Federal Court Reverses Death Sentence Imposed on Defendant Represented By Georgia Lawyer With History of Ineffectiveness and Racial Bias

A fed­er­al appeals court has reversed the death sen­tence of an African-American Georgia death-row pris­on­er who was rep­re­sent­ed at tri­al by a defense lawyer noto­ri­ous for his his­to­ry of sub­stan­dard rep­re­sen­ta­tion and racial bias in death-penalty cases.

On April 27, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit reversed the rul­ing of a fed­er­al dis­trict court and over­turned the death sen­tence imposed on Willie James Pye (pic­tured). In a unan­i­mous but unpub­lished opin­ion, the appeals court held that Pye’s court-appoint­ed lawyer, Johnny B. Mostiler, pro­vid­ed inef­fec­tive rep­re­sen­ta­tion in the penal­ty phase of his cap­i­tal tri­al, unrea­son­ably fail­ing to inves­ti­gate and present a broad range of avail­able mit­i­gat­ing evi­dence and neglect­ing to obtain and review court records that rebutted the prosecution’s argu­ment that Pye would pose a future dan­ger in prison if the jury sen­tenced him to life. The appeals court ordered a new sen­tenc­ing tri­al for Pye.

Billing records indi­cat­ed that Mostiler, the only lawyer avail­able for all indi­gent defen­dants in Spalding County, Georgia, spent only 150 hours on Pye’s rep­re­sen­ta­tion, includ­ing jury selec­tion and the tri­al itself. While rep­re­sent­ing Pye, he was also rep­re­sent­ing four oth­er cap­i­tal clients, along with thou­sands of peo­ple charged with felonies and mis­de­meanors, and pri­vate civ­il clients. Four Spalding County cap­i­tal defen­dants sen­tenced to death dur­ing the peri­od in which Mostiler was the sole appoint­ed coun­sel have already been executed.

The appeals court found that Mostiler unrea­son­ably failed to inves­ti­gate Pye’s trau­mat­ic upbring­ing, which involved ​“near-con­stant phys­i­cal and emo­tion­al abuse, extreme parental neglect, endan­ger­ment, and abject pover­ty.” Mostiler and the inves­ti­ga­tor who worked with him also did not inves­ti­gate Pye’s pos­si­ble intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty. His billing records indi­cat­ed that he spent few­er than five hours prepar­ing Pye’s case for life, almost all of it on the day of the penal­ty phase and the day before. The court wrote, “[t]he evi­dence tri­al coun­sel failed to inves­ti­gate and present ​‘adds up to a mit­i­ga­tion case that bears no rela­tion to the few naked pleas for mer­cy actu­al­ly put before the jury.’”

Pye’s is at least the fourth case in which Mostiler has been the sub­ject of alle­ga­tions of inef­fec­tive rep­re­sen­ta­tion and/​or racial bias against Black clients. Jurors in the case of Kenneth Fults, an intel­lec­tu­al­ly dis­abled Black defen­dant exe­cut­ed by Georgia on April 12, 2016, sub­mit­ted affi­davits that Mostiler slept through por­tions of the tri­al. Mostiler failed in Fluts’ case to inves­ti­gate and present to the jury evi­dence that Fults was intel­lec­tu­al­ly dis­abled and ​“func­tions in the low­est 1 per­cent of the pop­u­la­tion.” The U.S Supreme Court recent­ly declined to hear the case of Frederick Whatley, anoth­er client of Mostiler’s. In that case, Mostiler failed to object to Whatley being shack­led dur­ing the penal­ty phase or to the pros­e­cu­tion hav­ing Whatley reen­act the mur­der in front of the jury. In the case of Curtis Osborne, Mostiler report­ed­ly told a white client that “[t]he lit­tle n***r deserves the death penal­ty” and lat­er repeat­ed ​“that lit­tle n***r deserves the chair.”