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Thread: Joshua Daniel Bishop - Georgia Execution - March 31, 2016

  1. #11
    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
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    In today's orders, the United States Supreme Court declined to review Bishop's petition for certiorari.

    Appeals exhausted. Ruling could result in an execution date.

    Lower Ct: United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit
    Case Nos.: (10-15442)
    Decision Date: August 8, 2013
    Rehearing Denied: October 3, 2013
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  2. #12
    Senior Member Member GASMANDIRTY's Avatar
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    Joshua Bishop will be receiving a death warrant soon.

  3. #13
    Junior Member Stranger EdgeofSundown's Avatar
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    so what happened with Braxley? I do not see any info on him.

  4. #14
    Senior Member CnCP Legend Mike's Avatar
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    Execution set for man convicted in 1994 fatal Baldwin County beating

    A man sentenced to death in the 1994 fatal beating of a man in Baldwin County is set to be executed March 31, according to a news release from the Georgia Attorney General's office.

    The Superior Court of Baldwin County issued an order Friday setting a seven-day window for 41-year-old Joshua Daniel Bishop to be executed that lasts from noon March 31 to noon April 7. The execution is scheduled for the night of March 31, although a time has not been announced.

    Leverett Morrison, 43, a Milledgeville native visiting from Savannah, drove Bishop and another man, Mark Braxley, to a bar June 24, 1994. Bishop and Braxley schemed to steal Morrison's car, according to the news release.

    Evidence at Bishop's 1996 trial showed after leaving the bar and driving to Braxley's trailer in the early hours of the next morning, Bishop beat Morrison in the head and face with a blunt object.

    Later, after his arrest, Bishop admitted to authorities he struck Morrison with a wooden rod until he stopped breathing, according to the release.

    No murder weapon was ever recovered.

    Bishop and Braxley wrapped Morrison's body in a sheet, loaded it into the back of Morrison's 1984 Jeep Wagoneer and drove him to a nearby Dumpster.

    Unable to toss the body into the Dumpster, they left Morrison on the ground where he was discovered several hours later, according to the release.

    The men drove Morrison's car into a nearby wooded area and set it on fire.

    Bishop also confessed to killing another man, Ricky Lee Willis, about two weeks before Morrison's death and burying the body in woods near Braxley's trailer, according to the release.

    Jurors deliberated two hours before finding the then 21-year-old Bishop guilty of murder and armed robbery.

    During the sentencing phase of Bishop's trial, then-district attorney Fred Bright said Willis died June 9, 1994. He was beaten with a blunt object, had eight deep lacerations on his head and face, had four broken ribs and his throat was cut with a knife.

    Bright told jurors Bishop and Braxley buried Willis in the woods behind Braxley's father's trailer and had to break the man's legs to get him into the shallow grave.

    Braxley, 57, pleaded guilty to his part in Morrison's killing and was sentenced to life in prison. Although he also was charged in Willis' death, that charge was dropped as part of a plea bargain.

    State prison records show Braxley is serving his sentence at Georgia State Prison in Reidsville.

    Bishop is being held at the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification State Prison in Jackson, home to the state's death chamber.

    http://www.macon.com/news/local/crim...e65464602.html
    "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

  5. #15
    Senior Member CnCP Legend Mike's Avatar
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    A clemency hearing has been set for a Georgia death row inmate set to be executed later this month

    ATLANTA — A clemency hearing is set for a Georgia death row inmate set to be executed later this month.

    The State Board of Pardons and Paroles announced Tuesday that it will hear from advocates for Joshua Bishop on March 30. Bishop is scheduled to die the next day.

    Bishop was convicted of murder and armed robbery in the 1994 beating death of Leverett Morrison in Milledgeville.

    The parole board is the only entity in Georgia authorized to commute a death sentence.

    Bishop, Morrison and Mark Braxley had been drinking and smoking crack on June 24, 1994. Prosecutors say Bishop tried to steal keys from Morrison, who was sleeping, and beat Morrison to death when he woke up.

    Bishop and Braxley dumped Morrison's body between two trash bins and burned his Jeep.

    http://www.dailyjournal.net/view/sto...-Death-Penalty
    "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

  6. #16
    Senior Member CnCP Legend Mike's Avatar
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    Mark Braxley


    Violent childhood put Georgia killer on sure path to Death Row

    Joshua Bishop was 19 when he began his short journey to Georgia’s Death Row.

    He seemed to be headed in that direction all along, authorities say

    “I’m not going to say I’m surprised he killed two people,” said Baldwin County Sheriff Bill Massee. “I was disappointed that life had brought him to the place where he killed two people … in such a horrific way.”

    Bishop, 41, is scheduled to die by lethal injection on Thursday for beating a man to death with a curtain rod. He had killed another man earlier and, with an accomplice, bent his limbs in unnatural directions to make his body fit into a makeshift grave. The day before the scheduled execution, the state parole board will hold a clemency hearing.

    In 1994, Bishop killed Ricky Lee Wills and 35-year-old Leverette Morrison just two weeks apart.

    “We were called early one morning to the scene where we found Leverette Morrison’s body,” Sheriff Massee said. “By early evening we had made two arrests in this case, one of which was Josh Bishop.”

    Bishop and his co-defendant, Mark Braxley, both quickly admitted to the murders. Despite confessing, Bishop went to trial and was sentenced to death. Braxley, however, pleaded guilty and was sentenced to life with the possibility of parole.

    According to family members, Bishop was steeped in violence, alcoholism and drug addiction from the day he was born.

    When Leverette and Wills were murdered, Bishop had been living under a bridge with his mother, an alcoholic and drug addict who sometimes prostituted herself. She was heard telling her son that men show their love with punches, slaps and verbal assaults. She knew a man loved her, she told her son, if he beat her.

    Family members have said Joshua Bishop never escaped those influences.

    Sheriff Massee is sympathetic, but he also said Bishop deserves to be executed.

    “We’ve had many people who have been successful, productive individuals in their communities that had terrible home lives, and that’s not an excuse,” Massee said. “But I want to tell you Josh Bishop did have a terrible home life.”

    Former sheriff’s office Detective Richard Horn expressed similar sentiments in an affidavit attached to one of Bishop’s appeals.

    “Given my knowledge of Bishop and his early environment, it is my opinion that he had little chance of success in life,” Horn wrote.

    A failed plan to steal a car

    Bishop, Braxley and Morrison, who may have been Bishop’s uncle, spent much of June 25, 1994, drinking — first at a Milledgeville bar and later at Morrison’s trailer.

    Bishop and Braxley had a plan to take the keys from Morrison’s pocket while he was asleep so they could steal his Jeep; Braxley wanted to visit his girlfriend. But Morrison woke when Bishop reached into his pants pocket, and the three began to fight. Bishop and Braxley used a car battery to knock down Morrison, and then Bishop set upon Morrison with the curtain rod.

    The two dumped Morrison’s body between two trash bins, set fire to his car in nearby woods and then walked back to Braxley’s trailer to clean up the murder scene.

    Bishop and Braxley, then 36, were in custody by sundown that day, and it was during the police interview regarding Morrison that investigators learned a second man had been killed and buried in some woods near Braxley’s trailer.

    They folded up Wills’ body, twisting his legs into unnatural positions, so he would fit in the grave.

    “It was a very aggressive homicide,” Massee said. “We not only had one very aggressive homicide. We had two.”

    Bishop said he killed Wills because Wills boasted about sexually assaulting Bishop’s mother.

    ‘Nothing good about his family’

    The details of Bishop’s life reside in written statements, used in his appeals, from almost four dozen people, including some from Morrison’s family. They described lives controlled by alcohol, drugs and physical and verbal abuse.

    Bishop’s mother treated her two sons like “drinking buddies,” wrote Barbara Cheeley, the boys’ aunt. “This seemed to be the way she dealt with them best.”

    No one connected to these murders – not even the victims – is a sympathetic character.

    “I had watched him as a juvenile, and he had issues,” said Massee, who has been sheriff in the Middle Georgia county for almost three decades. “You will read nothing good about his family. If there is something good out there, I don’t know about it.”

    Carolyn Bishop was 17 when she gave birth to Joshua Bishop’s older brother, Michael. Michael Bishop’s father, Mike, was 14 years old when he married Carolyn.

    Joshua Bishop, however, never knew for certain who his father was.

    “Josh was almost obsessed with finding out who his daddy was,” the brother wrote in an affidavit. “It was sad for me to hear Josh ask so many people while he was growing up who his daddy was. The answer was usually ‘I don’t know,’ and this was really painful for him to hear.”

    ‘Drugs and liquor ruled Carolyn’

    Carolyn Bishop told her younger son that one of three men could be his father, most likely Albert Ray Morrison, who was Leverette Morrison’s brother.

    “Many people say Josh is my son but I don’t really know for sure,” Albert Morrison wrote. “His mama, Carolyn, went with a lot of men, including me and Leverette.”

    Albert Morrison said his dead brother had “problems with drugs as far back as I can remember.

    “I know Josh was charged with killing Leverette and received a death sentence for it,” Albert Morrison wrote. “But Josh is the same people as me and Leverette. With all the drinking and crack going on, it could just as easily have been Josh who was killed as my brother.”

    Joshua Bishop’s maternal grandparents were moonshiners who were more interested in drinking than caring for their children, according to relatives’ affidavits. It “turned out that Carolyn got the worst parts of both,” wrote Allen Hartley, Carolyn Bishop’s first cousin.

    Joshua Bishop first tasted alcohol at 4 and in just a few years was “huffing” chemicals like gasoline. Eventually, he was using cocaine and drinking with his mother.

    “If you spent much time with Carolyn you felt like you were living in a tornado,” Mary Bass Fordam, Carolyn Bishop’s older sister. “Carolyn loved a man that would fight with her. The drugs and liquor ruled Carolyn. It was the thing she wanted more than anything in life.

    “Carolyn’s demons were big ones. They took control of her and made her an even more horrible person. Carolyn could say some horrible things to us and to her boys. And, the only time I could stand to be around Carolyn was when I was drunk.”

    http://www.myajc.com/news/news/local...ath-row/nqsr9/
    "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

  7. #17
    Senior Member CnCP Legend Mike's Avatar
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    Joshua Bishop asks for barbecue for last meal

    A 41-year-old man scheduled to be put to death on Thursday has asked for barbecue for the last meal he gets before his lethal injection scheduled for 7 p.m.

    According to the Department of Corrections, Joshua Bishop’s last meal request is a barbecue sandwich, Brunswick stew, potato chips, coleslaw, lemonade and purple candy.

    Bishop, 41, is to be put to death for the 1994 beating death of 35-year-old Leverette Morrison. Bishop and his co-defendant Mark Braxley confessed to Morrison’s murder, as well as the murder of another man, within hours of detectives finding Morrison’s body between two dumpsters near Braxley’s trailer. Investigators didn’t even know Ricky Lee Wills was dead until Bishop confessed to killing him two weeks before Morrison’s death.

    Though Bishop, 19 at the time, confessed, he still went to trial. He was convicted and sentenced to die.

    Braxley, however, pleaded guilty and was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole.

    Bishop, Braxley and Morrison had spent much of the day on June 25, 1994, drinking at a Milledgeville bar and then at Braxley’s trailer. Morrison fell asleep and that’s when Braxley decided he wanted to visit his girlfriend. Braxley and Bishop decided to just take Morrison’s Jeep without asking. But Morrison woke when Bishop tried to fish the car keys from his pocket. They struggled and Bishop and Braxley beat him to death with a curtain rod.

    After dumping Morrison’s body, the two set fire to his Jeep in some nearby woods.

    Bishop told investigators he and Braxley killed Wills because he boasted about sexually assaulting Bishop’s mother. He said they had to bend Wills’ legs in unnatural directions to make his body fit into a makeshift grave.

    Neither Braxley nor Bishop went on trial for Wills’ death even though they confessed. Prosecutors used Wills’ death when to argue that Bishop should get the death penalty.

    Bishops’ advocates as well as those who want his sentence carried out will meet separately with the state Board of Pardons and Paroles on Wednesday.

    If Bishop is put to death by lethal injection, he will be the third man Georgia has executed this year.

    Another execution has been scheduled for April 12.

    Kenneth Fults is scheduled to die next month for the 1996 murder of his 19-year-old neighbor. Fults was on a crime spree, hoping to get guns to kill his former girlfriend’s new boyfriend, when he broke into the Spalding County house of Cathy Bounds, who was home alone. Fults pleaded guilty to placing a pillow over her head and firing five shots so he went to trial only a jury could decide his punishment.

    http://www.ajc.com/news/news/local/j...st-meal/nqtRB/
    "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. #18
    Moderator Ryan's Avatar
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    Panel to Hold Clemency Hearing for Georgia Death Row Inmate

    By Kate Brumback
    ABC News

    A Georgia death row inmate scheduled to die this week has grown into a quiet man with a positive influence who bears little resemblance to the teenager who helped beat a man to death two decades ago, his lawyers argue.

    Joshua Bishop, 41, is set to be executed Thursday for the 1994 killing of Leverett Morrison in Milledgeville. A clemency hearing is scheduled for Wednesday before the State Board of Pardons and Paroles, the only entity in Georgia authorized to commute a death sentence.

    "The story of Joshua Bishop's life is one of deprivation, abuse, hopelessness, and crime; but it is also one of faith, contrition, redemption, gratitude, and love," Bishop's lawyers wrote in a clemency petition asking the parole board to spare his life.

    Morrison's children, however, are adamant that the death sentence should be carried out, Baldwin County Sheriff Bill Massee said.

    Bishop had an extremely rough childhood with a mother who constantly drank and used drugs and had a weakness for abusive men who beat her and her two sons, the petition says. He bounced between foster families and group homes, eventually returning to his mother, who was frequently in trouble with the law for drug and alcohol offenses or prostitution.

    Many who knew Bishop as he grew up shared a common sentiment: that he "never had a chance," his lawyers wrote.

    Bishop spent June 19, 1994, drinking and using drugs with Morrison and a third man, Mark Braxley. They continued drinking at a bar that evening and then went to Braxley's trailer, where they continued to drink and use drugs.

    Morrison fell asleep and Braxley decided he wanted to take Morrison's Jeep to visit his girlfriend and instructed Bishop to "get them keys," the clemency petition says. Morrison woke up as Bishop was trying to take his keys from his pocket, and Bishop hit him over the head with a piece of a closet rod to knock him out, the petition says.

    Bishop told investigators he and Braxley both beat Morrison and, once they realized he was dead, they dumped his body between two trash bins and burned his Jeep.

    Bishop and Braxley were arrested within 24 hours of Morrison's death. Bishop quickly confessed and immediately showed remorse, while Braxley lied about the crime, the petition says.

    While in police custody, Bishop told investigators he had been involved in the death of another man, Ricky Willis, about two weeks earlier, also at Braxley's trailer. Bishop told police he repeatedly punched Willis after Willis bragged he had sexually assaulted Bishop's mother and then Braxley cut Willis' throat, killing him.

    Bishop and Braxley were both charged with murder and armed robbery in Morrison's death. After a trial, a jury convicted Bishop and sentenced him to die. Braxley pleaded guilty and got life in prison. He's been denied parole twice and will next be eligible for consideration next year.

    Bishop has admitted involvement in the deaths of Morrison and Willis. But his lawyers argue that Braxley, who's about 17 years older than Bishop, was the instigator and influenced Bishop in both cases.

    Two decades in prison have given Bishop stability that has led him to become a positive influence on fellow inmates and others, and he still has good to do in the world, his lawyers argue. They gave the board statements from two of Morrison's sisters and his niece, who wrote that they don't want to see Bishop executed.

    But Massee, the sheriff, said he met on Monday with three of Morrison's family members, two daughters and a son, who all said it's important to them to see Bishop executed for their father's death.

    Bishop would be the third Georgia inmate executed this year. Another inmate, Kenneth Fults, is scheduled to die April 12.

    http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/p...nmate-38022992

  9. #19
    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
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    Victims' families ask state to spare life of Baldwin Co. killer

    Some family members of Joshua Daniel Bishop's two victims are asking a state parole board to spare him the death penalty.

    A clemency hearing is scheduled Wednesday for Bishop who faces execution Thursday in connection with the 1994 murder of a Baldwin County man.

    The Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles is scheduled to conduct the hearing at its offices in Atlanta. The board is the only agency in Georgia that can commute death sentences.

    Bishop, 41, is scheduled to be executed at 7 p.m. Thursday at the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison in Jackson. He received the death sentence two years after the June 1994 murder of Leverett Morrison.

    According to court records, Bishop was 18 at the time of the murder. Bishop, Mark Braxley and Morrison were out drinking and using drugs the night of the murder. They kept drinking and using drugs after leaving a bar and going to Braxley's trailer.

    At some point, Braxley decided he wanted to visit a friend and told Bishop to get the car keys from a sleeping Morrison's pocket. Morrison woke up when Bishop tried to get the keys. Braxley handed Bishop a piece of a closet rod, and Bishop hit Morrison several times with the rod.

    A short while later, Bishop and Braxley wrapped Morrison's body in a sheet and tried to toss it in a dumpster. They couldn't get in the dumpster and left the body on the ground. It was found later and authorities picked Bishop up for questioning.

    Bishop confessed to his role in the Morrison murder and also confessed to his role in the death of Ricky Willis who had been killed at Braxley's trailer two weeks earlier. Bishop wasn't tried for the Willis murder.

    In Bishop's clemency petition, attorneys say it should be granted because Bishop has shown remorse from the time he was arrested and has become religious in prison. Among other things, the petition says Bishop ministers to other inmates and attends religious services regularly.

    The petition also notes that several members of the two murder victims' families have written the pardons and paroles board asking that Bishop's sentence be commuted to life without parole.

    In one of those letters, Angela Morrison Duduk, one of Leverett Morrison's sisters, wrote, ... "It is certainly a hard life in prison, but it is still life. I loved my brother Leverett, but his memory is not honored by killing Josh. I forgive Josh for what he did."

    Ronnie Daniels, Ricky Willis' half-brother and only living relative, wrote the board that he believes Bishop's sentence should be commuted to life in prison.

    "I do not think it is fair that Josh got the death sentence if Mark was just as responsible for the killing. I am not friends with Mark Braxley or Josh Bishop, however, I do not want Josh to die. I think Josh should at least get a life without parole sentence."

    Braxley was also convicted of the crimes and was sentenced to life without parole.

    In another effort, seven of the 12 jurors who sentenced Bishop to death have joined the clemency movement in asking that Bishop be granted life without parole.

    Since the death penalty was restore in 1976, pardons and paroles has commuted nine death sentences. The last was two years ago when the board commuted Tommy Lee Waldrip's death sentence to life without parole.

    Waldrip was convicted in Dawson County for the murder Keith Evans, a college student who was scheduled to testify against Waldrip's son in a re-trial of an armed robbery case.

    http://www.13wmaz.com/news/victims-f...ller/110024940
    An uninformed opponent is a dangerous opponent.

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

  10. #20
    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
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    An uninformed opponent is a dangerous opponent.

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

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