Georgia Superior Court Judge Upholds 2021 COVID-Era Agreement Barring Executions for Nine Prisoners

On May 29, 2025, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Shukura Ingram ruled that Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr must abide by a 2021 agree­ment reached with attor­neys for nine indi­vid­u­als cur­rent­ly on Georgia’s death row that bars their exe­cu­tions until COVID-19 vac­cines are avail­able to every­one. In 2021, the state agreed to halt exe­cu­tions until vac­cines were avail­able to all mem­bers of the pub­lic. In her rul­ing, Judge Ingram not­ed that the vac­cine is not approved for chil­dren under six months old. Experts for both sides tes­ti­fied it was like­ly the COVID-19 vac­cine would even­tu­al­ly become avail­able to infants under the age of 6 months.

The case harkens back to when exe­cu­tions were halt­ed in Georgia in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic. At the instruc­tion of the state’s judi­cial task force on COVID, the Attorney General’s office agreed in 2021 not to sched­ule exe­cu­tions for nine pris­on­ers until three con­di­tions had been met. In 2022, the Georgia Supreme Court, in State v. Fed. Def. Program, Inc., found the agree­ment to be a bind­ing con­tract on the state. 

That one of the con­di­tions of the 2021 agree­ment, the expi­ra­tion of the state’s COVID-19 judi­cial emer­gency, has been met is not in dis­pute. But attor­neys for the death-sen­tenced pris­on­ers argued before Judge Ingram that the agreement’s sec­ond and the third con­di­tions, name­ly that nor­mal vis­i­ta­tion at state pris­ons resume and that the COVID-19 vac­cine is ​“read­i­ly avail­able to all mem­bers of the pub­lic,” were unful­filled. In her May 29 rul­ing, Judge Ingram agreed that the third con­di­tion was not met, keep­ing the pause on exe­cu­tions in place.  She has not yet ruled on the vis­i­ta­tion issue. Once the con­di­tions are ful­ly met, the state is fur­ther oblig­ed to give three months’ notice before seek­ing an exe­cu­tion war­rant for any­one cov­ered by the agree­ment. Attorney General Carr’s office says it plans to appeal the decision. 

The 2021 agree­ment cov­ers only nine of the 39 indi­vid­u­als on Georgia’s death row with active sen­tences. Specifically, the agree­ment applies to those on death row whose requests to have their appeals reheard were denied by the 11^th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals while the judi­cial emer­gency was in place. Attorneys for those not cov­ered by the agree­ment have sued to be includ­ed. The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals will hear oral argu­ments this October on whether the agree­ment vio­lat­ed the law when it cov­ered some, but not all death-sen­tenced pris­on­ers. One indi­vid­ual not cov­ered by the agree­ment, Willie James Pye, was exe­cut­ed in March 2024.  

The cur­rent case arose after state offi­cials set a May 2022 exe­cu­tion date for Virgil Presnell, Jr.  Attorneys for Mr. Presnell argued the war­rant was in vio­la­tion of the 2021 agree­ment. A Fulton County Superior Court judge agreed and stayed his exe­cu­tion. The Georgia Supreme Court did not imme­di­ate­ly rule on the state’s appeal, so the stay order remained in place until after the exe­cu­tion window expired. 

This is the lat­est devel­op­ment in the long and com­pli­cat­ed case of Mr. Presnell. He was first sen­tenced to death in 1976 for the mur­der of one girl and the rape and kid­nap­ping of anoth­er. On appeal, the Georgia Supreme Court vacat­ed the death sen­tences for kid­nap­ping and rape but affirmed the mur­der and rape sen­tences, and the U.S. Supreme Court vacat­ed the death sen­tence for mur­der, remand­ing for fur­ther pro­ceed­ings. On remand, the Georgia Supreme Court rein­stat­ed the death sen­tence for mur­der. In 1990, a fed­er­al dis­trict court vacat­ed Mr. Presnell’s death sen­tence because of pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al mis­con­duct. The court found that the prosecutor’s clos­ing argu­ment was ​“so egre­gious that it ren­dered the pro­ceed­ing fundamentally unfair.”

Mr. Presnell was resen­tenced to death in 1999. Following his resen­tenc­ing, his attor­neys in fed­er­al habeas pro­ceed­ings chal­lenged his tri­al counsel’s fail­ure to inves­ti­gate and present evi­dence that Mr. Presnell’s moth­er drank bour­bon to excess through­out her preg­nan­cy and that, as a result, Mr. Presnell was born with fetal alco­hol spec­trum dis­or­der. In 2020, the Eleventh Circuit ruled that Mr. Presnell’s court-appoint­ed tri­al coun­sel had not been inef­fec­tive. Mr. Presnell is cur­rent­ly 71 years old.