Citing Evidence of Innocence, Race Discrimination, Georgia Court Grants New Trial to Former Death-Row Prisoner

A Georgia judge has grant­ed a new tri­al to Johnny Lee Gates (pic­tured recent­ly, right, and at the time of tri­al, left) based on new evi­dence that excludes him as the source of DNA on imple­ments used by the killer dur­ing the 1976 rape and mur­der for which Gates was sen­tenced to death. DNA test­ing dis­closed that Gates’s DNA was not found on a neck­tie and the bathrobe belt the pros­e­cu­tion said were used by the killer to bind Kathrina Wright, the 19-year-old wife of a sol­dier sta­tioned at Fort Benning dur­ing the mur­der. In a January 10, 2019, deci­sion over­turn­ing Gates’s con­vic­tion, Senior Muscogee County Superior Court Judge John Allen cred­it­ed the analy­sis of defense DNA expert Mark Perlin that Gates’s DNA was not present on the evi­dence. Judge Allen not­ed that Perline had trained the two Georgia Bureau of Investigation sci­en­tists the pros­e­cu­tion relied upon in the most recent court pro­ceed­ings in the case and that the tes­ti­mo­ny of the GBI wit­ness­es sup­port­ed Perlin’s con­clu­sions. Judge Allen wrote that “[t]he exclu­sion of Gates’ pro­file to the DNA on the two items is mate­r­i­al and may be con­sid­ered excul­pa­to­ry” and enti­tled Gates to a new trial.

Gates, who is African American, was con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death by an all-white jury in a racial­ly charged case. His death sen­tence was over­turned in 2003 based upon evi­dence that he is intel­lec­tu­al­ly dis­abled, and he was resen­tenced to life. Heightening the racial ten­sions of a black man accused of rap­ing and mur­der­ing a young white woman, pros­e­cu­tors delib­er­ate­ly exclud­ed African American jurors from the case. Lawyers from the Georgia Innocence Project and Southern Center for Human Rights filed a motion in March 2018 argu­ing that Columbus, Georgia pros­e­cu­tors engaged in a pat­tern and prac­tice of sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly strik­ing black prospec­tive jurors because of their race in Gates’s case and six oth­er cap­i­tal cas­es with black defen­dants, dis­crim­i­na­to­ri­ly empan­elling all- or near­ly-all-white juries in those cas­es. The pros­e­cu­tors’ jury selec­tion notes in those sev­en cap­i­tal tri­als showed that the state attor­neys in his case had care­ful­ly tracked the race of jurors, struck every black juror they could, and repeat­ed­ly wrote deroga­to­ry com­ments about blacks and black prospec­tive jurors. A Georgia Tech math­e­mat­ics pro­fes­sor pro­vid­ed expert tes­ti­mo­ny that the prob­a­bil­i­ty that black jurors were removed for race-neu­tral rea­sons was infin­i­tes­i­mal­ly small – 0.000000000000000000000000000004 per­cent. In an opin­ion that exco­ri­at­ed local pros­e­cu­tors for ​“unde­ni­able … sys­tem­at­ic race dis­crim­i­na­tion dur­ing jury selec­tion,” Judge Allen found that the pros­e­cu­tors ​“iden­ti­fied the black prospec­tive jurors by race in their jury selec­tion notes, sin­gled them out … and struck them to try Gates before an all-white jury.” However, the court said the race dis­crim­i­na­tion against Gates was not grounds to grant him a new tri­al because he had not shown that the lawyers who pre­vi­ous­ly rep­re­sent­ed him did not have access to the evi­dence of systematic discrimination.

(Bill Rankin, Georgia judge orders new tri­al in 1976 case that sent man to death row, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, January 17, 2019.) Read DPIC’s 1991 report, Chatahoochee Judicial District: BUCKLE OF THE DEATH BELT, describ­ing sys­temic racial dis­crim­i­na­tion by Columbus, Georgia pros­e­cu­tors, and the Muscogee County Superior Court’s opin­ion in State v. Gates, No. SU-75-CR-38335 (Ga. Super., Muscogee County, Jan. 10, 2019). See Race and Innocence.