Georgia Sets March 20 Execution Date for Willie Pye Despite Strong Evidence of Intellectual Disability and Previous Finding of Ineffective Representation by Attorney with History of Racial Bias

The Georgia Attorney General has announced that Willie James Pye, who pre­vi­ous­ly had his death sen­tence reversed due to his attorney’s fail­ure to inves­ti­gate his back­ground, only to see the death sen­tence rein­stat­ed on appeal, is set to be exe­cut­ed on March 20. Mr. Pye’s court-appoint­ed tri­al attor­ney, Johnny Mostiler, has been accused of inef­fec­tive rep­re­sen­ta­tion or racial bias in at least four cas­es involv­ing Black defen­dants and report­ed­ly called one of his own clients a ​“lit­tle n****r.” Mr. Pye also has ​“undis­put­ed” signs of intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty, with an IQ of 68 and a his­to­ry of learn­ing dif­fi­cul­ties. Georgia has not con­duct­ed an exe­cu­tion in over four years, and Mr. Pye is the state’s first sched­uled exe­cu­tion date in about two years.

Mr. Pye was con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death in 1996 for the kid­nap­ping, rob­bery, rape, and mur­der of his ex-girl­friend Alicia Yarbrough. At the time, Mr. Mostiler had a lump-sum deal with Spalding County to rep­re­sent the entire indi­gent crim­i­nal case­load, which num­bered some 800 felony and five cap­i­tal cas­es. He also had an active pri­vate civ­il prac­tice. Mr. Mostiler only spent about 150 hours on Mr. Pye’s case, includ­ing the tri­al itself, while stud­ies have found that thou­sands of hours are typ­i­cal­ly required for effec­tive cap­i­tal defense rep­re­sen­ta­tion. He also spent less than five hours prepar­ing the case for a life sen­tence, most of it on the day of the penal­ty phase and the day before. Due to his lim­it­ed inves­ti­ga­tion, he did not uncov­er evi­dence of Mr. Pye’s trau­mat­ic upbring­ing and intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty. Mr. Pye grew up expe­ri­enc­ing ​“near-con­stant phys­i­cal and emo­tion­al abuse, extreme parental neglect, endan­ger­ment, and abject pover­ty.” He bat­tled severe depres­sive episodes and report­ed hear­ing voic­es pri­or to the killing. However, Mr. Mostiler relied on Mr. Pye’s sis­ter to recruit fam­i­ly mem­bers as wit­ness­es and told them only to tes­ti­fy to Mr. Pye’s good char­ac­ter, with­out delv­ing into the dif­fi­cul­ties of Mr. Pye’s child­hood. He did not request any eval­u­a­tion of Mr. Pye’s intel­lec­tu­al func­tion­ing or devel­op any evi­dence regard­ing the claim.

At least three of Mr. Mostiler’s clients have been exe­cut­ed, includ­ing Kenneth Fults and Curtis Osborne; Mr. Mostiler infa­mous­ly slept through por­tions of Mr. Fults’ tri­al, and he told a white client that he would spend much more mon­ey on his case than on Mr. Osborne’s because ​“that lit­tle n****r deserves the chair.” In Frederick Whatley​’s case, Mr. Mostiler allowed the pros­e­cu­tion to force Mr. Whatley to reen­act the mur­der while shack­led in man­a­cles and leg irons. Justice Sonia Sotomayor lat­er wrote that it was ​“hard to imag­ine a more prej­u­di­cial exam­ple of need­less shack­ling.” A 2001 pro­file of Mr. Mostiler fol­low­ing his death found that he had han­dled ​“more than sev­en times the num­ber of indi­gent cas­es the American Bar Association (ABA) believes is manageable…turning over one case every 100 min­utes, less time than a pri­vate attor­ney might devote to a sim­ple traf­fic vio­la­tion.” The pro­file called him the ​“arche­type” of ​“meet ​’em, greet ​’em, and plead ​’em” lawyers. 

In 2021, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit over­turned Mr. Pye’s death sen­tence, unan­i­mous­ly find­ing that Mr. Mostiler failed to inves­ti­gate and present a broad range of avail­able mit­i­gat­ing and rebut­tal evi­dence. The pan­el did not reach the mer­its of Mr. Pye’s intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty claim, writ­ing that the inef­fec­tive assis­tance claim was suf­fi­cient to require a new sen­tenc­ing tri­al, but high­light­ed sub­stan­tial evi­dence of Mr. Pye’s low cog­ni­tive func­tion­ing. However, on the state’s motion, the Eleventh Circuit recon­vened en banc (with the full court) and rein­stat­ed Mr. Pye’s death sen­tence. The court acknowl­edged that Mr. Mostiler’s per­for­mance was defi­cient, but held that it was required under the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA) to defer to the state court’s find­ing that Mr. Mostiler’s per­for­mance did not prej­u­dice Mr. Pye. The major­i­ty inter­pret­ed AEDPA and Supreme Court prece­dent to con­clude that even if the state court’s deci­sion rests on clear errors, fed­er­al courts must defer to that deci­sion if there are ​“addi­tion­al ratio­nales” that sup­port it. In oth­er words, the fed­er­al review­ing court may the­o­rize rea­sons for the state court’s out­come and adopt those rea­sons to jus­ti­fy a state court deci­sion that is oth­er­wise wrong on the facts or the law.

Two judges dis­sent­ed in full, while two addi­tion­al judges joined the dis­sent in part but con­curred in the judg­ment. Dissenting Judge Jill Pryor wrote that the major­i­ty had direct­ly vio­lat­ed Supreme Court prece­dent by ​“turn­ing to jus­ti­fi­ca­tions the state nev­er even hint­ed at” and rely­ing on ​“a half-baked tex­tu­al analy­sis” in sup­port. She fur­ther argued that the hold­ing ​“cre­ates a prac­ti­cal­ly impos­si­ble path to relief for habeas petitioners…[i]f fed­er­al courts can bury unrea­son­able find­ings under an avalanche of new rea­sons the state court nev­er gave, then unrea­son­able find­ings will vir­tu­al­ly nev­er be impor­tant enough to sat­is­fy the majority’s test.” 

Judge Pryor also not­ed the ​“undis­put­ed evi­dence” of Mr. Pye’s low intel­lec­tu­al func­tion­ing. Supreme Court jurispru­dence and sci­en­tif­ic research rec­og­nize IQ scores below 70 as a strong, often defin­i­tive indi­ca­tor of intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty. Georgia has one of the low­est appel­late suc­cess rates of intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty claims by cap­i­tal defen­dants, with an 11% suc­cess rate com­pared to 82% in neigh­bor­ing North Carolina. Georgia is also the only state that requires defen­dants to prove their intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty ​“beyond a rea­son­able doubt” at tri­al, and a 2017 study found that only one defen­dant had ever been found exempt from the death penal­ty on these grounds in three decades. Research shows that states that sig­nif­i­cant­ly devi­ate from accept­ed clin­i­cal stan­dards, includ­ing Georgia, are much less like­ly to exempt defen­dants from the death penal­ty based on intellectual disability.

Judge Pryor con­clud­ed that under the majority’s rul­ing, the ​“writ of habeas cor­pus is illu­so­ry — impos­si­ble, even, to obtain.” She wrote that as the author of the pan­el opin­ion, read­ing the full court’s opin­ion made her feel like she had ​“stepped through the look­ing glass.” However, ​“what hap­pened dur­ing Alice’s time through the look­ing glass was a dream…This case, unfor­tu­nate­ly, is not.”