Georgia GOP to Give Death Penalty a Better Chance (Revisited)
Barry Fleming recently confirmed that he will seek the Georgia House seat he once held, and among his priorities is finally getting serious death penalty reform for the state. With last week’s Troy Davis inspired publicity spree, I take this opportunity to remind readers that far, far, far more obviously guilty killers sidestep the death penalty than most ever know. I wrote this column in 2005. Sadly, it can run almost in tact today. At the end is an ironic postscript.
What started last year with moves to equalize jury strikes in criminal cases (defense attorneys previously had a 2-1 advantage) and allow prosecutors to have the last word with jurors during closing arguments is turning into a wave of change for the way the state legal system works.
For years Georgia was known as one of the best “defendant’s rights” states in the country. That is largely due to the fact that long-time House Speaker (and well-known criminal defense attorney) Tom Murphy ruled his Democrat-controlled chamber with an iron fist that would have made Mao Tse Tung blush.
Georgia prosecutors and law officers complained about the stacked deck for years, but the legendary speaker refused to allow even the smallest concessions out of committee.
To say it was bad would be an understatement. Allowing Murphy to dictate Georgia’s criminal justice rules for the last four decades was akin to allowing Wile E. Coyote to dictate scripts for Road Runner cartoons.
Despite years of protests from citizens and law enforcement types, he refused to budge an inch.
Time was working against him though, time and a rising political tide. When Georgia’s majority conservative voting base finally learned of the level of his heavy handed tyranny, all the dynamite in the Acme Catalog Warehouse couldn’t have saved his mangy old butt.
With Murphy’s ouster a few years back and the eventual take over of the House by the GOP, changes for Georgia’s prosecutors was priority one. To prove how archaic and “out of grace” the old system was, the reform movement pushed by conservatives won with super majorities in both legislative chambers. With Democrats and Republicans alike, the new rules proved to be slam-dunks.
Republican State Representative Barry Fleming of Columbia County says Georgia’s days as a criminal defense attorney’s nirvana are over. “It had to change,” he says, “Tom Murphy refused to allow the will of the people to be heard, and we are giving the system back to the people.”
Fleming noted, “The overwhelming bipartisan support in the legislature for our reforms has shown how unpopular the old system happened to be. Murphy kept it in place artificially.”
The chief apologists for the old system, for the most part, have been run out of office, and the few that are left are out of the inner circle of power.
Fleming and the rest of his party smell blood in water, and are now gearing up for tackling the granddaddy of all legal system reforms: The death penalty.
At this moment the GOP is putting together draft legislation that would make Georgia the fourth state in the nation to allow a death sentence with less than a unanimous verdict.
The proposed changes would see the death penalty imposed with perhaps a 9-3 jury majority (10-2 being a more realistic target, Fleming says) instead of the current 12-0 requirement.
Veteran criminal defense attorney Peter Johnson laments the proposed change, joking, “I hope I have tried my last death penalty case here…”
There is quite a list of Augusta cases where one or two jurors spared an obviously guilty killer from ultimate justice. Marcus Williams is one. His 1990 murder of Faye Burd was one of the easiest cases local lawmen ever got to present. The parolee, out of jail one week, was found hiding in the home of his victim with her blood smeared on his clothes. Her body was still warm.
Burd’s daughter had heard her mother’s last struggle while holding on the phone in San Antonio and called police to the scene. Open and shut.
The case ended in the jury room, with one juror holding out. Other members of the panel claimed the hold out had expressed a racial agenda when defending her dissent. The case disgusted then District Attorney Mike Eubanks so badly that he cursed the system and the juror in question. Loudly.
Another example of one juror allowing a guilty murderer to live is the case of Kenny Stephens. Stephens has been convicted three times in the 1979 killing of Richmond County sheriff’s investigator Larry Stevens. In those three convictions (two retrials were granted on technicalities) he has been sentenced to death by a count of 35-1.
Because the one holdout juror came in the final trial, the cop killer gets a lifetime of three squares and a bed, courtesy of Mr. and Mrs. Taxpayer.
Johnson, who recently represented local serial killer and rapist Renaldo Rivera, laments the proposed reform would cripple his ability to save a client from execution, “…right now all you need is one guy to hold out… giving two or three back would just about finish it.”
Johnson does admit that concern over the facts in a case seldom inspires a juror to hold out. “Very rarely is someone troubled by evidence in these cases, it is usually sentimentality or emotionalism that causes it,” he said.
The GOP hopes to mitigate the sentimentality and return common sense and justice to the system. They believe the people of Georgia will agree.
Fleming was twice successful in getting death penalty reform bills passed in the House, and even though the measures were supported by Governor Sonny Perdue, they both died in the Senate Judicial Committee, at the personal direction of then-chairman, GOP Senator Preston Smith. Smith ran for state Attorney General in 2010, and was soundly defeated in the Republican primary by Sam Olens, the eventual general election winner. Reportedly, there are no further roadblocks in the state Senate at this time.You Might Also Like:
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