Georgia Pardons Board Grants Day-of-Execution Clemency to Jimmy Meders

The Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles has grant­ed clemen­cy to death-row pris­on­er Jimmy Meders (pic­tured). One day after his January 15, 2020 clemen­cy hear­ing, and just six hours before his sched­uled exe­cu­tion, the Board announced it had com­mut­ed Meders’ death sen­tence to a sen­tence of life with­out pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole.

The Board’s com­mu­ta­tion order was influ­enced in large part by affi­davits sub­mit­ted by every liv­ing mem­ber of the jury from Meders’ 1989 tri­al sup­port­ing his clemen­cy peti­tion. The Board list­ed ​“the jury’s explic­it desire dur­ing delib­er­a­tions to impose a life with­out parole sen­tence which was legal­ly unavail­able at the time, and every liv­ing, able juror’s con­tin­ued sup­port for such a sen­tence” among the fac­tors it con­sid­ered in reach­ing its deci­sion. It also cit­ed the cir­cum­stances of the offense, Meders’ lack of any oth­er crim­i­nal his­to­ry and his near spot­less prison record.

Twenty min­utes into its penal­ty-phase delib­er­a­tions in Meders’ tri­al, the jury sent a note to the court ask­ing whether they could sen­tence him to life with­out parole. At the time, Georgia did not autho­rize life with­out parole as a sen­tenc­ing option, and the judge told them they could not con­di­tion a life ver­dict on the unavail­abil­i­ty of parole. Four years lat­er, the Georgia leg­is­la­ture changed the law to make cap­i­tal mur­der pun­ish­able by life with­out parole or death.

Meders’ appli­ca­tion for clemen­cy also stressed the dis­pro­por­tion­al­i­ty of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment for the crime Meders was con­vict­ed of com­mit­ting and con­tin­u­ing doubts about his role in the mur­der. Meders was sen­tenced to death for the shoot­ing death of a store clerk dur­ing a con­ve­nience store rob­bery. He had unsuc­cess­ful­ly sought DNA test­ing that he said would show that the prosecution’s key wit­ness — who was not charged in the mur­der — was the actu­al shoot­er. He also argued that the mur­der would not be con­sid­ered a cap­i­tal case today, cit­ing evi­dence that, in the past eight years, no pros­e­cu­tor had sought the death penal­ty for a robbery/​murder involv­ing only one vic­tim and no jury had vot­ed for death in such a case in more than a decade. 

The affi­davits sub­mit­ted by Meders’ jurors made clear that their sen­tenc­ing deci­sion hinged on whether or not parole would be pos­si­ble if they imposed a life sen­tence. According to the affi­davit of the jury foreper­son, the jurors did not want Meders to face exe­cu­tion, “[b]ut that was the only option if we want­ed to make sure he didn’t get out.” Another juror wrote that they ​“would not have vot­ed for a death sen­tence” if there had been assur­ances that Meders could not have been released. 

Meders was rep­re­sent­ed by the Southern Center for Human Rights in his clemen­cy appli­ca­tion and in his efforts to obtain DNA test­ing. Shortly after the deci­sion, the Southern Center issued a state­ment from Michael Admirand, one of Meders’ lawyers, prais­ing the Board’s ​“crit­i­cal­ly impor­tant role in show­ing mer­cy in these rare cir­cum­stances.” The state­ment said: ​“We are deeply grate­ful for the Board’s deci­sion to com­mute Jimmy Meders’s death sen­tence to life in prison with­out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole. … By tak­ing this action, this parole board has made real the intent of the jury to sen­tence Jimmy to life with­out parole, and not death.” 

Meders is the 10^th death-row pris­on­er grant­ed clemen­cy in Georgia and the 291^st in the U.S. since 1976. It was the first since the state leg­is­la­ture enact­ed a new law in 2015 requir­ing the board to pro­vide an expla­na­tion of its rea­sons when it com­mutes a death sentence.