Friday, August 10, 2007
News

A lifetime on death row

Some of Georgia’s inmates were sentenced to death more than 20 years ago

This undated photo shows the death chamber at the Georgia Diagnostic Prison in Jackson, GA. CREDIT: Erik S. Lesser/Getty Images

By Stephanie Ramage

On Aug. 3, the Georgia Supreme Court agreed to consider whether recantations of testimony from witnesses for the state is sufficient reason to grant a new trial to Troy Anthony Davis, who was convicted of the 1989 slaying of Savannah police officer Mark Allen MacPhail.

“If they decide that recantations should count, we may be entitled to a hearing in Savannah,” says Davis’ attorney, Jason Ewart.

Davis was scheduled to die by lethal injection on July 17, but a clemency hearing on July 16, in which the state Board of Pardons and Paroles was reminded that seven of nine people who testified against him have since disavowed their statements, resulted in a 90-day delay of execution. With the state supreme court now agreeing to reconsider the significance of the recantations, the delay is moot.

According to the Georgia Department of Corrections, Davis is one of 106 inmates on death row.

Seven of those are there as a result of the efforts of Fred Bright, district attorney for the Ocmulgee Judicial Circuit in middle Georgia. Bright has prosecuted 12 death penalty cases. He says families of victims have often added momentum to such cases because they want the closure that the
execution can bring them.

“I tell them, ‘Be prepared for endless appeals,’” he says.

As of Aug. 9, Georgia has 10 inmates who have resided on death row for more than 20 years because of such appeals. Some are in limbo because of considerations like mental capacity or orders for new sentencing trials, but the GDOC still lists them on death row. It just so happens that one of these, Eddie W. Finney Jr., was prosecuted by Bright’s predecessor. Bright says he does not consider Finney’s case an “active” death penalty case.

“There is a legal impediment to carrying out the death penalty,” says Bright. “The Finney case has been remanded to the trial court for a jury trial on the mental retardation issue.”

(Since Georgia passed a law prohibiting execution of mentally retarded individuals in the late 1980s, there has been a substantial number of death row inmates seeking a determination as to whether they can be classified as mentally retarded.)

Cases like Finney’s are so old that witnesses and survivors may have passed away or moved. Tim Vaughn, district attorney for the Oconee Judicial Circuit in Southeast Georgia, says that Telfair County’s former sheriff still occasionally calls and checks in on the status of that county’s only death row inmate, John W. Conner. The actual case was before Vaughn’s time.

Similarly, Chatham County’s Chief Assistant District Attorney David Locke says he’s familiar with the cases against two of the state’s longest-serving death row inmates, Jack Alderman and Roy W. Blankenship, even though they were originally prosecuted before he took office.

Some believe there are ways to speed up the appeals process without compromising constitutional rights. Cobb County District Attorney Patrick Head suggests that appeals at the state and federal level should be pursued simultaneously, and he believes that there should be a time limit on how long judges can hold up a case.

“It’s frustrating to me when a judge has said he’s going to extend discovery for a year and then it sits,” says Head.

At the Southern Center for Human Rights, senior counsel Stephen Bright (no relation to D.A. Fred Bright) points out that some death row inmates die of natural causes before an execution date is set. Even the prosecutors in some capital cases, he says, can’t see the point in dragging the inmate—as well as the victims’ families—through another proceeding given that an inmate in his 50s, for example, is unlikely to live much longer because prison life expectancies are substantially shorter than those on the outside.

He notes that trying to gauge who will go next to Georgia’s lethal injection chamber, is almost impossible.

“There is no way to know, given the vagaries of the court system,” says Stephen Bright. “Some people with death sentences are effectively serving life without parole.” SP

Long-timers

Here are Georgia’s longest-serving death row inmates, according to the 2007 “Under Death Sentence” list from the Georgia Department of Corrections, in order of time served:

Jack Alderman was sentenced to death for killing his wife, Barbara Jean Alderman, 27, on Sept. 21, 1974. His sentence was overturned on a federal appeal in 1980, but in April 1984, he was again sentenced to death. A codefendant, John Arthur Brown, plea bargained and told investigators that Alderman had wanted to kill his wife for the insurance money. Brown was paroled in 1987. Alderman has spent his time on death row studying sacred texts of the major religions and writing poetry. One of his poems, “Unrest in Pieces,” can be found on a Web site that features the paintings of British artist Simone Sandelson, who has taken up Alderman’s cause. Alderman may be the next death row inmate executed. “Around the end of September, the U.S. Supreme Court has to decide whether they will take another look at the Alderman case,” says Chief Assistant District Attorney David Locke. “If they decide not to, we will be signing an execution warrant.”

Virgil D. Presnell Jr., was sentenced to death in October 1976 in Cobb County. Five months earlier, on May 4, 1976, he kidnapped two schoolgirls. Presnell confessed to laying in wait for the 10- and 8-year-old girls. He raped and sodomized the older girl, and when 8-year-old Lori Ann Smith tried to run away, he drowned her in a stream. According to Cobb County D.A. Patrick Head, Presnell was retried in 1999 and given the death penalty again. “There is no doubt as to Presnell’s guilt,” says Head. “But here we are, 31 years later, and he is still sitting on death row.” Presnell filed a petition with federal court in June. On August 14, the court will schedule a date for an evidentiary hearing.

Edward W. Finney Jr. was sentenced to death for robbing, raping, and beating Thelma Kalish, 69, and Ann Kaplan, 60. On Sept. 22, 1977, the two elderly women, according to the district attorney, were tied up, raped and beaten to death with a two-by-four. Finney and Johnny Mack Westbrook, who had both done yardwork for the women, were convicted of the crimes. The Georgia Supreme Court reversed Westbrook’s death sentence and he died of natural causes in prison in 1993. Finney’s is not, according to D.A. Bright, an “active” death penalty case because of issues related to mental retardation.

Roger Collins was sentenced to death for the rape and murder of Deloris Luster, 17. On Aug. 6, 1977, Collins and a friend offered the young woman a ride. The teen was raped; afterwards, Collins killed her with a car jack. William Durham was sentenced to life in prison. Collins’ case has since been cited by Ireland’s Senate in discussions of international pressure on the U.S. to abolish the death penalty. Much of that debate has centered on Collins’ age (18) at the time the crime was committed. An Irish group has also participated in marathons while wearing T-shirts bearing his image to draw attention to his case. In a written statement on the Web site rogercollins.com, Collins admits to being part of a “situation that left a young lady murdered” and adds, “Although I didn’t directly kill anyone, I still very much deserve every single day I have served in prison.” Collins’ case was remanded in March 1991 for a jury trial to rule on the issue of mental retardation.

Brandon Astor Jones was sentenced to death for the June 17, 1979 murder of 29-year-old gas station manager Roger Tackett. Jones and Van Roosevelt Solomon were arrested at the scene after an officer just happened to drive up and heard gunshots. In the storeroom, the officer found Tackett’s body. He had been shot in the arms and legs and beaten before the fatal shot was fired into his skull. Solomon also was sentenced to death, and was executed on Feb. 20, 1985. According to a Web site devoted to Jones, he is a writer who has had articles published around the world. In “Without War,” which he describes as a “roman á clef,” he writes about the brutality involved in tracking runaway slaves in the pre-Civil War South. Jones was sentenced to death in a 1997 retrial during which international supporters testified that he had been rehabilitated. Currently, there is a decision pending in the Georgia Supreme Court on an application for certificate of probable cause to appeal.

Roy W. Blankenship’s victim, 78-year-old Sara Bowen, for whom Blankenship had done yardwork, died from a heart attack brought on by being raped, beaten, bitten, scratched and stomped. Blankenship has been sentenced to death three times, the last time in June 1986. He filed a petition with the U.S. district court in 2005. A final ruling by the court is pending. If petition is not granted, Blankenship can appeal to the 11th Circuit Court.

James Randall Rogers was sentenced to death for the 1980 rape and murder of his 75- year-old neighbor, Grace Perry of Rome, and the assault of Perry’s 63-year-old cousin, Edith Polston. Perry died of massive hemorrhaging caused by Roger’s use of a rake in the attack. In 2005, after the jury in Rogers’ retardation hearing returned a “not retarded” verdict, one of Polston’s daughters, now in her 60s, told the Rome News-Tribune regarding Rogers: “He’s going to outlive all of us.” Polston, for example, is now deceased. Rogers filed an appeal with the Georgia Supreme Court in May; oral argument is scheduled for Sept. 10.

Willie J. Wilson Jr. was sentenced to death for the shooting deaths of Alfred Boatwright, 64, and Morris Highsmith, 58, during an armed robbery in June 1981 at a store Boatwright owned. Wilson’s case was sent back to the trial court on the issue of mental retardation in March of 1991.

John W. Conner was sentenced to death for what Oconee Judicial Circuit District Attorney Tim Vaughn describes as the “stomping” death of James T. White, 29. Conner and White were drinking together when Conner became enraged and started beating White. Vaughn says Conner left a tennis-shoe print on White’s forehead. The U.S. district court denied a discovery motion in Sept. 2004 and has not as yet issued a separate finding on procedural default.

Lawrence Jefferson was sentenced for the beating death of Edward Taulbee, his construction supervisor. On May 1, 1985, Jefferson and Taulbee went fishing at Lake Allatoona. Taulbee’s body was found the next day; his skull had been crushed. A federal habeas petition regarding Jefferson’s sentence was granted in May of this year, with the federal court finding ineffective assistance of counsel in failing to investigate and present mental health evidence. A brief from the state in answer to the finding is due Aug.13. SP

Information for this list was gathered from interviews with district attorneys, defense attorneys and staff at the Georgia Attorney General’s office, as well as from legal documents, and archived published accounts in the Rome News-Tribune, the Augusta Chronicle and the Macon Telegraph.