier Thursday.

Ingram, 31, was sentenced to death for the 1983 robbery-murder of 55-year-old J.C. Sawyer, who was abducted from his suburban Atlanta home, robbed of $60, tied to a tree and shot in the head. Sawyer’s wife survived and identified Ingram as the killer.

The state Board of Pardons and Parole unanimously refused to grant clemency to Ingram on Thursday.

The case has drawn intense scrutiny from the media in Britain, which effectively outlawed capital punishment in 1965, although it is still on the books for treason.

The prison and the parole board were inundated Thursday by phone calls from Britons seeking to block the execution.

The archbishop of Canterbury, George Carey, said Thursday that he had sent a letter to the parole board earlier in the week asking it to show mercy.

Ingram, who holds dual citizenship, was born in Cambridge, England, to a British mother and American father. The family moved to Georgia a year later.

Ingram’s mother has asked the British government to intervene, but Prime Minister John Major, in Washington this week, declined to do so.