COLUMBIA--Jerry McWee, the Aiken County inmate scheduled to die Friday by lethal injection, is no stranger to the other side of the law.

More than a decade before he killed two people in 1991, McWee was a police officer in Augusta for a couple of years. Since his conviction, he's apparently stayed out of trouble, committing just one minor infraction in 10 years on death row, his lawyers say.

Prosecutor Barbara Morgan says any good McWee might have done in his life was destroyed by what he did at a rural convenience store in July 1991.

"He literally took this man who had just moved here to get away from crime, and as he was asking for his life, took him to the back and shot him in the back of the head," Morgan said.

McWee shot John Perry twice before taking $350 from the cash register, authorities said.

He likely will die for that murder at 6 p.m. today at the Capital Punishment Facility at Broad River Correctional Institution.

McWee lost his final chance to avoid a death sentence Thursday afternoon when Gov. Mark Sanford denied his clemency petition.

McWee asked to have his sentence reduced to life in prison without parole because his co-defendant in the Perry killing and a second fatal shooting a week later struck a plea bargain that gave him a life sentence.

"The governor found no reason in this case to effectively overturn the results of an exhaustive judicial process," Sanford spokesman Will Folks said in a statement.

The clemency denial is no real surprise. No governor has reduced a death sentence to life in prison in South Carolina since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976.

McWee lost an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court earlier in the week. Those were his last two chances to save his life, his lawyer John Hardaway has said.

McWee's supporters point out McWee had never been in trouble with the law when he met his co-defendant, George Scott.

While McWee may have pulled the trigger, Scott was at the store when Perry died. When the two killed their boss, David Wills, it was Scott who fired the shots, McWee's lawyers said.

Scott was a career criminal who saved his own skin by cooperating with authorities, according to McWee's clemency petition.

Morgan doesn't see it that way. She recalls Scott's testimony on how McWee ordered him to kill Willis or die himself.

"McWee was an EMT, so he literally was taking his pulse as they shot him," Morgan said. "And he told the guy where to shoot him a second time so he died for sure."