The Georgia State Board of Pardons and Paroles has halted the execution of Robert Earl Butts, Jr. (pictured), less than 24 hours before the state intended to put him to death. On May 2, the Board stayed Butts’s execution for up to 90 days, saying it needed additional time “to examine the substance of the claims offered in support of the application.” In a news release accompanying the issuance of the stay, the Board said it had received a “considerable amount of additional information … regarding the case” and, “because the Board understands the importance and seriousness of its authority and responsibility,” it issued a stay. Board spokesperson Steve Hayes said the Board “will continue consideration of the case and at a later date make a final decision” and that decision “could come during the stay or at the end of the 90-days.” The Board has the power to lift the stay, allowing the execution to proceed, or grant clemency to Butts, commuting his sentence to life without parole. Because Georgia death warrants remain active for a full week, Butts remains at risk of imminent execution if the Board lifts the stay on or before May 10. A new execution warrant would be required to execute Butts if the Board denies his commutation request and lifts the stay after that date. Butts’s clemency petition claims that he did not shoot Donovan Corey Parks, the off-duty correctional officer killed during a carjacking, but that his co-defendant, Marion Wilson, was the triggerman. The application includes a sworn statement from Horace May—a jailhouse informant who had testified at trial that Butts had confessed to him—saying that he had fabricated the confession after Wilson had asked him to testify against Butts. The petition also says the jury was given unsupported, false, and inflammatory information that Wilson and Butts were gang members and the killing was gang-related. Wilson is also sentenced to death, and currently has an appeal pending before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit. Butts also argued that his personal circumstances and his remorse for his involvement in the killing provided “compelling grounds for mercy.” Butts was just 18 at the time of the crime and, the petition says, endured “profound childhood neglect” from parents who “left him to care for his younger siblings while they roamed the streets of Milledgeville, each in the grip of mental illness, drug addiction or both.” In addition, the clemency petition argues that execution is a disproportionately severe punishment in light of the unwillingness of juries to impose the death penalty today in similar cases. In the past decade, no Georgia jury has sentenced any defendant to death in a case like this that involved a single victim and only one aggravating circumstance. [UPDATE: The Board lifted the stay late in the day on May 3, and the state executed Butts on May 4.]
(Kate Brumback, Board grants stay of execution for condemned Georgia inmate, Associated Press, May 2, 2018; Rhonda Cook, Ga. parole board issues stay of execution; killer was to die Thursday, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, May 2, 2018; Rhonda Cook, Awaiting execution this week, Robert Earl Butts Jr. asks for clemency, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, May 1, 2018; Press Release, Parole Board Issues Stay in Robert Earl Butts, Jr., Case, State Board of Pardons and Paroles, May 2, 2018; Order Staying the Execution of Sentence of Death, State Board of Pardons and Paroles, May 2, 2018.) Read the clemency petition and supplemental materials. See Clemency and Upcoming Executions.
