Brandon Astor Jones was born on February 13, 1943, in the United States. While limited public information exists about his upbringing, career, or personal life prior to the crime, Jones lived a relatively quiet life before becoming involved in a fatal robbery in 1979. He was in his thirties at the time of the murder. During his decades on death row, Jones underwent a significant personal transformation. He became a thoughtful and educated man, writing essays, articles, and even two full-length manuscripts, one historical fiction, the other an autobiography. These writings were published in various outlets, and he became known for his intellectual engagement and critique of the justice system, making him a notable voice among death row inmates.

Despite his crime, Jones's time in prison reflected a deep introspection. Many who followed his case, including writers, activists, and journalists, noted the contrast between the man who committed a robbery in his thirties and the reflective writer in his seventies. Until the end of his life, he maintained that he had changed and expressed remorse, though the courts remained firm on upholding his sentence.

On June 17, 1979, Brandon Astor Jones and Van Roosevelt Solomon entered a Tenneco convenience store in Georgia with the intent to rob it. During the robbery, they fatally shot Roger Tackett, the 30-year-old store manager. The murder was classified as a felony murder, meaning it occurred during the commission of a serious crime, in this case, armed robbery.

Jones and Solomon were both arrested and tried for Tackett’s murder. On October 17, 1979, Jones was sentenced to death. Solomon was also sentenced to death and was executed by electrocution in 1985 at the age of 41. However, Jones’s case took a different path. In 1989, a federal court ruled that his sentencing was unconstitutional because jurors had improperly brought a Bible into the deliberation room. This action was seen as introducing religious bias into their decision. As a result, his death sentence was overturned, and he was re-sentenced to death in 1997.

Years later, in 2016, Jones’s legal team fought hard to halt his execution. They challenged Georgia’s secrecy law surrounding lethal injection drugs and argued that the punishment no longer fit the crime. The courts rejected both appeals. On February 2, 2016, the Eleventh Circuit Court declined to hear the case. Just after midnight on February 3, 2016, Jones was executed at Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison.

His execution was prolonged and controversial. The team struggled for 45 minutes to find a usable vein for the IV. After failed attempts on both arms, a doctor had to insert the IV through Jones’s groin, a procedure that took an additional 13 minutes. He was pronounced dead at 12:46 a.m., just ten days short of his 73rd birthday. At the time, he was the oldest person on Georgia’s death row.