A Georgia man has become the first inmate to be executed in the United States since the botched execution, which took place in Oklahoma in April.

The inmate, Marcus A. Wellons, was declared dead at 11:56 p.m. Tuesday at the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison in Jackson.

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He is the first to be executed in the US after the botched execution of 38-year-old Clayton Lockett. Lockett began to writhe and clench his teeth following the injection of a new drug combination.

Reportedly, Lockett finally died from a heart attack 43 minutes after the initial injection. His excruciating death raised serious questions as to the US' continued use of lethal drugs for executions.

In recent years, pharmaceutical companies around the globe have boycotted the sales of drugs used for executions in U.S. prisons. In 2005, the EU banned the export of such products in a move to abolish the death penalty.

This has caused U.S. authorities to seek out lethal drugs elsewhere or experiment with untested drug combination.

Wellons' execution was only one of three scheduled to take place in less than 24 hours. Officials present stated that there were no notable complications during the procedure and everything went as planned.

John Winfield was also put to death by lethal injection at 12:01 a.m. Wednesday in Missouri, and John Ruthell Henry is scheduled for execution at 6 p.m. Wednesday in Florida.

The 59-year-old Wellons was convicted in 1993 of raping and killing 15-year-old India Roberts just outside of Atlanta.

Georgia Department of Corrections spokeswoman Lisa Rodriguez-Presley specified that the execution drug used in Wellons' lethal injection was pentobarbital, which is the same drug Georgia has always used in the past. She stated that Georgia uses a single execution drug, while Oklahoma employs a lethal cocktail of more than one.

TagsGeorgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison