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Thread: Brandon Astor Jones - Georgia Execution - February 3, 2016

  1. #11
    Moderator Ryan's Avatar
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    Death-row inmate says state should get new source for execution drug

    By Bill Rankin
    The Atlanta Journal Constitution

    “It is not with malice or glee that (state officials) are forced to conceal information. It is with forced resignation from the knowledge that those opposed to the death penalty will stop at no measure to thwart this constitutional means of punishment.”

    -- State's court filing regarding execution secrecy


    Lawyers for a condemned killer are seeking to force the state to find a new source for its lethal-injection drugs, contending the compounding pharmacy being used now produces drugs that pose too great a risk of causing needless suffering during executions.

    Their court motion was recently filed on behalf of Brandon Astor Jones, 72, who is scheduled to be executed Feb. 2. As expected, Senior U.S. District Judge Charles Pannell dismissed the case on Thursday. Jones’ lawyers had told Pannell their motion was foreclosed by recent precedents set by the federal appeals court in Atlanta, but they wanted the entire court to take a fresh look at the issue.

    Jones, the oldest inmate on Georgia’s death row, is under death sentence for the 1979 robbery and murder of Roger Dennis Tackett, 30, a high school teacher working a second job as manager of a convenience store in Cobb County.

    Jones’s codefendant in the murder was executed 30 years ago.

    In a recent court filing, state attorneys said the last seven executions carried out by the state used a compounded lethal-injection drug — pentobarbital — and all seven inmates were calm, fell asleep and remained still until they were put to death.

    State attorneys also attached “execution timelines” compiled by officials who observed the most recent executions.

    The person observing Brian Keith Terrell’s execution on Dec. 9, for example, wrote that Terrell was “still and quiet” at 12:32 a.m. when receiving an injection from a second syringe. At 12:37, Terrell “appears to be asleep” and three minutes later was still, the observer wrote. At 12:52 a.m., after doctors checked for signs of life, the warden announced Terrell’s execution had been carried out.

    But Jones’ lawyers note that two prior executions were put on hold last year after batches of pentobarbital that were to be used in those lethal injections were found to be cloudy. This translates into an unacceptable error rate of about 20 percent, the motion said.

    Cloudiness poses a threat because the “injection of a precipitated solution would be akin to having small pieces of broken glass projected into your blood vessels,” Jones’ lawyers said. To avoid such a risk, the state should obtain its drugs from another source.

    The request by Jones’ legal team is an unusual tactic. In 2008, the U.S. Supreme Court set an important precedent when upholding Kentucky’s method of execution. To prevail when challenging an execution protocol, inmates must not only show that lethal injection poses a demonstrated risk of severe pain, the high court said; they also must show the risk is substantial when compared to other, reasonably available alternative methods.

    Jones’ lawyers are saying that a better alternative is not another method of execution, just another source of pentobarbital.

    The lawyers are also asking that Georgia’s lethal-injection secrecy law be declared unconstitutional. The law shields from public view many facets of the execution process, such as the identities of the compounding pharmacist, the prescribing physician and those who carry out the lethal injections.

    The law enables the state to carry out executions “with no scrutiny of any kind, save for their superficial and outcome-determinative self-investigation,” the filing said. “In short, (the state carries out its) gravest duty with impunity and no accountability whatsoever.”

    State attorneys responded by saying the secrecy law has been a success because the state’s source of pentobarbital has been protected from the “rabid manipulations of death penalty opponents” during the past seven executions.

    “It is not with malice or glee that (state officials) are forced to conceal information,” the filing said. “It is with forced resignation from the knowledge that those opposed to the death penalty will stop at no measure to thwart this constitutional means of punishment.”

    As for the cloudy drugs detected last March, that problem “has now clearly been solved,” the state’s motion said. It added there is no evidence that inmates Terrell, Kelly Gissendaner and Marcus Johnson suffered any pain when they were injected with compounded pentobarbital during the final four months of 2015.

    Jones’ lawyers have noted that prior rulings by three-judge panels on the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta sparked concern from three judges on the court. Writing either dissents or separate opinions, these judges questioned the legality of Georgia’s secrecy law. The 11th Circuit currently has 11 judges, meaning six of its members must agree for the full court to hear Jones’ appeal.

    http://www.ajc.com/news/news/local/d...source-/np86p/

  2. #12
    Senior Member CnCP Addict TrudieG's Avatar
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    They need to give it up. The law is clear and the protocols are put in place to protect everyone. Gissandaner's punishment was delayed because they noticed the cloudy drug and did not attempt to execute her at that time. Since then the last executions have not had a problem using the compounding pharmacy and they can thank their anti friends for not allowing the names to be revealed.

  3. #13
    Administrator Moh's Avatar
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    11th Circuit rejects condemned inmate’s appeal

    The federal appeals court in Atlanta on Thursday rejected an appeal filed by Brandon Jones, the oldest inmate on Georgia’s death row and who is scheduled to be executed on Tuesday.

    The majority decision, written by Judge Stanley Marcus, was joined by Judge Bill Pryor. Judge Charles Wilson, writing separately, concurred with the result.

    The ruling noted that this is not Jones’ final appeal pending before the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Another decision on that request will be issued later, the judges said.

    Jones, 72, was sentenced to death in Cobb County for the 1979 robbery and murder of Roger Tackett, a convenience store manager. Jones and his co-defendant, Van Roosevelt Solomon, were found at the scene. Solomon was also convicted of the crimes and executed years ago.

    On Thursday, the 11th Circuit declined to reopen Jones’ claims that his trial lawyers provided him ineffective counsel during the mitigation phase of his capital trial. Jones’ appellate lawyers asked the court to stay Jones’ execution in light of a still-pending appeal from death-row inmate Marion Wilson. Jones’ new lawyers say the court’s decision in Wilson’s appeal could affect their prior ruling that rejected Jones’ claims his trial lawyers were ineffective.

    But Marcus wrote that Jones “has offered no new arguments to reconsider the soundness of that decision, even if we were able to examine it still again.”

    In that prior ruling, he said, the 11th Circuit “specifically weighed the totality of the aggravating evidence against the totality of the mitigating evidence, the new and the old, the good and the bad, and we concluded that Jones had failed to establish that he was entitled to habeas relief.”

    Jones’ lawyers have also asked the full 11th Circuit court to stay the execution and consider the constitutionality of Georgia’s lethal injection secrecy law. The three-judge panel, in Thursday’s 28-page ruling, said the court would address that request in a separate order.

    http://legal.blog.ajc.com/2016/01/28...nmates-appeal/

  4. #14
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    Secrecy of Georgia's lethal injection drug challenged as execution nears

    Lawyers for an inmate set to die in days are asking a conflicted federal appeals court to weaken Georgia's law that keeps secret the source of the state's lethal injection drug. It's the toughest of a number of secrecy laws passed in recent years by death penalty states eager to stabilize their execution drug supplies.

    States say the laws protect companies that fear retaliation for their association with the death penalty. Most were enacted after drug manufacturers, many of them in Europe, stopped selling their products for executions, citing ethical concerns.

    "There are certainly secrecy laws in other states, and some of them create extraordinary secrecy, but nothing reaches the level of Georgia," said Megan McCracken, a death penalty expert at the University of California at Berkeley.

    Georgia stopped a lethal injection in March because of a problem with the drug, the barbiturate pentobarbital made by a compounding pharmacy. A Department of Corrections video shows solid white chunks falling against the syringe's plunger in a solution that should be clear. Citing this example, some 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals judges have expressed concern about Georgia's secrecy law.

    Lawyers for death row inmate Brandon Astor Jones — convicted of killing a convenience store manager in 1979 and scheduled to die Tuesday — argue that Georgia's execution method carries "a substantial risk of significant harm," violating his constitutional right against cruel and unusual punishment. But because of the secrecy law, they say, they don't have enough information to make that claim, which violates his due process right.

    Similar arguments have been rejected by three-judge panels of the 11th Circuit, setting a binding precedent.

    Georgia's law says the identifying information of any entity or person participating in an execution is a "confidential state secret," meaning it can't be revealed — not even for a judge's review or under seal in a court case.

    After the defective drug halted Kelly Gissendaner's execution in March, officials investigated and took steps to ensure it wouldn't happen again, state lawyers argued in response to Jones' complaint. The problem was clearly rectified as Gissendaner and two other inmates were executed last fall with no sign of pain, state lawyers wrote.

    But Jones' lawyers say the investigation lacked transparency, and they aren't convinced officials determined the problem's cause.

    Gissendaner's lawyers, including at least one now representing Jones, raised similar arguments before her rescheduled execution in September. A three-judge panel of the 11th Circuit rejected those claims, but in a dissenting opinion Circuit Judge Adalberto Jordan said the state's secrecy was troubling.

    "Georgia can certainly choose, as a matter of state law, to keep much of its execution protocol secret, but it cannot hide behind that veil of secrecy once something has gone demonstrably wrong with the compounded pentobarbital it has procured," Jordan wrote. "It is not too much to require Georgia to put on some evidence that will provide some level of confidence that its compounded pentobarbital is no longer a problem."

    In December, the same attorneys represented another condemned inmate and again raised constitutional concerns about the law.

    Jordan was on that panel, too. This time, he conceded the challenge was barred by circuit precedent but said he believed that precedent was incorrect. Circuit Judge Beverly Martin, also on the panel, agreed.

    "Of course, I recognize the State's need to obtain a reliable source for its lethal injection drugs," Martin wrote. "But there must be a way for Georgia to do this job without depriving ... condemned prisoners of any ability to subject the State's method of execution to meaningful adversarial testing before they are put to death."

    Martin also worried about the lack of court access to the information. Federal courts routinely keep secret information revealed in judicial proceedings — for example, in the grand jury process or in trade secret cases — so surely there's a way to do so for death penalty cases, she wrote.

    State lawyers say Jones doesn't have a right to know every detail of the execution method, an argument that's been made in 11th Circuit opinions. State lawyers also say the law protects the source of the drugs from "rabid manipulations of death penalty opponents."

    Citing the doubts raised by Jordan and Martin — as well as a 2014 opinion by 11th Circuit Judge Charles Wilson noting "the disturbing circularity problem created by Georgia's secrecy law" — Jones' lawyers argue that three judges on that federal appeals court have now suggested that law doesn't comply with the Constitution.

    If the distribution of judges on the panels had been different, their opinion might be precedent, Jones' lawyers argue. They're requesting a full-court review by the 11th Circuit, which could overturn the established precedent.

    Any full-court ruling would be significant as it would be binding in Georgia pending any appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, said Robert Dunham with the Death Penalty Information Center, which tracks issues related to capital punishment. It also could serve as a reference for lawmakers in other states and would have persuasive, though not binding, authority in other federal courts, he said.

    http://www.al.com/news/index.ssf/201...ethal_inj.html
    An uninformed opponent is a dangerous opponent.

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

  5. #15
    Senior Member CnCP Legend Mike's Avatar
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    Execution witnesses? Victim’s kin, no. Co-defendant’s son, maybe

    The widow and daughter of the man Brandon Astor Jones murdered in 1979 don’t plan to watch his execution, scheduled for Tuesday evening.

    They will be together at the Cherokee County home of Katie King, who was 7 when her father was killed.

    “I will be at peace, being with my mom,” said King, referring to Christine Bixon.

    Bixon — who was Christine Tackett until she remarried four years after her husband’s murder — said she did not attend the execution of Jones’ co-defendant Van Roosevelt Solomon 30 years ago and she doesn’t plan to attend the one set for Tuesday at the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison outside Jackson.

    But Zuberi Solomon, who was 2 when his father and Jones murdered convenience store manager Roger Tackett, has asked the Department of Corrections to allow him to be a witness. He has not received an answer.

    He said he wanted to “see the face of the person that destroyed two families.”

    “They’ve lost their father (and husband),” Solomon said. “You feel sympathy for them. I definitely know what it feels like. Senseless.”

    Zuberi Solomon says all the blame for the murder should go to Jones and not his father, a one-time Baptist preacher who by then had a painting business. Jones worked for Van Roosevelt Solomon.

    Zuberi Solomon said Jones forced his father at gunpoint to drive from Atlanta’s West End to Cobb County so he could buy drugs and it was Jones who decided they should break into the Tenneco on Delk Road. He said his father did not shoot Tackett, even though police found two guns that had been fired and gunshot residue on the hands of both men.

    Solomon and Jones were arrested because Cobb County police Officer Ray Kendall was outside the store when Tackett was shot. The officer had driven a stranded motorist to the Tenneco to use a pay phone and became suspicious when he found Tackett’s car parked in front with the driver’s side door open. Kendall was looking through a window when Jones peeked out of the storeroom door.

    Kendall found Tackett lying in a pool of his own blood inside the storeroom, shot once in the thumb and twice in the hip and the head.

    Each suspect blamed the other for firing the shot that killed Tackett.

    Van Roosevelt Solomon, who had been in prison in Oklahoma, was electrocuted in 1985.

    Jones’ case was delayed when a federal judge ordered that he be resentenced because jurors in the first trial had a Bible during deliberations. In 1997 a second Cobb County jury said Jones should die for his crime.

    “It’s been a nagging thing,” Zuberi Solomon said of the 30 years that have passed between his father’s execution and the date Jones is scheduled to die by lethal injection. The now 38-year-old man has two sons who are around the age he was when his own father was put to death.

    On Feb. 22, 1985, Van Roosevelt Solomon became the fifth person Georgia executed once the death penalty was reinstated.

    “As a kid, I thought, ‘My father has been put to death for a murder. So why is he (Jones) still alive? One person has been punished for this and another person is still here.’ That makes absolutely no sense.”

    Zuberi Solomon said he’d actually thought Jones had been executed, until he heard a newscast about Jones’ pending lethal injection. “I didn’t know he was in prison this long,” he said.

    If Jones is executed, he will be the oldest man Georgia has put to death. His execution date is 11 days before his 73rd birthday

    http://www.myajc.com/news/news/local...dants-s/nqFks/
    "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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    Condemned murder Brandon Astor Jones loses another appeal

    An appellate court on Friday rejected another attempt by Brandon Astor Jones to stop his execution scheduled for Tuesday for the 1979 murder of a Cobb County convenience store manager.

    Late in the afternoon, a judge in Butts County, which is where Georgia’s execution chamber is located, said the issues raised in Jones’ appeal were decided years ago and cannot be revisited.

    Jones’ lawyers argued in the appeal that it’s rare for a murderer to be sentenced to die if the crime that made the case eligible for the death sentence was armed robbery. A death sentence can be given only is certain circumstances such as when certain felonies were committed at the same time as the murder, if he crime was exceptionally horrendous or if a law enforcement officer was killed.

    Even at the time of Mr. Jones’ original sentence in 1979, a death sentence for a murder that occurred in those circumstances was an anomaly,” his lawyers wrote.

    “Since the time of Mr. Jones’ crime, a death sentence for a murder that occurs in the context of a place-of-business armed robbery has fallen into complete extinction,” they wrote. “A death penalty has not been imposed in Georgia for a murder committed during an armed robbery in the last 20 years.”

    They wrote Jones’ execution would be “unconstitutionally disproportionate and excessive” because “in Georgia today” his crime would not be considered the worst of the worst and deserving of capital punishment.

    Jones also makes the same arguments in his clemency petition filed with the State Board of Pardons and Paroles. The Parole Board will hear from Jones’ family and attorneys Monday morning. Tackett’s widow and daughter, along with Cobb County prosecutors, are scheduled to speak to the board Monday afternoon.

    http://www.ajc.com/news/news/local/c...another/nqFs9/
    "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
    Member Newbie allfourjacks's Avatar
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    He is 72.....many dont live even that long....the system has allowed for him to hang on in this world where his victim was cut short. I say.....just die already...he should be thanking Georgia for letting him live this long. Bottom line....his crime was horrific.
    "It's ok to do for others knowing they won't do anything for you"

  8. #18
    Administrator Helen's Avatar
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    Parole Board weighing arguments for and against Jones’ execution

    The five members of the State Board of Pardons and Paroles are now weighing the arguments from family and advocates for condemned killer Brandon Astor Jones against the statements from prosecutors and the victim’s family in deciding if the 72-year-old man should live or die tomorrow night.

    Jones’ attorneys spent three hours and 15 minutes with the board
    this morning. Cobb County District Attorney Vic Reynolds, former District Attorney Tom Charron, who prosecuted Jones and his co-defendant in 1979, and murder victim Roger Tackett’s family met with the board for an hour in the afternoo.

    The members do not discuss with each other the case when deciding whether to commute before they take a vote. It takes three votes to either sustain the death sentence or to commute it to life without parole. A decision could come today.

    “The death penalty is just punishment (in this case),” Reynolds said after the meeting.

    Reynolds disagreed with Jones’ lawyers claims that Jones should be spared because of his age — Jones’ 73rd birthday is Valentine’s Day — and his increasing dementia. Reynolds said he had read Jones’ writings, many posted on the internet, and found nothing to suggest he was failing mentally.

    Jones and Van Roosevelt Solomon were both convicted of murder and sentenced to die in separate trials just months after the Father’s Day murder almost 37 years ago. If Jones is executed as scheduled — 7 p.m. Tuesday — he will be the oldest man Georgia has ever executed.

    Tackett, a former teacher, had locked up the store that he managed at midnight. But he stayed to complete paperwork so he could be free to attend Mass with his 7-year-old daughter and his wife.

    Jones and Solomon were attempting to burglarize the store when they shot Tackett, 35.

    But a Cobb County police officer was dropping off a stranded motorist so she could use the Tenneco pay phone when he heard the shots. Within moments, officer Roy Kendall had the two in custody, and then he found Tackett on the storeroom floor, dead in a pool of his own blood.

    Solomon was electrocuted for Tackett’s murder on Feb. 2, 1985
    , but four years after that a federal judge ordered Jones’ a new trial because the jurors who had condemned him had, had a Bible in the room during deliberations.

    In 1997, another Cobb County jury again sentenced Jones to die.

    Jones lawyers and supporters declined to speak to reporters after the hearing as did Katie Tackett King, Tackett’s daughter, and Christine, Bixon, Tackett’s widow who married again several years after the murder.

    But Charron and Reynolds took questions.

    They said the only thing the board asked was which shot killed Tackett and how long did he linger after suffering the first of five wounds. Charron said Tackett was alive for some time because he aspirated blood. Charron also insisted that Tackett’s thumb was shot off almost tw0 hours before he died, a claim Jones’ lawyers have challenged in their filings. Jones lawyers say Tackett’s thumb was not shot off but was struck by a bullet that also struck him in the head.

    It was never determined who fired the fatal shot to the back of his head. Jones and Solomon both had gunpowder residue on their hands and they blamed each other.

    If Jones is executed, Charron said, “it will bring closure to this family and to me and to the justice system in Cobb County.”

    While the Parole Board was hearing the Jones’ case, the 11th U.S. Circuit was still considering Jones’ challenge to the state’s secrecy law that protects the identity of the pharmacist who will make the pentobarbital that will be used to put him to death.

    The appellate court ruled last week that Jones could not revisit his claims that he had bad legal representation but they said they would comment in a later opinion on the issue around the state’s secrecy law.

    http://www.ajc.com/news/news/local/p...inst-jo/nqG5b/
    "I realize this may sound harsh, but as a father and former lawman, I really don't care if it's by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions."
    - Oklahoma Rep. Mike Christian

    "There are some people who just do not deserve to live,"
    - Rev. Richard Hawke

    “There are lots of extremely smug and self-satisfied people in what would be deemed lower down in society, who also deserve to be pulled up. In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.”
    - Rowan Atkinson

  9. #19
    Administrator Helen's Avatar
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    Son wants to witness father’s co-defendant’s execution

    The widow and daughter of the man Brandon Astor Jones murdered in 1979 don’t plan to watch his execution, scheduled for Tuesday evening.

    They will be together at the Cherokee County home of Katie King, who was 7 when her father was killed.

    “I will be at peace, being with my mom,” said King, referring to Christine Bixon.

    Bixon — who was Christine Tackett until she remarried four years after her husband’s murder — said she did not attend the execution of Jones’ co-defendant Van Roosevelt Solomon 30 years ago and she doesn’t plan to attend the one set for Tuesday at the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison outside Jackson.

    But Zuberi Solomon, who was 2 when his father and Jones murdered convenience store manager Roger Tackett, has asked the Department of Corrections to allow him to be a witness. He has not received an answer.

    He said he wanted to “see the face of the person that destroyed two families.”

    “They’ve lost their father (and husband),” Solomon said. “You feel sympathy for them. I definitely know what it feels like. Senseless.”

    Zuberi Solomon says all the blame for the murder should go to Jones and not his father, a one-time Baptist preacher who by then had a painting business. Jones worked for Van Roosevelt Solomon.

    Zuberi Solomon said Jones forced his father at gunpoint to drive from Atlanta’s West End to Cobb County so he could buy drugs and it was Jones who decided they should break into the Tenneco on Delk Road. He said his father did not shoot Tackett, even though police found two guns that had been fired and gunshot residue on the hands of both men.

    Solomon and Jones were arrested because Cobb County police Officer Ray Kendall was outside the store when Tackett was shot. The officer had driven a stranded motorist to the Tenneco to use a pay phone and became suspicious when he found Tackett’s car parked in front with the driver’s side door open. Kendall was looking through a window when Jones peeked out of the storeroom door.

    Kendall found Tackett lying in a pool of his own blood inside the storeroom, shot once in the thumb and twice in the hip and the head.

    Each suspect blamed the other for firing the shot that killed Tackett.

    Van Roosevelt Solomon, who had been in prison in Oklahoma, was electrocuted in 1985.

    Jones’ case was delayed when a federal judge ordered that he be resentenced because jurors in the first trial had a Bible during deliberations. In 1997 a second Cobb County jury said Jones should die for his crime.

    “It’s been a nagging thing,” Zuberi Solomon said of the 30 years that have passed between his father’s execution and the date Jones is scheduled to die by lethal injection. The now 38-year-old man has two sons who are around the age he was when his own father was put to death.

    On Feb. 22, 1985, Van Roosevelt Solomon became the fifth person Georgia executed once the death penalty was reinstated.

    “As a kid, I thought, ‘My father has been put to death for a murder. So why is he (Jones) still alive? One person has been punished for this and another person is still here.’ That makes absolutely no sense.”

    Zuberi Solomon said he’d actually thought Jones had been executed, until he heard a newscast about Jones’ pending lethal injection. “I didn’t know he was in prison this long,” he said.

    If Jones is executed,
    he will be the oldest man Georgia has put to death. His execution date is 11 days before his 73rd birthday.

    http://www.ajc.com/news/news/local/s...executi/nqGtR/
    "I realize this may sound harsh, but as a father and former lawman, I really don't care if it's by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions."
    - Oklahoma Rep. Mike Christian

    "There are some people who just do not deserve to live,"
    - Rev. Richard Hawke

    “There are lots of extremely smug and self-satisfied people in what would be deemed lower down in society, who also deserve to be pulled up. In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.”
    - Rowan Atkinson

  10. #20
    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
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    Parole Board rejects Brandon Astor Jones’ clemency request

    The State Board of Pardons and Paroles Monday night turned down Brandon Astor Jones’ request to commute his death sentence to life in prison just moments after he also lost in the federal appeals court.

    Unless a court steps in on Tuesday, the 72-year-old man will be put to death.

    Jones’ attorneys spent three hours and 15 minutes with the Parole Board this morning. Cobb County District Attorney Vic Reynolds, former District Attorney Tom Charron, who prosecuted Jones and his co-defendant in 1979, and murder victim Roger Tackett’s family met with the board for an hour in the afternoon.

    The members do not discuss with each other the case when deciding whether to commute before they take a vote. It takes three votes to either sustain the death sentence or to commute it to life without parole.

    “The death penalty is just punishment (in this case),” Reynolds said after the meeting.

    Reynolds disagreed with Jones’ lawyers claims that Jones should be spared because of his age — Jones’ 73rd birthday is Valentine’s Day — and his increasing dementia. Reynolds said he had read Jones’ writings, many posted on the internet, and found nothing to suggest he was failing mentally.

    The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday evening turned down his request for a stay. Jones had asked that his execution be delayed to allow time for all 11 judges, not just a three-judge panel that usually decides, to hear his challenge to the Georgia law that keeps secret the name of the pharmacist who makes the pentobarbital that will be used to execute him. The appellate court said Jones could have raised that question a long time ago, instead of waiting until days before his scheduled execution.

    http://www.ajc.com/news/news/local/p...inst-jo/nqG5b/
    An uninformed opponent is a dangerous opponent.

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

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