5 Georgia Executions Emblematic of Systemic Problems With State’s Death Penalty

Georgia is scheduled to execute Marcus Johnson (pictured) on November 19 despite ongoing concerns about his innocence. The execution would be Georgia’s fifth since December 2014 - each raising serious questions about systemic problems in Georgia’s application of the death penalty. In a commentary for The Marshall Project, Sara Totonchi, executive director of the Southern Center for Human Rights, says these cases “are emblematic” of death sentences imposed before Georgia’s statewide capital defense office opened in 2005 and “encapsulate what’s wrong with capital punishment in Georgia.” In December 2014, Georgia executed Robert Wayne Holsey, whose drunk lawyer failed to investigate and present mitigating evidence that Holsey had an IQ of 70 and had been seriously abused as a child. The lawyer was later imprisoned and disbarred for misconduct in another case. Andrew Brannan, a decorated Vietnam veteran with bi-polar disorder who was declared 100% disabled by the Veterans Administration as a result of combat-related PTSD, was executed in January, the first U.S. execution in 2015. The jury was never heard details of Brannan’s military service or disability. Two weeks later, Georgia executed Warren Hill, a man with intellectual disabilities. A judge found that Hill had proven his disability by a “preponderance of the evidence,” the standard of proof required by every other death penalty state, but Georgia requires defendants to prove intellectual disability “beyond a reasonable doubt.” Even after the state’s doctors admitted that Hill met this higher standard, the state and federal courts refused to consider this evidence on technical procedural grounds and Hill was executed. Kelly Gissendaner’s execution in September hghlighted a different type of arbitrariness: she was executed for planning to murder her husband, while her boyfriend, who actually committed the killing, made a deal with prosecutors to serve a life sentence and will be eligible for parole in seven years. Finally, Marcus Johnson’s case raises concerns that Georgia may be executing an innocent man. The DNA evidence from the murder scene that was tested was inconclusive, other blood evidence was not tested, and none of Johnson’s DNA was found on or in the car where the victim’s body was found. The trial judge wrote to the Georgia Supreme Court that the evidence in Johnson’s case “does not foreclose all doubt respecting the defendant’s guilt.”

(S. Totonchi, “Five Things Wrong With Georgia’s Death Penalty,” The Marshall Project, November 18, 2015; R. Cook, “Debate continues whether Marcus Ray Johnson murdered 35-year-old woman,” Atlanta Journal-Constitution, November 15, 2015.) See Arbitrariness, Intellectual Disability, and Innocence. [UPDATE: Georgia executed Marcus Ray Johnson on November 19, 2015.]