Atlanta to Join List of Cities that Won’t Seek New Death Sentences

Atlanta is poised to become the lat­est in a grow­ing num­ber of U.S. cities in which pros­e­cu­tors have pledged not to seek the death penal­ty or to use it more sparingly. 

On May 26, 2020, at a can­di­date forum host­ed by the Georgia Justice Reform Partnership, all three Democratic can­di­dates in Fulton County, Georgia’s June 9 pri­ma­ry elec­tion for District Attorney said they would not seek the death penal­ty. With no Republican oppo­nent in the gen­er­al elec­tion, the win­ner of the Democratic pri­ma­ry will become D.A. for the Atlanta Judicial Circuit, which will like­ly not have any new death-penal­ty cas­es in the foreseeable future. 

The pledge marked a major shift in pol­i­cy by incum­bent Fulton County D.A. Paul Howard, a for­mer chair of the Prosecuting Attorney’s Council of Georgia. Howard has been one of the most aggres­sive pur­suers of the death penal­ty in Georgia, seek­ing cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in about 40 cas­es since 2005. Death sen­tences were imposed in two of those cas­es, one of which has been over­turned in the courts. His two chal­lengers — for­mer chief deputy District Attorney Fani Willis and Christian Wise Smith, also a for­mer Atlanta pros­e­cu­tor — told the Reform Partnership that they would not seek death and would with­draw death notices in the nine cap­i­tal cas­es cur­rent­ly pend­ing in the office.

Since 2015, pros­e­cu­tors have been replaced in one-third of the 32 most pro­lif­ic death-sen­tenc­ing coun­ties in the coun­try, most fre­quent­ly by can­di­dates pledg­ing to make sys­temic reforms in the enforce­ment of the crim­i­nal laws. New District Attorneys in Philadelphia, Denver, St. Louis City and County, Portland, San Francisco, and in the Washington, D.C. sub­urbs of Northern Virginia have said they will not seek the death penalty.

During the can­di­date forum, rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Georgia Justice Reform Partnership asked the District Attorney can­di­dates if they would pledge to not seek the death penal­ty if elect­ed. All three agreed.

Howard pro­posed a three-phased approach for elim­i­nat­ing the death penal­ty for most mur­ders but stopped short of advo­cat­ing its abo­li­tion. He rec­om­mend­ed that the gov­er­nor appoint a com­mis­sion to exam­ine the death penal­ty and col­lect input from cit­i­zens, fol­lowed by a 5- to 10-year mora­to­ri­um on cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, dur­ing which crime sta­tis­tics would be col­lect­ed and ana­lyzed to assess whether the mora­to­ri­um had any effect on crime rates, fol­lowed in turn by a vote on a con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ment that would ban cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment for all crimes except ter­ror­ism or the mur­ders of mul­ti­ple chil­dren. After the forum, Harris told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, ​“I believe Georgia should lead the nation in com­ing to grips with a crim­i­nal sen­tence that might have out­lived its use­ful­ness.” He said he would con­sid­er with­draw­ing the death penal­ty from the county’s nine pend­ing cap­i­tal cas­es through a ​“case-by-case analysis.”

Challenger Christian Wise Smith expressed his oppo­si­tion to the death penal­ty in his open­ing remarks, call­ing it ​“inhu­mane” and ​“expen­sive.” In par­tic­u­lar, he cit­ed con­cerns about inno­cence, not­ing the dozens of death-row pris­on­ers exon­er­at­ed by DNA evi­dence. [Note — the Death Penalty Information Center exon­er­a­tion list iden­ti­fies 24 cas­es in which DNA played a major role in the exon­er­a­tion.] ​“My con­cern,” Smith said, ​“is if you get a death penal­ty case wrong there’s no com­ing back.” He pledged to with­draw death notices in all pend­ing cas­es and not to seek it going forward.

Former chief deputy Willis said she ​“believe[s] that life with­out parole is an appro­pri­ate rem­e­dy” and that she ​“can­not fore­see a case” in which she would seek the penal­ty. She said that she had pros­e­cut­ed hun­dreds of mur­der cas­es in her career as a pros­e­cu­tor and could think of only one that war­rant­ed a death sen­tence: a defen­dant who killed four peo­ple after escap­ing from cus­tody while on tri­al for rape. Ironically, that case end­ed in a life sen­tence after the state spent mil­lions seeking death.

Georgia has imposed only one death sen­tence since 2014. In that case, defen­dant Tiffany Moss was allowed to rep­re­sent her­self despite evi­dence that she had dam­age to the brain regions respon­si­ble for exec­u­tive func­tion, deci­sion mak­ing, and impulse con­trol. She pre­sent­ed no defense or mit­i­ga­tion, and the jury sen­tenced her to death.