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Thread: Georgia Capital Punishment News

  1. #41
    Senior Member CnCP Legend Mike's Avatar
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    GradyJ, Georgia happened to have over a dozen people that were appealing to the 11th circuit that got their appeals denied close together. The Supreme Court also denied their appeals close together so Georgia had a record amount of executions because their inmates finished their appeals in a clump. GA right now has around 10 people at the 11th right now, and one who was denied by the Supreme Court. If both of those courts start denying more people GA may execute a large number of people again. They likely won't ever reach 2016 heights ever again. I don't know when they will start picking up again since the courts seemed to have slowed to a snails pace this year.
    "There is a point in the history of a society when it becomes so pathologically soft and tender that among other things it sides even with those who harm it, criminals, and does this quite seriously and honestly. Punishing somehow seems unfair to it, and it is certain that imagining ‘punishment’ and ‘being supposed to punish’ hurts it, arouses fear in it." Friedrich Nietzsche

  2. #42
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    Thank you Mike. Most appreciated.

  3. #43
    Senior Member CnCP Legend CharlesMartel's Avatar
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    Death sentences becoming increasingly rare in Georgia

    By Associated Press
    The Chattanooga Times-Free Press

    The Georgia Supreme Court on Monday did something it once did on a fairly routine basis but now hardly ever does: It heard a death-penalty appeal.

    It had been almost two years since the court heard a direct appeal — the first appeal after a capital sentence is imposed — in a death-penalty case. And this once-unthinkable rarity shouldn't change anytime soon. It's now been more than four years since a Georgia jury handed down a death sentence.

    This is in keeping with what's been going on nationally. Last year, 39 death sentences were imposed nationwide. That's a dramatic drop from 126 capital sentences imposed a decade earlier and from 295 death sentences imposed in 1998, according to the Death Penalty Information Center in Washington.

    National polls show the death penalty is losing public support, said Pete Skandalakis, executive director of the Prosecuting Attorneys' Council of Georgia. That's because people are becoming increasingly comfortable with the sentencing option of life in prison without the possibility of parole.

    "That has made a huge difference," said Skandalakis, once the district attorney for the Coweta Judicial Circuit. "And when you sit down with victims' families and discuss the process of a death-penalty case with all the pretrial hearings, then the years of appeals that follow, I have found that families like the finality of life without parole. It lets them get on with their lives."

    On Monday, the state Supreme Court heard an appeal from Demetrius Willis, who was sentenced to death by a Fulton County jury in 2008 for the murders of his former girlfriend, their 3-year-old son and her boyfriend.

    During the arguments, Willis' attorney asked the court to strike down the death penalty in Georgia on grounds it is arbitrarily imposed. "It's just not working," Charles Henry Frier said.

    Fulton County prosecutor Kevin Armstrong asked the justices to reject Frier's claim, contending "there's no basis" behind it. The state Supreme Court is expected to issue its decision later this year.

    The last time a death sentence was handed down by a Georgia jury was March 2014 in Augusta against Adrian Hargrove, who committed a triple murder. Last year, the two death cases that went to trial in Georgia involved the murder of law enforcement officers — a crime that traditionally results in a death penalty. Yet both resulted in sentences of life without parole.

    More often than not, district attorneys are now allowing capital defendants to enter guilty pleas in exchange for life-without-parole sentences.

    "It's a self-fulfilling prophesy," Gwinnett County District Attorney Danny Porter said. "As more and more juries give fewer death sentences, prosecutors begin to think it's not worth the effort."

    Even so, it's not time to remove the death penalty as a sentencing option, Porter said. "I think there are still cases where there's just no question that death is the proper punishment."

    On July 23, Porter is scheduled to take the next capital case to trial in Georgia. Tiffany Moss, who as of now is representing herself, is accused in the abuse and starvation death of 10-year-old Emani.

    Porter also sought death against the child's father, Eman Moss. But he pleaded guilty three years ago in exchange for life without parole. The same offer has been extended to Tiffany Moss in return for a guilty plea, but it will be rescinded once jury selection begins next month, Porter said.

    In addition to Moss, four other defendants tentatively face death-penalty trials this year — three in Fulton and one more in Gwinnett.

    Like Porter, many other Georgia DAs strongly support capital punishment. Last year, for example, DAs announced they were seeking the death penalty in 26 cases. So far this year, prosecutors have filed notices to seek death in just two new cases, the state records show. Since it can take years for death penalty cases to move foward, it's not clear how many of these will proceed to trial.

    Opponents to capital punishment have traditionally been aligned with liberal causes. More recently, increasing numbers of conservatives are speaking out against it.

    Heather Beaudoin, national coordinator of Conservatives Concerned about the Death Penalty, said her primary concerns are the number of exonerations that have been disclosed over the years and the possibility of executing an innocent person.

    "We have a problem on our hands," she said.

    According to the Innocence Project, there have been 356 convictions overturned by DNA evidence around the U.S. since 1989, including 20 who were convicted and served time on death row.

    Beaudoin founded Conservatives Concerned about the Death Penalty in Montana in 2010. Five years ago, it became a national organization and has chapters in 13 states, including one in Georgia.

    "Many of our supporters are millennials who are pro-life like I am," she said. "We believe that life is created by God and has value no matter what the circumstances are. Even someone who has committed an awful crime — that life has value."

    After four years without a death sentence, Georgia's capital defender office is attracting national recognition. The capital defender's office is part of the state's public defender system and represents capital defendants who can't afford their own lawyers.

    The office's intervention program, in which capital defenders seek plea deals from prosecutors early on in a case, has helped more than 20 defendants avoid a death-penalty trial, Jerry Word, who heads the defender office, said.

    "The average time to resolve a case in early intervention has been less than eight months," Word said. "The average time to get a case to trial is over three years. This results in a saving in court time and dollar savings to the state and county."

    http://www.timesfreepress.com/news/b...y-rare/472453/
    In the Shadow of Your Wings
    1 A Prayer of David. Hear a just cause, O Lord; attend to my cry! Give ear to my prayer from lips free of deceit!

  4. #44
    Senior Member CnCP Legend Mike's Avatar
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    Death penalty on the wane in Georgia

    By Bill Rankin
    The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

    Georgia prosecutors have long had a reputation for zealously seeking the death penalty to punish heinous killers. And yet capital punishment in 2019 seems to be going the way of the guillotine and the gallows: It’s disappearing.

    A jury in Augusta imposed the last death sentence in Georgia in March 2014. With no capital trials set for early this year, it’s all but certain the state will go at least five years without a death sentence.

    That span is the longest here since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment more than four decades ago. It wasn’t long ago when death sentences were fairly routine in the state. Between 2007 and 2014, for example, prosecutors convinced Georgia juries to hand down death sentences in 18 cases.

    Pursuing a death penalty means a costly trial and decades of appeals. And it’s now made more difficult by jurors’ growing reluctance to send convicts to their death.

    The availability of a life-without-parole sentence, which is seen by many as a more humane option, offers an alternative that district attorneys are turning to more often.

    Last year, Georgia’s district attorneys filed notices to seek the death penalty in just three cases. That’s also the lowest number, on an annual basis, in decades.

    It wasn’t that long ago when DAs sought death for dozens of cases a year, such as in 2011 when they sought it 26 times or 2005 when they sought it 40 times, according to state records obtained by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution under an Open Records Act request.

    “Wow, I didn’t know that,” Cobb County District Attorney Vic Reynolds said, when told so few death notices were filed last year. He attributed the precipitous drop to the ability of prosecutors to get sentences of life in prison without the possibility of parole.

    This is also reflected on a national level. Across the U.S., capital sentences are reaching historic lows. Polls have shown increasing support for life-without-parole sentences as opposed to the death penalty.

    Last year, 42 death sentences were imposed nationwide, according to the Death Penalty Information Center in Washington. That’s down from 83 such sentences in 2013 and 120 in 2008.

    A decade ago, prosecutors in Georgia had to seek the death penalty against a murder defendant in order to get the option of a life-without-parole sentence.

    But in 2009 state lawmakers made a change that allows DAs to seek life without parole in non-death-penalty cases. In Georgia, a sentence of life in prison means an inmate can seek parole after serving just 30 years — a life-without-parole sentence is the only way to be sure someone convicted stays in prison.

    In the Cobb County hot-car death case involving a toddler, Reynolds did not seek death for the child’s father, Justin Ross Harris. Instead, Reynolds obtained a life-without-parole sentence after Harris’s conviction.

    “The majority of prosecutors around the state are now convinced that a life-without-parole sentence actually means what it says,” said Reynolds, who has sought the death penalty in one case during his six years as DA. “It’s made a huge difference.”

    Reynolds also acknowledged that the public’s attitude toward capital punishment has shifted. “It’s now more difficult to obtain a death sentence because that’s not necessarily what many of your citizens or jurors wish to be done these days,” he noted.

    Vernon Keenan, who retired Jan. 1 after serving 15 years as GBI director, said he doesn’t believe the death penalty will be around much longer.

    “I believe at some point it will go away,” he said. “It will either be abolished by law or no longer used because the public no longer supports it.”

    The state’s former top law man said he’s never supported capital punishment.

    “It doesn’t accomplish much of anything,” Keenan said. “It doesn’t deter anyone from committing the crime. They’re not concerned about the sentence because they don’t think they’ll get caught.”

    2018’s death-penalty cases

    Two of the three cases where DAs sought death last year involved twin killings.

    In March, Pierce County District Attorney George Barnhill announced he was seeking death against Kenneth Jernigan for the Dec. 10, 2017, deaths of Dan and Flora Hollman in the southeastern Georgia town of Patterson. Jernigan allegedly killed the elderly couple by beating their heads with a stick or a metal object during a burglary, according to court records. Jernigan, who had prior armed robbery convictions, is also accused of setting fire to the Hollman’s residence before leaving with about $40 in cash.

    The Hollmans, who were semi-retired farmers, “were well liked and respected elders in their community, never broke the law, both giving, sweet and generous people,” Barnhill said.

    “We have the death penalty as an option in Georgia,” the DA said. “It is a legal and appropriate sentence where the evidence supports it and the proven acts of the accused demand it. I decided it is appropriate to seek in this case.”

    Another death-penalty case is against James L. Smith is charged with the fatal shootings of 31-year-old Shawna Ware and 33-year-old Sheena Jones in Cordele. When authorities tracked down Smith to arrest him at a hotel, Smith opened fire on the officers before finally surrendering, police said.

    The third case is against Leon Lamar Tripp, who is charged with killing his 16-year-old stepdaughter in Augusta. The girl’s remains were found in a shallow grave in March.

    Whether those three cases go to trial remains to be seen. The state Office of the Capital Defender, which represents almost everyone facing a death-penalty prosecution in Georgia, has closed 69 cases since the beginning of 2015. Most of the resolutions involved defendants who pleaded guilty in exchange for sentences of life without parole.

    Because the capital defender’s office has developed a good rapport with district attorneys, both sides are now able to sit down and find common ground, said Pete Skandalakis, executive director of the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council of Georgia.

    “That office has become real good at identifying mitigating factors for a defendant and talking about that with prosecutors long before lines are drawn in the sand,” Skandalakis said, referring to a point when DAs will no longer negotiate a plea deal. “This has made a real difference, and you save the resources and the time required of a death-penalty case and the victims don’t have to go through the years-long process.”

    Of the 69 closed cases, only five went to trial. In those, juries declined to return a death sentence in all of them. Three of these cases involved the fatal shootings of police officers and resulted in sentences of life without parole.

    “From what I’m hearing from jurors, there are a lot of people who believe life without parole is as harsh, if not more harsh, a punishment than the death penalty,” said Jerry Word, who heads the state capital defender office.

    Georgia’s Death Row

    About 50 defendants in Georgia now face death-penalty prosecutions, and some are scheduled to stand trial in the coming months.

    Among them is Ricky Dubose, one of two inmates accused of killing two state correctional guards during a prison bus escape in June 2017. Because of pretrial publicity, the case will be tried in Brunswick on Sept. 30.

    And Tiffany Moss, who is acting as her own attorney, is now tentatively scheduled to face a death-penalty trial in Gwinnett County in April. Moss is accused of starving her 10-year-old stepdaughter to death in 2013.

    As this unfolds, the state is soon expected to start setting execution dates for death-row inmates whose appeals are all but exhausted.

    In December, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the appeal of Ray Cromartie, who sits on death row for the April 1994 fatal shooting of a convenience store clerk during an armed robbery in Thomasville.

    On Monday, by a 6-3 vote, the high court also declined to hear the appeal of Donnie Lance, who was sentenced to death for the November 1997 killings of his ex-girlfriend and her new boyfriend in Jackson County. In a rigorous dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said Lance’s trial lawyers “failed even to look into, much less to put on, a case for sparing Lance’s life.”

    The fact so few death sentences are being imposed now in Georgia also points to the difference competent defense lawyers can make, said Stephen Bright, a law professor at Georgia State, Georgetown and Yale law schools.

    “Those are people who were sentenced to death some time ago often with lawyers who were not qualified to try a death-penalty case,” Bright said of the inmates about to receive execution dates. “They are also people who would not be sentenced to death today.”

    https://www.ajc.com/news/local/death...Hx5mZCmAjEAjO/

  5. #45
    Moderator Ryan's Avatar
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    Here's the Interactive: Faces to Georgia's Death Row

    https://www.ajc.com/news/crime-ampam...1W0g2220WQKjM/
    "How do you get drunk on death row?" - Werner Herzog

    "When we get fruit, we get the juice and water. I ferment for a week! It tastes like chalk, it's nasty" - Blaine Keith Milam #999558 Texas Death Row

  6. #46
    Senior Member Frequent Poster Ted's Avatar
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    Why isn’t GA scheduling more executions? Don’t they have something like 5 warrant-ready inmates?
    Violence and death seem to be the only answers that some people understand.

  7. #47
    Senior Member CnCP Legend Mike's Avatar
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    They have three with cert denied however, Cromartie is being allowed to go back to county court, for some reason so that leaves two.

    I would have to guess either a lawsuit we don't know about or they don't have drugs.
    "There is a point in the history of a society when it becomes so pathologically soft and tender that among other things it sides even with those who harm it, criminals, and does this quite seriously and honestly. Punishing somehow seems unfair to it, and it is certain that imagining ‘punishment’ and ‘being supposed to punish’ hurts it, arouses fear in it." Friedrich Nietzsche

  8. #48
    Senior Member Frequent Poster NanduDas's Avatar
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    I would be pretty surprised if it were a drug issue. Georgia usually gets their doses custom made for each execution once a warrant has been signed. Can’t see what’s changed between Wilson and now that would jeopardize their supply.
    "The pacifist is as surely a traitor to his country and to humanity as is the most brutal wrongdoer." -Theodore Roosevelt

  9. #49
    Senior Member Frequent Poster Ted's Avatar
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    I had expected that Tharpe would’ve gotten a late September date last week, based on how they scheduled his 2017 date in relation to the anniversary of the murder, but I guess time will tell.
    Violence and death seem to be the only answers that some people understand.

  10. #50
    Senior Member CnCP Legend Mike's Avatar
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    Georgia's Death Row is still dealing with an 2008-09 outbreak of Tuberculosis. Even though it's been 10 years since, the disease hasn't left the row since this spike.

    13 inmates have been tested positive for the disease as of August 2019.

    Page 51 http://www.dcor.state.ga.us/sites/al...ow_2019_08.pdf
    Last edited by Mike; 09-14-2019 at 10:22 AM.
    "There is a point in the history of a society when it becomes so pathologically soft and tender that among other things it sides even with those who harm it, criminals, and does this quite seriously and honestly. Punishing somehow seems unfair to it, and it is certain that imagining ‘punishment’ and ‘being supposed to punish’ hurts it, arouses fear in it." Friedrich Nietzsche

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