Georgia Prepares to Execute John Conner Despite Evidence of Intellectual Impairment, Traumatic Upbringing

Georgia is continuing with preparations to execute John Conner (pictured) on July 14 after the state’s Board of Pardons and Paroles denied his clemency petition and the Georgia Supreme Court denied him a stay of execution.

In the clemency proceedings, Conner’s attorneys presented evidence that he is intellectually disabled and that he was raised in poverty and extreme violence in a home filled with chronic drug and alcohol abuse and in which sexual and emotional abuse were the norm. Conner’s lawyers wrote that, at a young age, he was “indoctrinated into a life that normalized drugs, alcohol, and violence, so much so that he drunkenly beat a friend to death in reaction to a lewd comment.” They also said Conner’s teachers had identified him as intellectually disabled.

Conner’s inexperienced trial attorney failed to present any evidence at trial or in the sentencing hearing and his appellate lawyer was not provided any resources to investigate his case. As a result, his lawyers said, neither the jury nor the state appellate courts heard any mitigating evidence of his intellectual impairments and horrifying upbringing, which they say might have changed the jury’s sentencing decision.

Though a federal court later ruled that his evidence of intellectual impairment did not reach the level of disability that would render him ineligible for execution, his lawyers argued that the court did not consider the mitigating aspects of his intellectual impairments or whether “Mr. Conner’s poverty-, violence-, and trauma-filled family background … should have justified a sentence less than death.”

On July 12, the Georgia Supreme Court declined to review Conner’s claim that his execution more than 34 years after being sentenced to death constitutes cruel and unusual punishment and voted 5-2 to deny him a stay of execution.

[UPDATE: Georgia executed Conner shortly after midnight on July 15. It was the sixth execution conducted by the state in 2016, more than in any previous calendar year since executions were allowed to resume in 1976.]