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Georgia’s third execution date in less than a month is set for next Wednesday. But lawyers for death row inmate Curt Osborne believe they have enough evidence to spare their client’s life.

Already this month, the state’s blood lust has been tempered by the Pardons and Parole Board. In the case of the second inmate scheduled for execution in May, the board commuted Samuel David Crowe’s sentence to life in prison without parole — three hours before he was to be put to death by lethal injection.

Osborne’s lawyers are hoping for a similar decision from the board. (William Earl Lynd wasn’t so lucky; he was executed on May 6.)

Unlike death row inmate Troy Davis, who is expected to receive an execution date later this year, neither Crowe’s nor Osborne’s attorneys have raised claims of their clients’ innocence. In Crowe’s case, attorneys asked for mercy due to the fact that Crowe had radically turned his life around in prison. In Osborne’s case, attorneys are claiming that his trial lawyer, the late Johnny Mostiler, was racially prejudiced against Osborne, who is African-American.

According to the AJC:

One of [Mostiler's other clients], Gerald Steven Huey, said Mostiler once said of Osborne, “That little [racial epithet] deserves the death penalty.”

(more…)

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Tonight’s scheduled execution of convicted murderer Samuel David Crowe — which would mark the second Georgia execution in two weeks — could actually be good news for death row inmate Troy Anthony Davis.

Over the past decade, Davis’s lawyers have been building a case that their client is innocent. Seven of the nine witnesses whose testimony was used to convict Davis of the 1989 murder of Savannah police officer Mark MacPhail later recanted. Other witnesses have come forward to say that another man confessed to the killing.

Davis narrowly missed an execution date last July. Less than 24 hours before he was to be put to death by lethal injection, he received a last-minute stay.

“With Georgia cranking up the executions again, I think we’re likely to see several more [execution] dates,” says Laura Moye, deputy director of the southern regional office of Amnesty International.

Ironically, the more executions that Georgia carries out, the better the chance that Davis’s life will be spared, according to death penalty expert (and outspoken opponent) Stephen Bright.

“Nobody wants to admit it, but everything’s a little bit political,” says Bright, director of the Southern Center for Human Rights and a lecturer at Yale University. “If there have been some executions recently, it’s more likely, perhaps, that a case will be commuted than if there hasn’t been an execution.”

(Photo courtesy of Department of Corrections)

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