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Thread: Johnnie Alfred Worsley - Georgia

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    Johnnie Alfred Worsley - Georgia




    Summary of Offense:

    Sentenced to death in 1998 by a Muscogee County Superior Court judge for the brutal murders of his wife, Flora J. Worsley, 36, and her 17-year-old daughter, Yameika Bell, in 1995.

  2. #2
    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
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    Muscogee County judge rejects double murderer's new trial request

    A judge declined Wednesday to grant a new trial to a confessed double murderer who claims his attorneys failed to question jurors adequately before his 1998 capital murder trial.

    Johnnie A. Worsley, 50, has been on death row more than 13 years, but his case has not yet reached the Georgia Supreme Court for an automatic appeal. The case is among three aging death penalty cases in Columbus that remain at the initial appellate stage more than a decade after conviction -- unusual delays even by the sluggish pace of capital proceedings.

    Worsley has never denied slaughtering his wife, Flora J. Worsley, 36, and her 17-year-old daughter, Yameika Bell, in 1995. Prosecutors described the crimes as being horrific beyond belief: Worsley stabbed Bell with a butcher knife, went out and bought some crack and several hours later crushed his wife’s skull with a baseball bat after she returned home from working a night shift.

    Worsley’s defense attorneys argued at trial that he should be spared capital punishment because he suffered from mental illness, and has a level of intelligence below “walking around sense.”

    On Wednesday, Superior Court Judge John D. Allen held the first of two hearings on Worsley’s motion for new trial and was unpersuaded by a litany of jury selection issues raised by appellate attorney Bill Mason. Allen noted an “absence of thoroughness” on the part of Worsley’s trial attorneys during jury selection, but nothing that rose to the level of ineffective assistance of counsel.

    Mason called to the witness stand Bob Wadkins, an attorney who represented Worsley at trial, and questioned him at length about why he chose not to investigate jurors’ feelings toward capital punishment during the screening process. Mason also noted that one juror was not excused, even though she began crying during jury selection and acknowledged her son had been the victim of an unsolved murder.

    “You cannot have a death penalty case and not ask a juror, ‘What do you think about the death penalty?’” Mason argued.

    Assistant District Attorney David Helmick, meanwhile, pointed to Wadkins’ years of experience at the time of the trial, and said that Mason’s arguments amounted to speculation.

    “We can’t say that any reasonable and well-qualified attorney would have acted any different,” Helmick said. “You could get 100 different attorneys who would conduct voir dire (jury selection) 100 different ways.”

    Mason is expected to argue at a second hearing early next year that Worsley’s trial attorneys were ineffective because they failed to present sufficient mitigating evidence for jurors to weigh during their deliberations.

    “He was an Army veteran and they didn’t even introduce any of his military records,” Mason said in a recent interview. “They had sisters and brothers waiting in the hallway, but they were never called as witnesses.”

    It was the victims’ family that attended Wednesday’s hearing, some expressing relief that the wheels of Worsley’s appeal are finally in motion. Michael Patillo, a nephew and close friend of the slain Flora Worsley, said he thought Johnnie Worsley would have exhausted his appeals by now.

    “It’s been a real strain because I feel with what he did, he should pay for that,” he said. “Sitting up in jail chilling, you can’t come out, but they still have good times.”

    Flora Worsley’s sister, Patricia Patillo, said her sentiments about capital punishment have changed over the years.

    “If he stays in jail, that’s the main thing,” she said.

    The murders

    Worsley was prosecuted by Melvin E. Hyde Jr., a former assistant district attorney who is now a federal prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney Office in Columbus. Hyde told jurors at Worsley’s trial that the case “cries out for the death penalty.”

    “There are times when the death penalty is an effective punishment for an evil man,” Hyde said at the time. “This is one of those times.”

    The slayings happened just months after Worsley reconciled with his wife and was taken back into their home. The couple’s relationship had been rocked over the years by Worsley’s cocaine abuse, but Flora Worsley “had taken him in because she was assured he was clean and was dedicated to remaining clean,” Helmick said.

    Shortly after midnight on March 7, 1995, Johnnie Worsley took a butcher knife into the bedroom of the stepdaughter he’d known since she was 6 years old.

    “I began stabbing her,” Worsley told police in an interview. “Sometime in the night I must have woke up and went berserk.”

    Worsley then drove to East Highlands and bought some crack before returning to the 32nd Avenue home. He lay in wait behind a bedroom door and attacked his wife with a baseball bat and stabbed her in the neck when she arrived home from work about 7:30 a.m.

    Worsley covered the bodies with quilts and blankets and fled Columbus in a car he stole in Phenix City. He stopped at a roadside church in Twiggs County and confessed to a Baptist minister, who telephoned authorities.

    Worsley was taken into custody after a high-speed chase on Interstate 16.

    After a Muscogee County jury sentenced him to death, Mason filed a motion for new trial -- 13 years ago today -- that remains pending. He also filed a motion for funds in July 2003 that he said former Superior Court Judge Kenneth B. Followill never ruled on.

    “I wrote several letters and made several phone calls” to Followill, Mason said, “and I just quit asking.”

    Followill said in a recent phone interview that he knows of nothing he left “unturned,” and added that judges should not take an activist role or seek to “hustle up an execution.”

    http://www.ledger-enquirer.com/2011/...#ixzz1gbkF5Blg

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    Johnnie A. Worsley, on death row over a decade, back in Columbus jail

    Johnnie A. Worsley, convicted of capital murder in 1998 and on death row more than 13 years, was booked into the Muscogee County Jail on Thursday, records state.

    Worsley, 50, was convicted of killing his wife, Flora J. Worsley, 36, and her 17-year-old daughter, Yameika Bell. However, his case has not yet reached the Georgia Supreme Court for an automatic appeal. It’s one of three aging death penalty cases in Columbus that remain at initial appellate stage more than a decade after conviction.

    Superior Court Chief Judge John Allen held in December the first of two hearings on Worsley’s motion for new trial. Allen was not persuaded by jury selection issues raised by appellate defense attorney Bill Mason, saying there was an “absence of thoroughness” on the part of Worsley’s trial attorneys but nothing that rose to the level of ineffective assistance of counsel.

    Mason is expected to argue at Worsley’s second hearing that his client’s trial attorneys were ineffective because they failed to present sufficient mitigating evidence for jurors to weigh during their deliberations.

    The slayings

    The slayings happened just months after Worsley reconciled with his wife and was taken back into their home. The couple’s relationship had been rocked over the years by Worsley’s cocaine abuse, but Flora Worsley “had taken him in because she was assured he was clean and was dedicated to remaining clean,” Assistant District Attorney David Helmick said.

    Shortly after midnight on March 7, 1995, Johnnie Worsley took a butcher knife into the bedroom of the stepdaughter he’d known since she was 6 years old. “I began stabbing her,” Worsley told police in an interview. “Sometime in the night I must have woke up and went berserk.”

    Worsley then drove to East Highlands and bought some crack before returning to the 32nd Avenue home. He lay in wait behind a bedroom door and attacked his wife with a baseball bat and stabbed her in the neck when she arrived home from work about 7:30 a.m.

    Worsley covered the bodies with quilts and blankets and fled Columbus in a car he stole in Phenix City. He stopped at a roadside church in Twiggs County and confessed to a Baptist minister, who telephoned authorities.

    Worsley was taken into custody after a high-speed chase on Interstate 16.

    http://www.ledger-enquirer.com/2012/...#storylink=cpy

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    Superior Court judge hears from sisters of death row inmate during hearing on new trial for Johnnie A. Worsley

    During a Superior Court hearing for a new trial, two sisters of death row inmate Johnnie A. Worsley testified Monday that they would have pleaded with a jury for their brother’s life if given the chance more than a decade ago.

    Worsley, 50, was convicted in 1998 of killing his wife, Flora J. Worsley, 36, and her 17-year-old daughter, Yameika Bell. However, his case has not yet reached the Georgia Supreme Court for an automatic appeal. It’s one of three aging death penalty cases in Columbus that remain at the initial appellate stage more than a decade after conviction.

    Worsley’s sisters testified Monday at the second hearing on a motion for a new trial. The first was in December, when Superior Court Chief Judge John Allen denied Worsley’s request for a new trial based on jury selection issues.

    Monday’s hearing, which took just less than an hour, focused on the argument that Worsley’s trial attorneys were ineffective because they failed to present sufficient mitigating evidence for jurors to weigh during their deliberations.

    Shirley Barrett, one of the sisters who testified Monday, talked about growing up with Worsley. She didn’t attend Worsley’s 1998 trial, but she said she would have asked a jury to spare his life if she had.

    “Because everyone does wrong sometimes and they have to pay for it, but they don’t deserve to die,” she said.

    Francis Worsley, the other sister who spoke Monday, said Johnnie Worsley would send their mother money each month when he served in the Army. She did attend her brother’s 1998 trial and spoke with his attorney while in Columbus, but she was never called to testify.

    “I would have asked them to spare his life,” Francis Worsley said. “I know he was wrong. What happened -- I don’t believe he intended. He wasn’t violent at all. I don’t know what happened.”

    Allen made no decision Monday on the request for a new trial. The hearing will reconvene Wednesday, when appellate defense attorney Bill Mason intends on presenting evidence of what he called objectionable testimony during his client’s trial.

    http://www.ledger-enquirer.com/2012/...#storylink=cpy
    An uninformed opponent is a dangerous opponent.

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

  5. #5
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    Judge overturns death sentence in heinous double murder case of Johnnie A. Worsley

    A Superior Court judge agreed this morning to grant a new penalty phase to confessed double murderer Johnnie A. Worsley, a Columbus death row inmate who argued 13 years after his conviction that his defense attorneys failed to offer sufficient mitigating evidence at trial.

    Judge John D. Allen said Worsley's representation fell "woefully short" of the effective assistance of counsel standard to the point it deprived Worsley of his constitutional rights. Defense attorneys interviewed several of Worsley's family members, but none was called to testify on his behalf during the penalty phase. Only one witness, a jailer, was called by the defense.

    Worsley admitted to going "berserk" one night in March 1995, slaughtering his 17-year-old stepdaughter with a butcher knife and smashing his wife's head in with a baseball bat hours later.

    "This was a heinous crime from the outset," Allen said this morning at the last of three hearings since December on Worsley's motion for new trial, an initial appeal which had been stalled more than a decade. "There's no question in my mind that there was sufficient basis for finding the death sentence, but we'll never know because sufficient mitigation evidence wasn't presented."

    The prosecution appeared stunned by the ruling. Assitant District Attorney David R. Helmick, who contended Worsley's trial attorneys made a strategic decision to omit the mitigating evidence for fear it would backfire, vowed to appeal Allen's ruling but had no further comment.

    Defense attorney Bill Mason said he doesn't think the state has a right to appeal Allen's ruling.

    "It's clearly the right decision," Mason said in an interview after the hearing. "This judge had the courage to do it now instead of waiting for another judge to do it down the line. So hopefully we can bring this case to a resolution without the victim's family or the defendant's waiting any longer."

    Mason said he hopes the state would agree to a life without parole sentence for Worsley given his failing medical condition.

    "He's on dialysis three times a week," he said. "If he lives long enough to have a new penalty phase, hopefully they can work it out. He offered to plead to life without parole before the start of the trial, and I'm hoping that's what they'd agree to now."

    Worsley’s defense attorneys argued at trial that he should be spared capital punishment because he suffered from mental illness, and has a level of intelligence below “walking around sense.”

    Worsley was convicted of murdering his wife, Flora J. Worsley, 36, and her daughter, Yameika Bell. Prosecutors said their deaths were horrific beyond description. Worsley took a butcher knife into Bell's bedroom shortly after midnight on March 7, 1995, and began stabbing her.

    "There was foam on her neck, which was very significant because it shows she was alive and breathing when she sustained the neck injuries when the defendant cut her throat and stabbed her," Helmick said.

    After driving to East Highlands to buy crack and laying in wait behind a bedroom door, Worsley also attacked his wife, stabbing her "twice in the left side in addition to literally bashing her head in" with the bat, Helmick said.

    "This is exactly what the death penalty is for," the prosecutor added.

    Allen's ruling followed a hearing in which attorneys sparred over the trial representation of Worsley's defense attorneys. Public defender Bob Wadkins testified he decided against calling family members as witnesses in mitigation because he feared they'd do more harm than good. Worsley had a brother in jail for murder in North Carolina and Wadkins didn't want "the jury to believe that this defendant came from a family of murderers," Helmick said.

    "Even if they had something to say, I didn't think they'd be able to articulate it very well," Wadkins said.

    Mason also took exception to Wadkins' failure to introduce into evidence documents of Worsley's service in the Army.

    "This is Fort Benning, Georgia. This is Columbus, Georgia," Mason said. "All he had to do was connect with one juror and say 'Hey this guy served his country, so let's send him to jail for the rest of his life and not kill him."

    Mason also argued that state witnesses offered improper testimony when reading their victim impact statements.

    "You cannot get on the stand and ask a jury to kill the defendant," he argued. "It's absolutely reversible error unless the state proves beyond a reasonable doubt that it was not error."

    http://www.ledger-enquirer.com/2012/...#storylink=cpy
    An uninformed opponent is a dangerous opponent.

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

  6. #6
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    Court reinstates death penalty in west Ga. case

    Georgia's highest court has reversed a Muscogee County court ruling in a decision that reinstates the death sentence for Johnnie Worsley for the 1995 rape and murder of his 17-year-old stepdaughter and the murder of his wife.

    The Supreme Court of Georgia's unanimous decision was released Monday.

    In 2012, the Muscogee County court had set aside the death sentences after finding that his trial attorneys had been incompetent and ineffective. The state Supreme Court disagreed.

    Johnnie and Flora Worsley married in 1984 but separated four years later, according to court records. In January 1995, they moved back in together, along with Flora's 17-year-old daughter, Yameika Bell.

    A few weeks later, the couple argued again over his continued drug use, she threatened to leave him, and he threatened to kill her if she did, according to a summary of the case.

    Columbus police officers responded to a call on March 8, 1995 and found the bodies of 17-year-old Yameika Bell and her mother, Flora Worsley, in their home on 32nd Avenue.

    Worsley drove to Alabama after the killings and stole a car from a dealership, according to the court records. Worsley left behind a note in the car that stated: "May you all forget for what I done. I now must go to hell and pay for what I am, but still love you."

    In Monday's opinion, the justices wrote that Worsley's lawyers should have objected to some testimony during the trial, but his appeal failed to prove that the trial would have had a different outcome had that happened.

    The "case for death was a strong one, considering that the murders of Ms. Worsley and Ms. Bell were particularly brutal, and there was no dispute that (Worsley) was the person who committed those acts of brutality," the Supreme Court's opinion states.

    http://www.ajc.com/news/ap/crime/cou...ga-case/nYZzr/

  7. #7
    Senior Member Frequent Poster Ted's Avatar
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    Worsley died of natural causes on 29 October 2018.

    http://www.dcor.state.ga.us/sites/al...w_Jan_2019.pdf
    Violence and death seem to be the only answers that some people understand.

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