On December 15, 2025, the Georgia Board of Pardons and Parole put a hold on the exe­cu­tion of Stacey Humphreys and post­poned his clemen­cy hear­ing, orig­i­nal­ly sched­uled for December 16, ​“indef­i­nite­ly.” Mr. Humphreys was to be exe­cut­ed December 17 — despite claims that his tri­al was taint­ed by what three Supreme Court jus­tices described as ​“extreme juror mis­con­duct.” He was the first per­son sched­uled for exe­cu­tion in Georgia in 2025. 

Last week, Mr. Humphreys’ attor­neys peti­tioned Fulton County Superior Court ask­ing that two of the five mem­bers of the parole board recuse them­selves from con­sid­er­ing his clemen­cy peti­tion, cit­ing poten­tial con­flicts of inter­est. One board mem­ber was a vic­tim advo­cate assigned to one of the vic­tims in Mr. Humphreys’ case and anoth­er was the sher­iff in the town where Mr. Humphreys’ tri­al was held. According to Mr. Humphreys’ attor­neys, just recus­ing the two mem­bers would not be suf­fi­cient to ensure his clemen­cy peti­tion received a fair hear­ing. They argue the two should be replaced so that Mr. Humphreys’ case is heard by a full five-mem­ber board with­out con­flicts of interest. 

Mr. Humphreys was accused of forc­ing two real­tors to undress at gun­point inside a mod­el home, then rob­bing and mur­der­ing both women. During jury selec­tion, defense attor­neys screened poten­tial jurors for any­one whose sim­i­lar expe­ri­ence might affect their abil­i­ty to fair­ly eval­u­ate the case. One poten­tial juror, Ms. Chancey, report­ed that she had been the vic­tim of a har­row­ing attack; she told the court that a con­vict­ed mur­der­er, on the run from a men­tal insti­tu­tion, had bro­ken into her home. However, she assured the court that she could be a fair juror despite that expe­ri­ence and would ​“hon­est­ly con­sid­er” all sen­tenc­ing options. She said that she had man­aged to escape before the attack­er entered her home. She was placed on the jury. 

“12 Angry Men, In Reverse” 

Maurice Chammah, The Marshall Project

This paved the way for what jour­nal­ist Maurice Chammah of The Marshall Project described as ​“the movie ​‘12 Angry Men,’ in reverse.” Mr. Humphreys’ jury ini­tial­ly vot­ed 11 – 1 for life with­out parole, with Ms. Chancey the lone hold­out in favor of a death sen­tence. During jury delib­er­a­tions, she revealed — in direct con­trast to her state­ments under oath — that she had actu­al­ly been assault­ed by her attack­er while naked in bed. She told the jury that she would con­tin­ue delib­er­at­ing ​“till for­ev­er” if that is what it took for Mr. Humphreys ​“to get death.” In a dis­sent from denial of review on October 14, 2025, Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by Justices Kagan and Jackson, described how Ms. Chancey ​“yelled, cursed, and screamed,” ​“levied per­son­al attacks against the jurors and refused to engage in any debate.” One juror lat­er said that ​“it was as if an evil force took [her] over.” 

The foreper­son sent a note to the court that the jury had dead­locked, but the judge instruct­ed them to keep delib­er­at­ing; the foreper­son lat­er unsuc­cess­ful­ly asked to be excused due to the ​“hos­tile nature of one of the jurors.” Justice Sotomayor not­ed that ​“unsur­pris­ing­ly, jury delib­er­a­tions almost com­plete­ly broke down,” devolv­ing into scream­ing, cry­ing, and even one juror punch­ing a hole in the wall after he ​“took a swing” at Ms. Chancey. Ultimately, Ms. Chancey suc­cess­ful­ly ​“bul­lied the oth­er jurors into vot­ing for death based on [her] pri­or expe­ri­ence.” Her ​“mis­con­duct appears to have sin­gle­hand­ed­ly changed the ver­dict from life with­out parole to death,” Justice Sotomayor wrote. 

Despite the seri­ous­ness of these alle­ga­tions, Mr. Humphreys faced a seri­ous hur­dle to bring­ing these claims: the ​“no-impeach­ment rule,” which gen­er­al­ly bars the use of juror tes­ti­mo­ny to chal­lenge a ver­dict. The rule is intend­ed to ensure that a juror’s con­tri­bu­tions are kept con­fi­den­tial from the pub­lic and that their job ends at the close of tri­al, there­by pro­mot­ing ​“full and vig­or­ous dis­cus­sion” in the jury cham­ber and ​“sta­bil­i­ty and final­i­ty” in legal judg­ments. However, the dis­sent­ing Supreme Court Justices wrote, this rule ​“is not an absolute shield, and in extreme cas­es it must give way to constitutional guarantees.” 

For instance, the Court held in 2017 that juror tes­ti­mo­ny may be admit­ted in ​“egre­gious” cas­es, such as when a ​“juror makes a clear state­ment that indi­cates he or she relied on racial stereo­types or ani­mus to con­vict a crim­i­nal defen­dant.” The jus­tices called Mr. Humphreys’ jury just such an ​“egre­gious” sit­u­a­tion where the “‘usu­al safe­guards’ were plain­ly insuf­fi­cient,” and said ​“the no-impeach­ment rule like­ly should have yield­ed because the juror’s extreme mis­con­duct threat­ened [Mr. Humphreys’] Sixth Amendment right to an impar­tial jury.” In the dis­sent­ing jus­tices’ view, the Supreme Court should have clar­i­fied that these facts cre­ate an excep­tion to the no-impeach­ment rule ​“because there is a height­ened ​‘need for reli­a­bil­i­ty’” in capital cases. 

Two more com­pli­ca­tions arose in the case: Mr. Humphreys’ direct-appeal attor­neys failed to raise a juror mis­con­duct claim, and when his post-con­vic­tion attor­neys brought the issue to fed­er­al court, the Eleventh Circuit denied relief using an ​“unclear” appli­ca­tion of fed­er­al habeas stan­dards.1 As a result, Mr. Humphreys asked the Court to review only the pro­ce­dur­al han­dling of the claim, not the mer­its. The dis­sent­ing jus­tices lament­ed that such a trou­bling alle­ga­tion was ​“buried in a procedural thicket.” 

“In a cap­i­tal case with a poten­tial­ly mer­i­to­ri­ous juror-mis­con­duct claim, mere con­fu­sion about a low­er court’s rea­son­ing does not jus­ti­fy clos­ing the door to relief alto­geth­er,” Justice Sotomayor wrote. ​“Tragically, the Court denies review instead, allow­ing a death sen­tence taint­ed by a sin­gle juror’s extra­or­di­nary mis­con­duct to stand.” To this day no state or fed­er­al court has con­sid­ered Mr. Humphreys’ juror mis­con­duct claim on the merits. 

Mr. Humphreys’ death war­rant is valid through noon on Dec. 24, after which the state will have to seek a new war­rant if the exe­cu­tion has not taken place. 

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Sources

Sources: Execution set for this week in Georgia put on hold for now, Associated Press, Dec. 15, 2025; Maurice Chammah, How Cases Like Luigi Mangione’s Could Widen the Death Penalty Divide, The Marshall Project, Dec. 15, 2025; Alba Rosa, Man sched­uled for exe­cu­tion in Middle GA faces clemen­cy hear­ing. What to know, The Telegraph, Dec. 11, 2025; Humphreys v. Emmons, 607 U.S. _​_​_​(2025) (Sotomayor, J., dis­sent­ing); Peña-Rodriguez v. Colorado, 580 U.S. _​_​_​(2017). 

Footnotes

  1. Before exe­cu­tion, death-sen­tenced pris­on­ers are guar­an­teed an auto­mat­ic direct appeal, which is lim­it­ed to errors not­ed in the tri­al record. They may then seek dis­cre­tionary review in state and fed­er­al post-con­vic­tion appeals, which may encom­pass issues out­side the tri­al record as well as review of state court judg­ments on direct appeal claims. 

    Because Mr. Humphreys’ attor­neys failed to raise the juror-mis­con­duct claim on direct appeal, the state post-con­vic­tion court held that the claim had been pro­ce­du­ral­ly default­ed (that Mr. Humphreys had for­feit­ed the chance to raise it). Courts will gen­er­al­ly not con­sid­er pro­ce­du­ral­ly default­ed claims on post-con­vic­tion review unless pris­on­ers can show ​“cause and prej­u­dice”: that a Constitutional vio­la­tion was the rea­son for the default, such as inef­fec­tive assis­tance of coun­sel, and that the default prej­u­diced the result. The state post-con­vic­tion court held that the neg­li­gence of his direct-appeal attor­neys for fail­ing to argue juror mis­con­duct did not prej­u­dice Mr. Humphreys because evi­dence of the mis­con­duct would have been inad­mis­si­ble and barred by the no-impeachment rule. 

    Mr. Humphreys’ attor­neys then appealed in fed­er­al court, where the Eleventh Circuit affirmed the state court’s find­ing of pro­ce­dur­al default. The Eleventh Circuit ​“seem­ing­ly deferred” to the state court’s analy­sis under the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA), which restricts fed­er­al courts’ review of state judg­ments. However, AEDPA def­er­ence only applies to state adju­di­ca­tion of claims on the mer­its. Justice Sotomayor point­ed out that ​“AEDPA says noth­ing about the cause-and-prej­u­dice inquiry” that each court, includ­ing fed­er­al habeas courts, must con­duct anew when pris­on­ers seek review of pro­ce­du­ral­ly default­ed claims — and ​“most courts of appeals to con­sid­er the issue have found that such def­er­ence has no place in the fed­er­al cause-and-prejudice inquiry.” 

    Mr. Humphreys only asked the Supreme Court to review whether the Eleventh Circuit should have con­duct­ed the pro­ce­dur­al default inquiry with­out def­er­ence to the state court’s rul­ing. In response, Georgia ​“points to ambi­gu­i­ties in the Eleventh Circuit’s opin­ion and argues that the Eleventh Circuit nev­er applied AEDPA def­er­ence” to that rul­ing. The dis­sent­ing jus­tices argued that the Court should ​“vacate and remand and seek clar­i­fi­ca­tion from the Eleventh Circuit about the basis for its decision.”