A new report by the American Bar Association Death Penalty Moratorium Implementation Project found that Georgia’s death penal­ty fails to meet 43 ABA stan­dards for improv­ing the fair­ness and accu­ra­cy of the death penal­ty. The assess­ment team assem­bled in Georgia by the ABA was so trou­bled by its find­ings that it called for a mora­to­ri­um on not only exe­cu­tions but also the pros­e­cu­tion of death penal­ty cas­es, and urged the state to study prob­lems such as inad­e­quate fund­ing for defense coun­sel, lack of rep­re­sen­ta­tion for state habeas appeals, racial dis­par­i­tites in cap­i­tal sen­tenc­ing, and an inap­pro­pri­ate bur­den of proof for defen­dants with men­tal retar­da­tion.

Among the 21-mem­ber assess­ment team’s key find­ings were the following: 

  • Approximately 41% of jurors inter­viewed for the study did not under­stand that any evi­dence could be used in con­sid­er­a­tion of mit­i­ga­tion, and 62% thought the defense had to prove mit­i­gat­ing fac­tors beyond a reasonable doubt.
  • Georgia does not appoint coun­sel for state habeas pro­ceed­ings, and Georgia is one of only two states to not pro­vide indi­gent cap­i­tal defen­dants with attor­neys at this stage. ​“This is par­tic­u­lar­ly prob­lem­at­ic becase so often death penal­ty indi­gent defen­dants have inad­e­quate coun­sel at tri­al. So if tri­al coun­sel miss­es some­thing, and you don’t have a right to assis­tance of coun­sel for habeas, very seri­ous errors that affect the accu­ra­cy and fair­ness of the death penal­ty can go uncor­rect­ed,” said Anne Emanuel, a Georgia State University College of Law asso­ciate dean, who chaired the ABA team. 
  • Georgia’s bur­den of proof for defen­dants with men­tal retar­da­tion is inap­pro­pri­ate; Georgia is the only staterequir­ing a defen­dant prove men­tal retar­da­tion beyond a reasonable doubt.
  • Among all homi­cides with known sus­pects, those sus­pect­ed of killing whites are 4.56 times as like­ly to be sen­tenced to death as those who are sus­pect­ed of killing blacks.
The Georgia death penal­ty assess­ment is the first in a series of state reviews being spon­sored by the ABA. The 21-mem­ber pan­el includ­ed attor­neys, law pro­fes­sors, and a state sen­a­tor.

(Georgia ABA Death Penalty Assessment Report, January 2006, and Fulton County Daily Report, February 1, 2006). Read the Executive Summary. Read the Full Report. See Studies, Race, and Mental Retardation.
Citation Guide