Georgia Supreme Court Votes 9 – 0 for New Trial for Former Death-Row Prisoner Johnny Gates

More than forty years after he was con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death by an all-white Columbus, Georgia jury for the rape and mur­der of a 19-year-old white woman, Johnny Lee Gates (pic­tured) will be get­ting a new tri­al. On March 13, 2020, the Georgia Supreme Court unan­i­mous­ly held that DNA con­tained on phys­i­cal evi­dence that police and pros­e­cu­tors had with­held for decades raised ​“sig­nif­i­cant doubt” as to Gates’ guilt. 

The court’s 9 – 0 deci­sion reject­ed an appeal by state pros­e­cu­tors of a January 2019 tri­al court rul­ing that had set aside Gates’ con­vic­tions in the 1976 killing. DNA test­ing of phys­i­cal evi­dence that police and pros­e­cu­tors had false­ly claimed no longer exist­ed exclud­ed Gates as the source of DNA on a bathrobe belt and sev­er­al neck­ties that the killer had used to bind his vic­tim. The deci­sion was the cul­mi­na­tion of decades of court pro­ceed­ings that lit­i­gat­ed Gates’ inno­cence and intel­lec­tu­al capac­i­ty and sys­temic race dis­crim­i­na­tion by the prosecution.

Gates’ 1977 con­vic­tion relied heav­i­ly on a con­fes­sion that defense attor­neys have long said was the prod­uct of coer­cive police inter­ro­ga­tion of an intel­lec­tu­al­ly dis­abled man. The con­fes­sion, they argued, includ­ed infor­ma­tion fed to Gates by police as well as some details that did not match the facts of the crime. 

Gates’ death sen­tence was vacat­ed in 2003 based on evi­dence of his intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty. At that time, he was grant­ed a jury tri­al to deter­mine whether his intel­lec­tu­al impair­ments made him inel­i­gi­ble for the death penal­ty. When that tri­al con­clud­ed in a mis­tri­al, the pros­e­cu­tion and defense reached an agree­ment to resen­tence Gates to life without parole.

For years, police and pros­e­cu­tors claimed that no phys­i­cal evi­dence exist­ed that could be sub­ject­ed to DNA test­ing. But in 2015, two Georgia Innocence Project interns reviewed the case file and dis­cov­ered a mani­la enve­lope that con­tained the neck­ties and a bathrobe belt. If the prosecution’s the­o­ry of the crime — which assert­ed that Gates had act­ed alone and had been bare­hand­ed when he tied up the vic­tim — was true, he would have left DNA from skin cells on the fab­ric. DNA test­ing showed that Gates’ DNA was not present on the items. The appeals court that, while the state’s evi­dence of Gates’ guilt appeared strong in the absence of the DNA results, he ​“could have much more effec­tive­ly coun­tered” the state’s case with the now-avail­able DNA evidence.

Gates’ case was marred from the out­set with mis­con­duct by a prosecutor’s office that had an exten­sive his­to­ry of racial dis­crim­i­na­tion. Gates, who is black, was tried before an all-white jury in a tri­al that took only three days, includ­ing the penal­ty phase. As ear­ly as 1991, DPIC had report­ed that Columbus pros­e­cu­tors had reg­u­lar­ly empan­eled all-white juries against black cap­i­tal defen­dants, includ­ing Gates. During the appeal process, Gates’ lawyers dis­cov­ered jury selec­tion notes from sev­en death-penal­ty cas­es tried by his pros­e­cu­tors, which showed that they had sys­tem­i­cal­ly exclud­ed black prospec­tive jurors from every cap­i­tal tri­al to empan­el all-white or near­ly all-white juries.

The notes showed that the state attor­neys who pros­e­cut­ed Gates’ case had care­ful­ly tracked the race of jurors, struck every Black juror they could, and repeat­ed­ly wrote deroga­to­ry com­ments about black peo­ple and black prospec­tive jurors, describ­ing black prospec­tive jurors as ​“slow,” ​“old +igno­rant,” ​“cocky,” ​“con artist,” ​“hos­tile,” and ​“fat.” White jurors were marked with the let­ter ​“W,” while black jurors were marked with the let­ter ​“N.” A Georgia Tech math­e­mat­ics pro­fes­sor pro­vid­ed expert tes­ti­mo­ny that the prob­a­bil­i­ty that black jurors were removed for race-neu­tral rea­sons was infin­i­tes­i­mal­ly small – 0.000000000000000000000000000004 percent.

In an opin­ion that exco­ri­at­ed local pros­e­cu­tors for ​“unde­ni­able … sys­tem­at­ic race dis­crim­i­na­tion dur­ing jury selec­tion,” Senior Muscogee County Superior Court Judge John Allen found that the pros­e­cu­tors ​“iden­ti­fied the black prospec­tive jurors by race in their jury selec­tion notes, sin­gled them out … and struck them to try Gates before an all-white jury.” However, Judge Allen denied Gates relief on the race dis­crim­i­na­tion claims, say­ing that Gates had not shown that his pri­or lawyers could not have devel­oped the evi­dence of systematic discrimination. 

Gates chal­lenged that por­tion of the tri­al court’s rul­ing. However, the Georgia Supreme Court found it unnec­es­sary to address the race dis­crim­i­na­tion issue “[i]n light of our deter­mi­na­tion … that the tri­al court did not abuse its dis­cre­tion in grant­i­ng Gates a new tri­al on the basis of new­ly dis­cov­ered DNA evi­dence …. Such claim,” the court wrote, ​“is now moot.”

Chattahoochee Judicial Circuit District Attorney Julia Slater said her office intends to retry Gates. He will not face the death penal­ty in any future trial.