Fresh Loaf

To legal mavens and armchair jurists alike, the November verdict in the Brian Nichols trial offered stunning evidence that the death penalty in Georgia is broken.

Courthouse killer Brian Nichols on trial

If a remorseless, mad-dog killer like Nichols is able to escape death row — after boastfully confessing to a day-long murder-and-car-jacking spree — then how can the state rationalize the planned execution of men whose decades-old convictions rest on circumstantial evidence and recanted testimony?

Anne Emanuel, for one, believes it can’t.

“The death penalty is justifiable for certain crimes, but in Georgia we’ve got huge inequities,” says Emanuel, a criminal law professor at Georgia State University who chaired an American Bar Association committee that spent two years studying the death penalty in Georgia.

That committee’s 2006 report recommended that the state suspend executions until it was able to repair cracks in the legal system to ensure that capital punishment is being applied fairly. A subsequent two-year investigation by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution determined that, over the previous decade, the process that produces death sentences in Georgia is largely arbitrary — often resulting in wildly different punishments for similar crimes.

“Getting the death penalty in Georgia is as predictable as a lightning strike,” the newspaper concluded.
Emanuel believes the recent Nichols verdict and the never-ending appeals of longtime death row inmate Troy Davis — whose innocence claims and evidence of faulty eyewitness accounts have attracted international attention — serve to underscore the need to halt executions while the state determines whether it’s even possible to salvage the legal integrity of its death penalty.

There is, however, one major drawback with this approach: It ain’t gonna happen.

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What was planned as a vigil instead became a celebration.

This evening, less than two hours before he was scheduled to be executed by the state of Georgia, longtime death row inmate Troy Davis was granted a stay of execution by the U.S. Supreme Court. To celebrate the eleventh hour decision, Davis supporters gathered on the western steps of the state Capitol.

“I was stunned,” says Laura Moye, deputy director of Amnesty International USA’s Southern regional office. Moye learned of the court’s decision while she was taping a radio interview. “We’d hoped for it all day. I was prepared for the worst, but I’d hoped for the best.”

On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court’s justices are scheduled to decide whether or not to hear Davis’ case. If they refuse to hear it, the stay will end.

“The struggle is not over,” Moye says. “We at least have a little more time. Every day is a gift. We will celebrate today, we will organize tomorrow.”

(Photo by Thomas Wheatley)

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Hundreds of people rallied outside the Capitol Thursday evening in a final attempt to convince the state Pardon and Parole Board that Troy Davis shouldn’t be executed. Davis has been on death row since 1989 for the murder of a Savannah police officer. Although there was no physical evidence linking Davis to the murder and seven of the nine witnesses who originally identified him as the killer have recanted their testimony the state has given a Sept. 23 date for Davis’ execution. His last hope is the parole board, which meets today to hear testimony about the case. The two-hour rally included speeches by Davis’ sister, state Sen. Vincent Fort and two of 129 death row inmates who have been exonerated nationwide in the last 35 years. Davis also spoke to the crowd through a cell phone call from the prison where he is held. The board is expected to make a ruling on the case sometime in the next week.

See more photos from yesterday’s Troy Davis rally at the Capitol here.

(Photo by Joeff Davis)

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William Earl Lynd was executed by lethal injection on May 6 in Jackson, Ga., 45 miles south of Atlanta. He was the first prisoner executed in the United States after the U.S. Supreme Court recently lifted a moratorium on the practice. Dean Poling, a journalist at the Valdosta Daily Times, witnessed and wrote about the event.

From his article:

These are among the last things William Earl Lynd sees.

A gathering of faces in the witness room. Most are strangers, official faces from the state Department of Corrections office. The faces of two of Ginger Moore’s relatives whom he may or may not have known on the front row. Witnesses include former Berrien County Sheriff Jerry Brogdon who took Lynd’s confession and former Alapaha District Attorney Robert Ellis who prosecuted the case against Lynd. He might recognize their faces if he sees them through the glass.

The faces he most likely recognizes are those of the prison’s personnel. Unlike most of the other witnesses, however, they do not look at Lynd.

Strapped to the gurney, Lynd can only move his head and his eyes. There are the uniformed correctional officers, six big men, who press against him to administer the straps. He is in a small room, the chamber, led their by the six officers from a connecting door. There is the window to the witness room. A ringed curtain conceals one wall of the chamber. Behind Lynd is a one-way glass where three officials will each press one of the three chemicals which will put Lynd to sleep, paralyze him then stop his heart.

Read the rest here.

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The Doing His Career No Favors Award

[One in a series of online awards for Georgia lawmakers. You'll find the rest in CL's Golden Sleaze issue Wednesday both in print and online.]

Rep. Robbie Mumford, R-Conyers, spends so much time outside the GOP fold that you wonder if it wouldn’t be easier on him simply to switch parties. Then again, he might not be as valuable a voice in challenging some of the really bad policy that his fellow lawmakers propose. Again this year, Mumford was one of a lonely few Republicans who spoke out against a bill to allow a divided jury to impose a death sentence. And he was the only GOP member of a House committee to sign on to a minority report on Rep. Jerry Keen’s reworked bill to establish residency restrictions for sex offenders. As such, Mumford offered not only his lawyerly opinion that the bill is unconstitutional, but he also criticized the House majority leader’s legislation on well-documented grounds that it actually could make Georgia’s children less safe from sexual abuse. He also introduced a bipartisan bill to strengthen rights for victims of sexual assault. Let’s hope Mumford isn’t shooting his political career in the foot.

(Photo: Courtesy of Georgia House)

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