Georgia's parole board grants clemency to death row inmate hours ahead of execution

The Georgia parole board granted clemency to a death row inmate on Thursday, hours before he was to be executed for the murder of a convenience store clerk three decades ago.

The state's Board of Pardons and Paroles commuted the death sentence of Jimmy Fletcher Meders, 58, to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole, the board said in a statement.

Meders was scheduled to be executed by lethal injection at the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison in Jackson at 7 p.m. EST for the 1987 murder of Don Anderson.