Senate votes to expand death-penalty alternatives
Tuesday, February 3rd, 2009For the second year, the Georgia Senate has again passed a Republican-penned proposal to give prosecutors the ability to seek life without parole against murder suspects.
As I explained in a recent article, in many murder cases, Georgia’s DAs now must choose between seeking life with parole or the death penalty. Giving prosecutors the option of going for life without parole is likely to save millions of tax dollars that would otherwise be spent on trying to send killers to Death Row on shaky evidence. As we learned with the Brian Nichols sentence, even a no-brainer capital case can collapse at the finish line.
The sponsor of Senate Bill 13 is Sen. Preston Smith, R-Rome, who sees his measure as a reasonable alternative to lowering the standards for sentencing a killer to death, which is the preferred route of the House. Last year, Smith refused to let a House bill to allow the death penalty to be doled out by non-unanimous juries to be attached to his own legislation – a move that scuttled both bills.
This year, versions of both bills are back in play. We’ll be watching to see which pulls ahead.
(Photo by Joeff Davis)












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