A Georgia man convicted of kidnapping, raping and murdering his former girlfriend is set to be executed in the southern US state on Wednesday.

Willie Pye, 59, is to be put to death by lethal injection at 7:00 pm (2300 GMT) at a prison in Jackson, Georgia.

It would be the first execution in Georgia in more than four years.

Pye was sentenced to death in 1996 for the 1993 rape and murder of his former girlfriend, Alice Yarbrough.

The State Board of Pardons and Paroles rejected a last-minute bid for clemency by Pye on Tuesday.

In seeking to reverse his death sentence, Pye's attorneys have argued that he has an intellectual disability and experienced a traumatic childhood, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

In 2021, an appeals court overturned his death sentence on the grounds that Pye had received ineffective representation from his court-appointed lawyer at his trial.

The death sentence was later reinstated.

There have been two executions in the United States this year.

Convicted killer Kenneth Smith was put to death in Alabama in January in the first execution in the country to be carried out using nitrogen gas.

Another convicted murderer, Ivan Cantu, was executed in Texas by lethal injection in February.

Another execution by lethal injection had been scheduled to take place in Idaho last month but was halted after a medical team was unable to insert an intravenous line.

Capital punishment has been abolished in 23 US states, while the governors of six others -- Arizona, California, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania and Tennessee -- have put a hold on its use.

There were 24 executions in the United States in 2023, all of them carried out by lethal injection.