The execution of the US’s longest-serving death row prisoner, Jack Alderman, has been condemned as cruel and inhumane by those who fought to overturn the sentence.

As the Gazette went to press last week, a court granted a last-minute stay of execution for Alderman, who had been on death row in Georgia for 33 years, stating that his sentence could not be carried out until he had been given a clemency hearing. Support for clemency came from Pope Benedict XVI, as well as politicians, charities and lawyers worldwide.

However, Alderman, who always maintained his innocence, was executed at midnight on 16 September by lethal injection, after last-minute appeals to the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles and the US Supreme Court were rejected.

Alderman was found guilty of killing his wife, Barbara Jean, in 1975 but there was no forensic evidence to support the charge. He was convicted on the back of statements made by co-defendant John Brown, who pleaded guilty to murder and was released after serving 12 years behind bars.

Samantha Ward, an associate in the litigation and dispute resolution team at magic circle firm Clifford Chance, was one of the lawyers acting pro bono for Alderman. She claimed he never had ‘full access to justice’ and that once found guilty ‘had been written off by the system’.

Clive Stafford Smith, director of human rights charity Reprieve, said he was ‘devastated’ by the execution: ‘The fact that Jack was killed despite his strong claim of innocence demonstrates, with depressing clarity, why this barbaric practice must end.’

Law Society President Paul Marsh called for proper observation of the rule of law and human rights throughout the world. ‘To execute him after 34 years, living with the ever present and mounting anguish of awaiting the death penalty, would amount to cruel and inhuman punishment.’