Page 3 of 12 FirstFirst 12345 ... LastLast
Results 21 to 30 of 118

Thread: Georgia Capital Punishment News

  1. #21
    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
    Join Date
    Oct 2010
    Posts
    33,217
    Gang membership could be used to seek death penalty

    Prosecutors could use gang membership as a reason to ask juries to sentence a convicted murderer to lethal injection under legislation introduced Wednesday.

    Rep. Barry Fleming, R-Harlem, introduced House Bill 355 which adds gang membership to the list of 12 "aggravating circumstances" juries can consider during sentencing in a capital case. Other examples include kidnapping and conspiracy.

    Fleming said he also wants to add another circumstance in a future bill, torture.

    "When I went to the gang prosecutors of the state and asked them 'What changes do you need to better protect us from gangs,' they gave me several things," he said. "The easiest and most simple one was this to begin with." The bill draws on a definition of gang membership contained in a law he helped pass when he was in the House of Representatives earlier.

    He believes the new bill will bring attention to a growing issue. He said experts estimate that as much as 90 percent of crime is connected to gangs.

    Metro Atlanta has about 40 gangs, and other cities like Augusta could have half that many.

    He expects opposition to his bill, especially from death-penalty opponents.

    Larry Pellegrini, executive director of the Georgia Rural Urban Summit advocacy group, is already taking a stance against Fleming's bill.

    "Adding to the death penalty over the years has never been a solution to the problems of violence in society, and this is another misguided effort to look tough and feel tough and not do much," Pellegrini said.

    Fleming is considering sponsoring another bill that Pellegrini and other capital-punishment foes have opposed over the years. That bill would allow a judge to impose the death penalty even if the jury is not unanimous.

    Fleming sponsored similar bills that passed the House in 2007 and 2008 but died in the Senate.

    http://www.walkermessenger.com/view/...ry_left_column
    An uninformed opponent is a dangerous opponent.

    "Y'all be makin shit up" ~ Markeith Loyd

  2. #22
    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
    Join Date
    Oct 2010
    Posts
    33,217
    Bill would cloak lethal injection information in secrecy

    The names of those who carry out Georgia’s executions and the identities of those that supply the lethal drugs would be classified as “state secrets” under legislation moving through the General Assembly.

    Rep. Kevin Tanner, R-Dawsonville, who sponsored the privacy exception, said it is needed to protect individuals involved in the execution process. But opponents said it shields from view how Georgia acquires its lethal-injection drugs and could, if there is a botched execution, prevent the public from finding out why it happened.

    Tanner successfully attached the “state secrets” amendment to House Bill 122, which was approved by the Senate Judiciary Non-Civil Committee on Wednesday.

    It would keep private the names of the guards on duty during executions, the pharmacist who fills out the prescription and the person who administers the lethal drug, he said. The amendment also requires the identifying information of any entity that “manufactures, supplies, compounds or prescribes” the lethal injection drugs to be classified.

    Tanner, a former Department of Corrections board member, said he has been working with the agency on the amendment. Nearly half of the states with the death penalty have enacted similar legislation.

    “Corrections has been having an issue with individuals that participate in this process being harassed,” he said. “Because they are carrying this function out on behalf of the state, (the department) felt like that it was important to attempt to offer them some protection personally, that their personal information would not be available.”

    In recent years, anti-death penalty opponents have targeted a doctor who has participated in administering lethal injections of Georgia inmates. The doctor was subjected to protests and faced complaints that sought to revoke his medical license.

    Tanner said he worries that angry family members and others might seek vengeance on those involved in executions if they had access to their identities.

    The provision does not make secret the methods used for execution, he said. “This isn’t pro-death penalty legislation or anti-death penalty legislation. It’s just about protecting these people.”

    Corrections fully supports the provision that protects those who are essential to the lethal-injection process in Georgia, agency spokeswoman Gwendolyn Hogan said.

    “The purpose of the bill is to protect the safety of the officers, nurses, doctors and pharmacists involved in this process,” she said. “Identifying these individuals and businesses jeopardizes their safety and makes them a target for harassment and intimidation, simply because of their involvement in court-ordered executions.”

    William Montross, a lawyer for the Southern Center for Human Rights in Atlanta, said no one wants the names of the actual executioners.

    “That is not what this bill is about,” he said. “It is about giving the Georgia Department of Corrections cover so that no one can see how they obtain the drugs they use to kill people. Transparency is being thrown out the window.”

    Sandra Michaels of the Georgia Association of Criminal Defense Attorneys said there have been problems with the quality and types of drugs used for lethal injections.

    “If there is a problem at an execution, it’s possible this bill will prevent getting to the bottom of what happened,” she said. “Nationally there have been botched lethal injections based on problems with the drugs.”

    Georgia’s lethal injection process has had its share of controversy. In March 2011, Drug Enforcement Administration officials confiscated Correction’s supply of sodium thiopental, a sedative once used in a three-drug lethal-injection cocktail.

    The seizure occurred shortly after lawyers for a condemned Georgia inmate asked the U.S. Justice Department to investigate whether the state failed to properly register with the DEA when it imported its sodium thiopental from England. Court filings showed that Georgia bought the drug from Dream Pharma, a company that operated in the back of a storefront driving school in London.

    Corrections soon switched from sodium thiopental to the barbiturate pentobarbital in its lethal injection cocktail. Last year, the agency changed its procedure from using three drugs to only one, pentobarbital.

    http://www.ajc.com/news/news/local/b...on-in-s/nWzYL/
    An uninformed opponent is a dangerous opponent.

    "Y'all be makin shit up" ~ Markeith Loyd

  3. #23
    Administrator Moh's Avatar
    Join Date
    Oct 2010
    Location
    Germany
    Posts
    13,014
    Compounding pharmacies may be source of lethal injection drugs

    By Rhonda Cook
    The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

    Out of lethal injection drugs and with three men who could have execution dates set soon, Georgia must figure out a way to restock its supply of pentobarbital, which the manufacturer refuses to sell for capital punishment.

    “The vast number of states are facing a crucial shortage of lethal injection drugs,” said University of Georgia law professor Ron Carlson. “Sources are drying up and states are scrambling to figure out how to implement their death penalty laws.”

    The shortage of drugs nationwide can be traced to political pressures on the drug manufacturers — all either based in or with facilities in other countries where sentiments are strongly against capital punishment.

    Legal experts and activists expect the alternative to buying from a mass producer will be ordering from local compounding pharmacies where batches of the drug can be made on the spot and as needed.

    “There is a sense that compounding pharmacies may be where states are turning,” said Richard Dieter, executive director of the Washington-based Death Penalty Information Center, which opposes the death penalty. “Big drug companies don’t want to be associated with this.”

    But there could be legal and public relations problems with a local pharmacist making up a batch of lethal injection drug on a case-by-case basis.

    “Its certainly invokes the image of the mad scientist mixing chemicals with the nefarious intention of taking human life, which certainly seems problematic for state government,” said Sara Totonchi, executive director of the Southern Center for Human Rights. “How do we know about the integrity of the compound? How do we know if the person being executed isn’t being put through unthinkable pain?”

    Some of the areas ripe for litigation, Totonchi and other death penalty opponents say, are the skills of the pharmacists, the efficacy of the drugs that will have to be tweaked enough so as not to violate patents and the need for a doctor to write a prescription for a lethal injection drug which could violate American Medical Association rules.

    “It reopens a whole new line of litigation around this issue. The state is going into uncharted waters,” said Georgia attorney Gerald Weber, who brought suits around the issue of doctors participating in lethal injections a few years ago.

    So far, only South Dakota has carried out an execution using drugs made locally.

    There are no executions scheduled in Georgia at this time. But on Tuesday the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected a challenge from Warren Hill, who came within two hours of being executed in February for a 1990 beating death of a fellow inmate, and his execution warrant could be signed at any time if the U.S. Supreme Court does not step in. The U.S. Supreme Court has the final appeals of Robert Wayne Holsey — who murdered a Baldwin County deputy 1995 — and Marcus Wellons — who raped and strangled his 15-year-old Cobb County neighbor in 1989.

    The state would be pressed if any of the three men at the end of their appeals have executions scheduled in the near future.

    That’s why it’s important for the state to shield the identities of doctors, pharmacists or drug providers that could be involved with procuring lethal injection drugs, said State Rep. Kevin Tanner, R-Dawsonville. He sponsored the legislation to keep those identities secret, expecting the state will have to turn to a pharmacist.

    “I can see it heading in that direction,” Tanner said.

    The nationwide shortage of lethal injection drugs became a problem only in recent years when companies in other countries became concerned their products were being used in executions.

    First the U.S. manufacturer of the sedative sodium thiopental — the first in a series of three drugs — stopped making it. Then the Danish company that made the replacement sedative, pentobarbitol, required U.S. suppliers to agree not to sell the drug if it is to be used in lethal injections. Then an Israeli pharmaceutical company stopped making the paralytic pancuronium bromide, the second drug Georgia and other states used in its three-drug cocktail; that is what led Georgia to go to a one-drug process even as that one drug was no longer available.

    Twenty-four states still have three-drug protocols that start with pentobarbital.

    Georgia and 10 other states have switched to a one-drug process. Missouri plans to use Propofol, the anesthetic said to have killed pop star Michael Jackson that is made by a German company. Arkansas has said it will use phenobarbitol, a sedative and anti-seizure drug that has not yet been used in an execution. The remaining 11 use pentobarbital, which they can’t buy now.

    Georgia’s ability to procure lethal injection drugs may well lie in its ability to shield the public from those involved in the production of the drug.

    “If we cannot protect the identities of these individuals, we may not be able to obtain drugs to carry out executions,” DOC attorney Robert Jones wrote in an email dated March 22, the day the Senate approved the change and four days before the House gave the bill its final approval.

    http://www.myajc.com/news/news/state...tomyajc_launch

  4. #24
    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
    Join Date
    Oct 2010
    Posts
    33,217
    GEORGIA DEATH PENALTY

    ATLANTA — State lawmakers plan to take a look at Georgia's death penalty law, specifically the state's toughest-in-the-nation requirement for death row inmates to prove mental disability beyond a reasonable doubt to avoid execution. The discussion comes against the backdrop of ongoing legal battles in the case of death row inmate Warren Hill. His lawyers have long argued that he is mentally disabled and should be spared execution. Groups representing people with mental disabilities have taken particular interest in his case and plan to lobby lawmakers for a change to Georgia's law.

    http://www.wral.com/georgia-weekend-advisory/13007174/
    An uninformed opponent is a dangerous opponent.

    "Y'all be makin shit up" ~ Markeith Loyd

  5. #25
    Administrator Moh's Avatar
    Join Date
    Oct 2010
    Location
    Germany
    Posts
    13,014
    Clemency ‘transparency’ may be hot issue at Capitol

    The State Board of Pardons and Paroles’ silence on the July 10 clemency it granted a death-row inmate in a 1991 murder case has stirred strong emotions in North Georgia, with ripple effects possibly leading to the doors of the 2015 General Assembly.

    “I think that we, as a state, owe the family an explanation why that sentence didn’t get carried out,” said state Sen. Steve Gooch, R-Dahlonega, adding that the lack of a reason is “tragic.”

    The five-member board’s decision to commute Tommy Lee Waldrip for his part in the murder of Keith Lloyd Evans to life in prison without parole evoked strong reaction by itself.

    But the board’s later decision to deny Dawson County’s request to declassify materials related to the decision has inspired a call for change that has riled several groups and piqued the interest of Gooch, whose district includes Dawson.

    He said he’s “anxious to hear what we can do in the General Assembly to open that process up a little bit more and make it more transparent. Whether that requires legislation or not, I don’t know.

    “I’m satisfied there’ll be some discussion between now and January about a piece of legislation to make that happen.”

    Also eyeing the debate is the Georgia First Amendment Foundation.

    “The issue of prime concern to the First Amendment community is not whether or not any given defendant is released — rather that the public knows almost nothing about the process of release,” executive director Hollie Manheimer said.

    “Public safety is a huge issue of public concern and this board’s decisions impacts public safety. The public has a keen interest in its decisions.”

    Evans’ sister, Angela DeCoursey, said her family was “not at all surprised” the parole board refused to release the information regarding its decision, based on “the positions of power this five-member board has.”

    “We are very disappointed, however, to know that the taxpayers of this state pay over half a million to this board, (which) does not have to be accountable for their actions.”

    DeCoursey said her family has not decided on future steps, if any.

    “We ... feel we have exhausted all efforts, basically to no avail,” she said. “Injustice has truly prevailed and we have been forced to accept it.”

    DeCoursey did say she hopes that “very soon, the law will be changed to avoid this happening to other families.”

    Northeastern Judicial Circuit District Attorney Lee Darragh said that in the clemency hearing he participated in, some parole board members seemed focused on “flawed reasoning” that “equally culpable” co-defendant John Mark Waldrip, Tommy Waldrip’s son, didn’t get the death penalty that he had sought “from a different jury in a different county.”

    In separate trials, Howard Livingston and John Mark Waldrip were sentenced to life in prison for their parts in Evans’ beating death.

    When asked about the transparency issues raised in this case, parole board spokesman Steve Hayes only said the board “has discretion under the law to determine whether it is appropriate to declassify information” and that its authority is derived from the Georgia Constitution.

    Waldrip’s attorneys and family couldn’t be reached for comment. James Mills, a Hall County resident and former state representative who serves on the parole board, also couldn’t be reached.

    Sasha Dlugolenski, a spokeswoman for Gov. Nathan Deal said, “There is a healthy distance between the governor and the State Board of Pardons and Paroles, as required by law.

    “The only role the governor plays in this whole process is the ability to appoint board members subject to confirmation by the state Senate. Therefore, something of this nature would not fall under our jurisdiction.”

    The state’s Open Records Act, which was last revised in 2012, exempts documents related to “the deliberations and voting of the state Board of Pardons and Paroles.”

    In addition, the law states, the “board may close a meeting held for the purpose of receiving information or evidence for or against clemency or in revocation proceedings if it determines that the receipt of such information or evidence in open meeting would present a substantial risk of harm or injury to a witness.”

    Dawson County Attorney Joey Homans said the county wants the classified information to be revealed in the pardons and parole board’s annual report to the governor.

    He said Georgia is one of a handful of states that does not require the governor, “or at least some elected officer,” to be involved in clemency issues.

    “If we receive no progress, we may request that the statute be rewritten. We’re now waiting to see how it unfolds,” he said.

    Homans said he is currently working on letters to the governor, Attorney General Sam Olens, Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle, House Speaker David Ralston, Rep. Kevin Tanner, R-Dawsonville, and Gooch on the matter.

    Olens’ spokeswoman Lauren Kane said state law gives the board “the discretion to seal records ... and does not give us the authority to unseal them.”

    She noted that in the early 1940s, questions were raised about the handling of pardons by some governors’ offices.

    Public concern led the General Assembly to enact legislation, signed into law in February 1943, that created the State Board of Pardons and Paroles as an independent agency to administer executive clemency.

    In August 1943, Georgia voters ratified an amendment to the state constitution to establish the parole board’s authority “to grant paroles, pardons and reprieves, to commute sentences, including death sentences, to remit sentences, and to remove disabilities imposed by law.”

    The board also was given a staff of parole officers to investigate cases and supervise persons granted parole.

    Darragh said an area of concern is that the board conducts its own investigations.

    “To review and rely on the record, transcripts and the like is perhaps a good thing,” he said. “However, to re-interview the defendant himself ... and allow him to make up whatever facts about the crime that he would without any access to that interview by the prosecutor or opportunity to refute those alleged facts is contrary to any sense of a proper legal process.”

    Gooch said legislators moving forward on the issue need “to be careful with changing all of those procedures.

    “We don’t want to do it too quickly or out of emotion, but, at the same time, the process worked (in the Waldrip case), the judicial system did its job ... and the family deserves some explanation.”

    “The only silver lining here,” Darragh said, “is that Tommy Lee Waldrip will never see the light of day, with (his sentence). In that both the remaining co-defendants unfortunately do have parole eligibility, it should be that they too should never see the light of day themselves.”

    http://www.gainesvilletimes.com/sect...rticle/104544/

  6. #26
    Administrator Moh's Avatar
    Join Date
    Oct 2010
    Location
    Germany
    Posts
    13,014
    Historic Changes Possible For Pardons Board

    After 70 years of operating in the darkness of secrecy, the Georgia Pardons and Paroles Board may be forced to step into the sunshine.

    A bill that would dramatically change the way Georgia's most secretive government agency operates passed the Georgia House of Representatives last week with overwhelming support.

    "Since the Keith Evans murder case and the subsequent articles in the Dawson News & Advertiser that showed a complete lack of transparency and secrecy at the board … there has been a lot of public support for this bill,” Tanner said.

    Of 180 House Representatives, 162 voted yes, eight said no, eight abstained and two did not vote.

    House Bill 71 would require records of the Georgia Pardons and Paroles Board to be open for public inspection, for the first time in 70 years, with few exceptions.

    "This is a major piece of legislation, a major shift in policy," House Rep. Kevin Tanner said, who sponsored the legislation. "This has been a long time coming."

    Under current Georgia law, all action taken by the pardons and paroles board, including how its five-member board votes on denying or granting clemency to death row inmates or granting paroles, is considered a confidential state secret.

    This newspaper launched an investigation into the actions of the board after it granted clemency July 9, 2014 to convicted murderer Tommy Lee Waldrip without releasing details of its decision to Evans’ family, elected officials, members of the news media, or the Georgia Sheriff’s Association, all of whom requested those details.

    THE MURDER OF DCHS GRAD KEITH EVANS

    Evans, who graduated from Dawson County High School in 1986, was the only eye witness to come forward to testify against Tommy Lee Waldrip, at his 1990 trial, for robbing at gunpoint the convenience store in Cumming, where Evans worked as a night manager. Although Waldrip was convicted in the robbery, the trial court granted his attorney's motion for a new trial. Waldrip was released on bond pending the retrial, according to court documents.

    The retrial was set for April 15, 1991.

    On Saturday, two days before the retrial, and sometime between 10:30 p.m. and midnight, Evans was on his way home from work on Highway 9. Waldrip and two other men ran Evans' truck off the road and shot him in the face with bird shot. The gunshots did not kill him, court documents showed.

    Evans then was driven to a barn off Hugh Stowers Road and beaten to death with a blackjack. He was buried in a shallow grave in Gilmer County and his nearly new pickup truck set on fire. Evans was 23-years-old.

    Waldrip was sentenced to die by lethal injection, and two others were sentenced to life in prison.

    After serving 20 years on Georgia’s death row, Waldrip’s execution was scheduled for July 10, 2014.

    One day before the execution, the Georgia Pardons and Paroles Board granted clemency to Waldrip. The board made its decision so fast, the Evans family hadn’t arrived home to Dawsonville from Atlanta, where they had attended Waldrip’s clemency hearing.

    “It was like they already had their minds made up,” Keith Evan’s sister, Angela DeCoursey, said at the time. "What's the point of having a justice system, judges, juries, appeals courts, if a board that has no law experience can just overturn all their decisions? We are shocked beyond belief."

    Cleve Evans, father of Keith Evans, said Monday his family has suffered enormously.

    "Having access to information would help, somewhat, to bring closure for families," Evans said. "But what I'd like is for it to be retroactive, so that my family can find out why they made the decisions they did."

    PROVISIONS IN THE HOUSE BILL

    If approved by the Senate and signed into law by Gov. Nathan Deal, the pardons and pardons board would be required when granting a pardon or parole to:

    1. Include the board's findings that reflect its consideration of the evidence offered that supports the board's decision

    2. Indicate each board member's vote on the decision, and

    3. Be available for public inspection

    "Up until now, the board's decisions have been hidden behind a veil of secrecy," Rep. Tanner said. "Keith Evans and his mother and father and two sisters, when they asked the board 'why', didn't get any answers. Victims' families deserve to have answers.

    LOCAL OFFICIALS TOOK UP THE CASE

    Dawson County Sheriff Billy Carlisle, Wiley Griffin, president of the Georgia Sheriff’s Association, and Mike Berg, chair of the Dawson County Board of Commissioners, were approached by the Dawson News & Advertiser and asked if they would also request information from the pardons board about its decision in Waldrip’s case.

    All three agreed.

    And all three were told “no” in a two-sentence form letter issued by the pardons board in September 2014.

    “The jury and judge sat there and listened to all the evidence and made their decision based on that evidence,” Sheriff Carlisle said at the time. “And that’s why they found him (Waldrip) guilty.

    “For a board to come in 23 years later and change it, just isn’t right.”

    Dawson County District Attorney Lee Darragh, who prosecuted the Waldrip case more than 20 years ago, said Tanner’s legislation will help victims’ families.

    “(We) are grateful for Rep. Tanner’s sponsorship and work on this bill which will increase transparency in the clemency process in particular,” Darragh said. “I’m confident in Senate passage and in the bill becoming law, to help families of victims throughout our state in their understanding of the process and in great participation in the process.”

    Kathy Strayhorn, a victim's advocate in Darragh’s office for 16 years and a representative for Keith Evans’ family, spoke during a House committee hearing about the dangers of the pardons board secrecy.

    She referred specially to a case involving a 6-year-old girl who was sexually abused.

    "Part of the reason we end up in court in child sex cases is because of secrets," she said. "Children are told by the molester, 'Keep this a secret. Don't tell anyone.'

    "Then, the (Georgia Pardons) board makes a decision to pardon a sex offender, and the victim, the family, no one is told anything. It's all a big secret.

    "If that's how we do justice, shame on us."

    WHAT NEXT?

    House Bill 71 has moved to the Senate Judiciary Non-Civil Committee. which has jurisdiction over Georgia's criminal laws and procedures, parole and pardons, sentencing and drug enforcement. On March 4, the bill was read into the Senate record and is being considered.

    http://www.dawsonadvertiser.com/view...ngNews_article

  7. #27
    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
    Join Date
    Oct 2010
    Posts
    33,217
    Effort to clear up Georgia's 'cloudy' lethal injection drug is on track

    There's no timetable yet for Georgia to resume executions, but Gov. Nathan Deal said efforts to clean up Georgia's death penalty drugs could soon be completed.

    He's referring to the state's decision to indefinitely postpone lethal injections after the chemicals that were to be used to execute Kelly Gissendaner for the 1997 murder of her husband were deemed to be "cloudy."

    The governor said Tuesday that prisons officials have taken "extreme efforts" to make sure the drugs work properly.

    "I am told they believe they are now on track to have a reliable source, one that will prevent the clouding of the drug, or any contamination or crystallization of the drug, which has also been a problem in the past," he said. "That's my only concern about it. That needs to be resolved, and hopefully they've found a way to do that."

    Gissendaner's attorneys contend the starts-and-stops that have led to repeated delays in her execution amount to "cruel and unusual punishment." Her case has also sparked a broader debate about a 2013 law that classifies Georgia's lethal injection protocol as "confidential state secrets."

    Death penalty critics have sought a reversal of the law, contending that the public deserves the right to know how executions are carried out. But Deal, who signed the proposal into law, cast it as an essential protection for the drugmakers supplying the chemicals and the doctors and nurses involved in the executions.

    "If I had the confidence that their would not be major groups boycotting these individuals and trying to do undue pressure on them, I would have not problem with that," he said. "But we know that's not the case. The reason we have the secrecy is to protect these individuals or companies who are, in effect, doing what the state has requested them to do."

    (Source: The Atlanta Journal-Constitution)
    An uninformed opponent is a dangerous opponent.

    "Y'all be makin shit up" ~ Markeith Loyd

  8. #28
    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
    Join Date
    Oct 2010
    Posts
    33,217
    Interesting read.

    Nevada barber lives by lessons from former clients on Georgia's death row

    Cornelius Burse can still see the faces of those doomed men, the hardened Southern convicts with an execution date looming.

    They had nicknames like Shorty and Bull, Hammer and Diddy. And when they walked into that windowless room in G House, he'd play it real cool; no stupid questions about who they killed or when they faced the needle. Like he did with clients outside those prison bars, Burse calmly asked, "How do you want it?"

    They'd take a moment to peer into a scuffed mirror bolted to the cinder-block wall. Then he'd tip them back in the solitary leather chair and clip their hair. Burse was himself a career criminal who'd already served time in seven prisons in two states. Still, these men scared him: convicted murderers, the infamous authors of heinous crimes.

    For nearly two years, Burse was the regular inmate barber on Georgia's death row.

    "Some of those men you just didn't want to be around," he recalled. "Others, you couldn't wait until they came back."

    It all seems like so long ago. The 40-year-old Burse — who goes by the moniker Cadillac — left prison in 2009 and cuts hair in a mostly black-men's barber shop called In Da Cut outside Las Vegas, southeast of the Strip. He keeps regular customers, most of whom know his past. At home, he's the doting single father to a young daughter and son. Informally, he mentors troubled teens, who remind him of himself.

    Burse says he owes his redemption to those ruined men in Georgia.

    He was 33 when he stepped off the "Gray Goose" prison bus in 2007 for a second stint at Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison, his last stop on a penitentiary tour prompted by a life of hurting people, taking what wasn't his, via assault and robbery.

    He considered himself ruthless, until he met condemned criminals who were all that and more. He learned hard-time lessons from luckless convicts who later made that long walk to the death chamber, hands shackled to their belts, a phalanx of guards in tow.

    He recalls the advice of Troy Davis, executed in 2011 for killing a police officer.

    "This is it for me," he told Burse from the barber's chair. "You get a chance to do the right thing. You don't know the place, the day or the time you're going to die. But I do. I do."

    Burse was born in Georgia, the eldest of three boys. He became their father figure after his dad, Melvin Burse, was slain when Cornelius was 8.

    Rachel Burse later told her oldest son she couldn't afford the boys' $7.50 haircuts on her factory worker's salary. She gave 13-year-old Cornelius a pair of scissors and told him to watch his older cousin cut hair. He got good with those shears.

    At 17, Burse was already a father, with a second child on the way. That's where his life sprung a gear like an old alarm clock. After the mother of his babies died in a house fire, Burse felt the weight of being a single provider.

    He learned the power of a knife and a .38-caliber handgun, how they could make people do what you wanted. Cutting hair was over. Working was hard; taking was easy. People called him Cadillac for the cars he drove, the bling of a street thug.

    He robbed stores and people, burglarized businesses, sold drugs. He didn't see his victims as people, just means to an end. His only real fear was going to prison, but that's where he ended up.

    Behind those ominous walls, he joined a gang called the Vice Lords, got crude tattoos with threatening skulls all over his body. He bulked up, gaining 60 pounds of muscle, because that's how you survived in the pen.

    He also earned his barber's license after a trustee suggested it could be his ticket on the outside. "I never planned on being a barber," Burse said. "That's what I did as a kid."

    But he learned.

    A convict nicknamed Hammer was Burse's first death row client. And Emmanuel Fitzgerald Hammond was one rough customer: He raped a woman, "blew the side of her face off" with a shotgun.

    Burse had thought barbering meant easy time in his 10-year-sentence. But when Hammer sat in his barber chair, Burse's hands shook.

    "That was the most terrifying moment of my entire life," he recalled. "I thought I'd be working with an armed officer present. No. We were alone."

    Burse's barber chair was just steps from the death row cells that held about 100 inmates. Before he was through, Burse had worked on most of them.

    "At first I didn't know who they were or what they'd done," he said. "All I knew was the guy was going to die; he had a date."

    Some men admitted their crimes. Others, like Davis, insisted on their innocence. Said Burse: "He told me, 'God's gonna take care of me. It's going to be OK.'"

    He got to know men by their faces, rarely their full names. To calm his nerves, he pretended they were friends from his past.

    Barbering a con nicknamed Diddy, he froze; he knew that face.

    "Man, you look so familiar," Burse said.

    "Why's that?"

    The tone ruffled Burse. "There was a guy I went to school with. John Dobbs."

    "That's my son," Diddy said. He laughed coldly.

    In time, haircuts became schooling sessions. Older inmates advised Burse to appreciate life's simple moments, never lie to himself, believe in God, read as much as he could. "They helped me change," he said.

    Burse was an inmate during three executions, each scheduled for 7 p.m.

    "You hear that?" he asked, sitting in a restaurant near the barber shop. "That's what it sounds like on execution night. Quiet."

    He paused. "When 7 p.m. hit, you knew they were gone. That moment of silence was the loudest thing I ever heard."

    Once, he ran into a condemned man nicknamed Shorty on the day of his execution. "You take care of yourself, Cadillac," he said.

    "It's been a pleasure to have known you," he recalled saying. "May God be with you."

    A few moments after 7 p.m., Shorty was gone.

    Now, Burse works beside barbers with names like Ron-Ron, Mondo and Mook, beneath posters of Michael Jordan and Tupac Shakur.

    Slender, head shaved, a thin beard lining his jaw, Burse is a family man. The two of six kids still at home — Rhonwyn, 13, and Chaz, 11 — know he's been to prison. He tells them he's a different man now, despite an arrest last year for marijuana possession. He was fined and ordered to take an online drug course.

    Duane Melvin, owner of In Da Cut, knows all about Burse's hard time. "He marches to his own beat. He's a good man; he's stayed clean," Melvin said. "He doesn't broadcast his past, but if you ask him, he'll tell you."

    Burse still sees the faces of those condemned men, when he dons the Air Jordan sneakers he got from death row prisoners via barters. And he keeps their letters — including one from Jack Alderman, executed in 2008 for beating his wife to death with a crescent wrench:

    "For Cadillac. Good man, excellent barber and believer in bettering people. I beg you not to do anything that sends you back behind bars. Trust me, it ain't pretty, and it ain't cool."

    Burse makes no excuses: "You live by the sword, you die by the sword. It's not my place to judge, but these men were lambs who led themselves to slaughter."

    Still, news of each execution rocks him hard. The other day, Burse read a list of men put to death since he left prison.

    Then he saw the name: Emmanuel Fitzgerald Hammond. Tears welled.

    "Hammer," he gasped. "He's gone. He's gone."

    http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-...ry.html#page=2
    An uninformed opponent is a dangerous opponent.

    "Y'all be makin shit up" ~ Markeith Loyd

  9. #29
    Senior Member Member GASMANDIRTY's Avatar
    Join Date
    Nov 2012
    Posts
    239
    I think every death row inmate should thank the only female on death row. Because of her all executions are on hold. Until things are resolved with her all death row inmates are safe. I think her case will be settled soon and once again georgia should get started. Falling behind the rest of nation.

  10. #30
    Administrator Moh's Avatar
    Join Date
    Oct 2010
    Location
    Germany
    Posts
    13,014
    Ga. yet to turn over results of execution drug testing

    By Rhonda Cook
    The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

    ATLANTA — The Georgia Department of Corrections has yet to follow through on a promise to tell the federal court the results of tests on lethal injection drugs to confirm that it was cold storage — and not contamination — that caused clumps in a specially-made batch of pentobarbital they had planned to use to put a woman to death.

    The main DOC attorney, Robert Jones, wrote in affidavits filed with the U.S. Supreme Court and the district court in Atlanta the testing would take seven days and the results would be given also to attorneys for Kelly Gissendaner, whose scheduled execution in early March was called off because of precipitates in all the vials of deadly dosages of the barbiturate.

    DOC told the news organization BuzzFeed the reports on testing was “was privileged and classified documents” and the state attorney general would decide when they would be released.

    DOC and the AG’s office have not yet responded to requests for comment.

    Kelly Gissendaner was scheduled to be executed on March 2 for the 1997 murder of her husband. She did not carry out the murder but planned it so her lover, Gregory Owen, could kill Douglas Gissendaner. After the scheduled hour of her death had passed, DOC called it off because of solids floating in the vials.

    DOC later reported than a lab had determined low temperatures allowed the solids to separate from the liquid solvent. DOC said it would do more testing by putting vials of the drug in refrigerators at different temperatures to see if they could recreate what happened on March 2.

    Jones wrote in three affidavits filed with the two courts: “This test should confirm whether the problem with the drugs that were to be used in the Gissendaner execution was that they were stored at too cold a temperature.”

    “It is the Georgia Department of Correction’s intention to provide the results of these tests to the court and the opposing party in the case of Gissendaner,” Jones wrote.

    Gissendaner’s attorney declined to comment.

    http://www.correctionsone.com/capita...-drug-testing/

Page 3 of 12 FirstFirst 12345 ... LastLast

Thread Information

Users Browsing this Thread

There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)

Tags for this Thread

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •