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Thread: Timothy Tyrone Foster - Georgia

  1. #21
    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
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    Hearings resume on retrial of Timothy Tyrone Foster, charged with killing a retired Rome schoolteacher in 1986

    Attorneys for a man facing the death penalty on accusation that he raped and killed a retired school teacher in 1986 said he'd be willing to immediately plead guilty for life in prison -- if that option was available.

    "We would be willing to plea to life with parole today," Christian Lamar with the Georgia Capital Defenders Office told Floyd County Superior Court Judge William "Billy" Sparks during a hearing Monday morning.

    His client, Timothy Tyrone Foster, has been in state custody since he was 18, he is 53 now. If he were to be convicted, or plea, and be sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole -- he would be immediately eligible for parole.

    When he approached prosecutors with the idea of Foster pleading guilty to murder, Lamar told the judge the state countered with a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole.

    Rome Circuit District Attorney Leigh Patterson disagreed with that contention in court.

    "Just to clarify, your honor, we did not make any counter offer," Patterson told the judge.

    A new case with similar circumstances has an additional sentencing option, life without parole. Since Foster's case is from the 1980s, prior to a change in Georgia law, there are only two options if his case goes to jury trial -- life with the possibility of parole or death.

    However, in a negotiated plea, Foster could potentially be sentenced to life without parole in prison.

    Foster was sentenced to death in 1987 for the murder and molestation of 79-year-old retired school teacher Queen Madge White during a burglary at her home at Highland Circle.

    However, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned his conviction in 2016, saying the district attorney at that time had systematically excluded Black jurors.

    In Foster v. Chatman, the high court ruled that the district attorney at the time of trial, Steve Lanier, discriminated on the basis of race when he used preemptory strikes to eliminate all four of the Black potential jurors.

    The high court overturned Foster's conviction and sent it back to Floyd County for retrial.

    Foster was transferred to the Floyd County Jail in March 2017 from Georgia’s death row in Jackson. In 2018, the state expressed its intent to seek the death penalty and the process to try him for murder began again.

    Monday's hearing was among several pretrial hearings held for a bevy of motions filed in the case. The morning's testimony centered around the proportionality of the death penalty -- essentially whether or not the death penalty is implemented in a consistent and fair manner.

    Prior to this week, the hearings have covered a number of matters including several difficulties presenting the case for trial. Original case files have been lost, only copies remain. Many, if not most, witnesses have died or face health issues.

    After a hearing scheduled for Tuesday on if certain pieces of evidence should be admissible, the only thing that remains will be a final hearing concerning the composition of the jury pool, scheduled for August.

    Once the local hearings are finalized, the case goes up to the Georgia high court for review prior to trial. During Monday's hearing, Judge Sparks estimated the case could go to trial by the end of the year or the beginning of 2022.

    (source: Rome News-Tribune)
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  2. #22
    Moderator Bobsicles's Avatar
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    High court declines interim review of Foster case which sets the possibility of trial in 2022

    By John Bailey
    northwestgeorgianews.com

    The Georgia Supreme Court denied an interim appellate review of a Floyd County death penalty case from 1986, which tentatively sets the case for trial in May 2022.

    Timothy Tyrone Foster, who is now 53, was sentenced to death in 1987 for the brutal beating death and rape of Queen Madge White. But the case was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2016.

    The high court cited Batson v. Kentucky in its ruling that the Floyd County DA at that time had struck Black jurors from the trial on the basis of their race.

    After his conviction was overturned, Foster was brought to the Floyd County Jail in March 2017 from Georgia’s death row in Jackson. In 2018, the state expressed its intent to seek the death penalty and the process to try him for murder began again.

    There will be some difficulties presenting the 35-year-old case for trial. Original case files have been lost, only copies remain, and many of the witnesses have died or are experiencing health issues.

    Now that the high court has declined to review the case, it’s likely it will go before Floyd County Superior Court Judge William “Billy” Sparks next year. The court has tentatively scheduled the case for May 2.

    The court has heard hundreds of motions in this iteration of the Foster case in a series of hearings since 2018. The hearing in September was the last one before the case was sent to the Georgia Supreme Court for review.

    Among the questions sent for review were the defense seeking to bar the imposition of the death penalty and a claim that Foster is intellectually disabled.

    Foster’s attorneys argued that, while he was 18 when the murder was committed, his intellectual disabilities meant he was not functioning as an adult at the time.

    Floyd County Assistant District Attorney Kevin Salmon argued during a hearing on that topic that a civil jury ruled 20 years ago that Foster did not suffer from a mental disability that would prohibit the state from imposing the death sentence.

    Judge Sparks ruled the trial could go forward.

    Other items discussed during pre-trial hearings included statements from White’s family members, which would be introduced in the sentencing phase of the case if Foster is again convicted.

    Death penalty cases in Georgia have two phases, the trial phase and the sentencing phase. The sentencing phase is a mini-trial in and of itself and is when jurors will determine if the defendant is sentenced to death.

    Foster’s attorneys have stated in court that he would enter a plea of guilty to the crime, if the death penalty were off the table. If that were to happen, he would immediately be eligible for parole.

    Floyd County prosecutors have indicated that option isn’t on the table.

    https://www.northwestgeorgianews.com...cf84005eb.html
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  3. #23
    Moderator Bobsicles's Avatar
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    Resolution: Family remembers Queen White as her killer pleads guilty, sentenced to life without parole

    By John Bailey
    Northwest Georgia News

    Bringing a nearly 36-year-old murder case to a close, Timothy Tyrone Foster pleaded guilty to the murder of a 79-year-old schoolteacher and accepted a life term in prison without parole.

    Foster’s case began in 1986 with the murder of Queen Madge White. He’d burglarized her home on Highland Circle and attacked her with a piece of wood when she’d woken up, Rome Circuit District Attorney Leigh Patterson told the court.

    She had been brutally beaten, sexually assaulted and then strangled. He had been arrested and sentenced to death. Foster’s case made headlines later when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned his conviction in 2016, because a prosecutor had struck Black jurors to get a conviction, and the case was sent back for retrial.

    But, Patterson argued Friday as part of the plea hearing, the case is and always was about the retired school teacher. She’d returned from church that night with her sister and was looking forward to a short trip to Marietta the next day.

    “This case is about what happened to Queen Madge White,” Patterson said who spoke of the loving, church going person who had been murdered that night on Aug. 27, 1986. “She reminds me of the woman who was mentioned in Proverbs 31. A woman of virtue is worth more than rubies.”

    Patterson described the crime in bitter detail before talking about White again, a woman described by neighbors as “immaculate” and “kind.” She had taught at Johnson School for 40 years and attended the North Broad United Methodist Church. Her husband, Otis White, had died in 1972 and on their shared grave an inscription reads “together forever.”

    Born in 1906, she’d lived through World War I, the Great Depression, World War II, the Korean War and Vietnam. She’d been loved by her neighbors, the community and her family.

    That night, Patterson said, White’s sister asked her if she’d locked the doors to her home.

    The crime
    That night was nearly 36 years ago, on Aug. 28, 1986, when police found White on the floor of her home. Foster had snuck over from his apartment on Stonewall Street and removed a window-mounted air-conditioning unit to enter the home.

    He ransacked the home before killing White and stashed several suitcases worth of stolen jewelry and items in an abandoned home nearby before later retrieving it.

    Police combed the community for clues and a month later hit pay dirt — an ex-girlfriend of Timothy Tyrone Foster turned him in.

    It started when Foster attacked his then girlfriend Lisa Stubbs and she fled. Stubbs told police that Foster had said he killed White. On top of that, Foster had stashed items taken from White’s home in her home.

    During 2021 hearing, former Rome police detective Wayne Craft testified Stubbs approached police with the information and identified items that only police knew had been stolen from White’s residence. They then arrested Foster.

    Foster confessed to the killing and police found White’s possessions, which had been stolen from her home, in his home as well as the homes of his two sisters.

    Foster, who is now 54, was 18 at the time of the murder.

    There was never much question of whether or not Foster had committed the crime. Years of appeals generally centered around his mental capacity and went to the Georgia Supreme Court more than once. But a claim of prosecutorial misconduct in the 1987 trial took the case to the U.S. Supreme Court...and back to Floyd County.

    U.S. Supreme Court and retrial
    His case had been appealed a number of times on the state level before getting to the Supreme Court, which cited Batson v. Kentucky in its 2016 ruling overturning Foster’s conviction.

    That precedent — set just prior to Foster’s original trial — holds that prosecutors cannot strike potential jurors on the basis of race, ethnicity or sex.

    Justices ruled 7-1 to overturn the conviction on a number of factors, but some of the most damning evidence came from former DA investigator Clayton Lundy’s notes — recovered 19 years later — had the name of each potential Black juror highlighted only because prosecutors were planning a defense against discrimination claims.

    That and other markings on the notes, including having three of the possible black jurors identified as “B#1,” “B#2,” and “B#3,” showed an intent to single out black jurors.

    Lundy’s notes also ranked the possible black jurors against each other in case “it comes down to having to pick one of the black jurors.”

    Adding to that, additional testimony later pointed to the justification of the ruling.

    Prior to the original trial for Timothy Tyrone Foster in 1987, a man who was then an assistant district attorney for Floyd County testified during a pre-trial hearing in 2019 that he heard the district attorney at that time and his lead investigator arguing about the case.

    As he walked up the steps Harold Chambers, who was then a sitting judge, testified he heard then District Attorney Steve Lanier arguing with his chief investigator Clayton Lundy.

    “Mr. Lundy told Lanier they had to put a black person on the jury,” Chambers said. “Lanier kept saying ‘no, I’m not going to do it.’”

    Chambers said Lundy then told Lanier “If you don’t put a black juror on this jury this is going to come back to haunt you.” As he approached they quit talking and Chambers said he didn’t mention it to anyone at that time or for years afterward.

    Lanier served three terms as DA from 1985 through 1996. He passed away in July 2018. In 2016, Lanier denied to the Rome News-Tribune that he’d struck jurors on the basis of their race and said he was floored by the decision.

    After his conviction was overturned, Foster was brought to the Floyd County Jail in March 2017 from Georgia’s death row in Jackson. In 2018, the state expressed its intent to seek the death penalty.

    Resolution and remembrance
    “Our family has known what you put Aunt Queen through for years,” White’s nephew Tony McCollum told Foster in the court. He was delivering mail in 1986 when a family member pulled up and told him what had happened.

    It shattered the family.

    They spoke of how close “Aunt Queen” was with her sisters and how they had to go in the ransacked home to clean up after the crime. They spoke of the lasting trauma the murder had caused and how that trauma had been revived with each appeal.

    “When my mother had purchased Aunt Queen’s bed I couldn’t stand for it to be in the house,” Tammy McCollum Cox said. She missed and loved her aunt but seeing the bed reminded her what had happened to her aunt.

    However, they also spoke of their aunt’s loving nature and devotion to Jesus Christ and they spoke of needing to forgive Foster for what he had done to their aunt, and to their family.

    “Aunt Queen got the death sentence executed by Mr. Foster, she didn’t get it overturned by the supreme court,” Tim McCollum said. “But I forgive Mr. Foster as Aunt Queen would have.”

    Foster didn’t speak on his behalf during the sentencing but answered that he understood the proceedings when asked by Floyd County Superior Court Judge William “Billy” Sparks.

    At the end of the hearing, Judge Sparks addressed Foster specifically.

    “Mr. Foster you have wasted your life but in doing so you unfortunately wasted another,” Sparks said. “Today you have done the only thing you could to end it and my hope is you have peace for the rest of your life.”

    https://www.northwestgeorgianews.com...b8bf4117a.html
    Thank you for the adventure - Axol

    Tried so hard and got so far, but in the end it doesn’t even matter - Linkin Park

    Hear me, my chiefs! I am tired. My heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more forever. - Hin-mah-too-yah-lat-kekt

    I’m going to the ghost McDonalds - Garcello

  4. #24
    Senior Member CnCP Legend Mike's Avatar
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    Yet another case of a celebrity innocence case being a fraud.
    "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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