Virginia set to execute rapist-murderer by lethal injection

(CBS/AP) RICHMOND, Va. - Virginia is set to execute a man who raped and suffocated an elderly widow. Jerry Terrell Jackson is scheduled to die by lethal injection at 9 p.m. at Greensville Correctional Center in Jarratt.

The 30-year-old Williamsburg man was convicted of the 2001 rape and murder of 88-year-old Ruth Phillips in her Williamsburg apartment.

Unless the U.S. Supreme Court blocks the execution, Jackson will become the first Virginia inmate executed using a new sedative in the three-drug lethal cocktail.

Like other states, Virginia replaced sodium thiopental with pentobarbital after a nationwide shortage of the sedative. Although attorneys in some states have contested its use, federal courts have ruled the change is not significant enough to stop executions.

There have been about 20 executions using pentobarbital.