ATLANTA: Georgia is set to execute a former US Navy crewman who killed a fellow sailor whose remains were found buried in two states.

The 45-year-old Travis Hittson is scheduled to receive an injection of the barbiturate pentobarbital Wednesday night at the state prison in Jackson. He was convicted in the April 1992 killing of Conway Utterbeck.

The State Board of Pardons and Paroles, which is the only entity in Georgia authorised to commute a death sentence, rejected Hitton's request for clemency Tuesday.

Court documents show Hittson went with Utterbeck and a third sailor, Edward Vollmer, to Vollmer's parents' home. Hittson and Vollmer went out drinking and killed Utterbeck upon returning home.

Hittson's lawyers had argued his life should be spared because he's shown great remorse and because Vollmer manipulated him into killing Utterbeck.

Vollmer reached a plea deal with prosecutors and is serving a life sentence for the killing.

Hittson still has a legal challenge pending before state courts that says his constitutional rights were violated during sentencing when a judge allowed a state psychologist who had examined Hittson to recount damaging statements Hittson had made about Utterbeck.

State lawyers say those arguments have previously been raised and rejected by the courts and are procedurally barred.