Jerry McWee, an Aiken County inmate scheduled to die today by lethal injection, lost his final chance to avoid a death sentence Thursday afternoon, when Gov. Mark Sanford denied his petition for clemency.

McWee, convicted in the 1991 killing of an Aiken County convenience store clerk, likely will die at 6 p.m. today at the Capital Punishment Facility at Broad River Correctional Institution.

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

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.

• Plane crash victims were from Colorado

NORTH AUGUSTA — Three Colorado men who had attended the Masters golf tournament have been identified as the victims of a small plane crash here, Aiken County authorities said.

The single-engine Cessna 182 crashed within 100 feet of the Anne Marie Rehab and Nursing Center shortly after 10 a.m. Monday, said Detective Tim Thornton, of the North Augusta Department of Public Safety.

The plane’s owner and pilot, William Cooper Cuntz Jr., 70, of Golden, Colo., and two of his sons, William Cooper Cuntz IV, 41, of Colorado Springs, Colo., and John Flynn Cuntz, 39, of Evergreen, Colo., died in the crash, Aiken County Chief Deputy Coroner Tim Carlton said.

From Wire Reports