Execution date set in 1994 Milledgeville murder case

A man convicted of a 1994 murder and armed robbery in Milledgeville is scheduled to die by lethal injection on March 31 at the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison in Jackson, according to a news release from the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles.

Joshua Bishop, now 41, was sentenced to die in the electric chair two years after the June 1994 slaying of Leverett Lewis Morrison, a 43-year-old Milledgeville native who had traveled from Savannah to visit his children that summer.

Morrison had been out drinking that evening with Bishop and Mark Braxley, a 57-year-old currently serving a life sentence for his part in the killing, according to The Telegraph's archives. The three men returned to a mobile home off Linton Road.

Bishop and Braxley planned to steal Morrison's Jeep Wagoneer. The two bludgeoned Morrison's head and face with a blunt object, which was never found. After Morrison died, the two men wrapped his body in a sheet, placed it near a trash bin and burned his Jeep.

The U.S. Supreme Court denied Bishop's appeal request in October 2014, the release said. The Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles will meet March 30 with representatives willing to advocate clemency for Bishop.

To contact writer Laura Corley, call 744-4334 or follow her on Twitter @Lauraecor.

This story was originally published March 15, 2016 at 4:46 PM with the headline "Execution date set in 1994 Milledgeville murder case ."