A new report by the American Bar Association Death Penalty Moratorium Implementation Project found that Georgia’s death penalty fails to meet 43 ABA standards for improving the fairness and accuracy of the death penalty. The assessment team assembled in Georgia by the ABA was so troubled by its findings that it called for a moratorium on not only executions but also the prosecution of death penalty cases, and urged the state to study problems such as inadequate funding for defense counsel, lack of representation for state habeas appeals, racial disparitites in capital sentencing, and an inappropriate burden of proof for defendants with mental retardation.

Among the 21-member assessment team’s key findings were the following:

  • Approximately 41% of jurors interviewed for the study did not understand that any evidence could be used in consideration of mitigation, and 62% thought the defense had to prove mitigating factors beyond a reasonable doubt.
  • Georgia does not appoint counsel for state habeas proceedings, and Georgia is one of only two states to not provide indigent capital defendants with attorneys at this stage. “This is particularly problematic becase so often death penalty indigent defendants have inadequate counsel at trial. So if trial counsel misses something, and you don’t have a right to assistance of counsel for habeas, very serious errors that affect the accuracy and fairness of the death penalty can go uncorrected,” said Anne Emanuel, a Georgia State University College of Law associate dean, who chaired the ABA team.
  • Georgia’s burden of proof for defendants with mental retardation is inappropriate; Georgia is the only staterequiring a defendant prove mental retardation beyond a reasonable doubt.
  • Among all homicides with known suspects, those suspected of killing whites are 4.56 times as likely to be sentenced to death as those who are suspected of killing blacks.
The Georgia death penalty assessment is the first in a series of state reviews being sponsored by the ABA. The 21-member panel included attorneys, law professors, and a state senator.

(Georgia ABA Death Penalty Assessment Report, January 2006, and Fulton County Daily Report, February 1, 2006). Read the Executive Summary. Read the Full Report. See Studies, Race, and Mental Retardation.