Set for Execution in Georgia September 16, Stacey Humphreys’ New Appeals Highlight Clemency Conflict of Interest, Juror Misconduct

For the sec­ond time in less than a year, Stacey Humphreys faces exe­cu­tion in Georgia. His ini­tial exe­cu­tion date last December was post­poned when a state court agreed that a mem­ber of the clemen­cy board had a con­flict of inter­est. Now the state has set his exe­cu­tion for September 16, argu­ing the prob­lem has been resolved because the board mem­ber recused her­self — even though no one has been appoint­ed in her place. In new court fil­ings, Mr. Humphreys argues that the U.S. Constitution requires his case be con­sid­ered by a full five-per­son clemen­cy board like every oth­er Georgia pris­on­er, and that evi­dence of ​“extreme juror mis­con­duct,” which no court has ever eval­u­at­ed on the mer­its, should enti­tle him to a new trial.

Capital Clemency: Background

The Supreme Court has called clemen­cy the “​‘fail safe’ in our crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem,” the ​“his­toric rem­e­dy for pre­vent­ing mis­car­riages of jus­tice where judi­cial process has been exhaust­ed.” In the mod­ern era (since 1972), 1679 pris­on­ers have been exe­cut­ed, while 369 received mer­cy—about three-quar­ters of those as part of mass clemen­cy grants. However, clemen­cy pro­ce­dures and grant rates vary wide­ly by state. Some states autho­rize gov­er­nors alone to com­mute death sen­tences, while oth­ers use a hybrid method where a board makes a bind­ing or non-bind­ing rec­om­men­da­tion to the governor. 

Georgia is one of the only states that entrusts the pow­er to a board alone, and clemen­cy grants there are rare but do occur. At least three of five board mem­bers must agree to com­mute a death sen­tence. Since 2000, the state has exe­cut­ed 54 peo­ple, while 6 received clemen­cy. The last to receive clemen­cy was Jimmy Meders in 2020, who pre­sent­ed com­pelling evi­dence of his mil­i­tary ser­vice and argued that his jury had sup­port­ed a life sen­tence. By con­trast, in neigh­bor­ing Florida, where the gov­er­nor has sole author­i­ty to sched­ule pris­on­ers for exe­cu­tion and deny clemen­cy, but must gar­ner the sup­port of at least two cab­i­net mem­bers to grant it, no death-sen­tenced pris­on­er has received clemen­cy in over forty years. 

A 2024 Death Penalty Information Center analy­sis of all mod­ern clemen­cy grants found that com­par­a­tive cul­pa­bil­i­ty, pos­si­ble inno­cence, and mit­i­ga­tion fac­tors such as intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty or men­tal ill­ness were among the most com­mon stat­ed rea­sons for clemen­cy. Misconduct and unfair­ness in the legal process, as Mr. Humphreys alleges in his case, con­tributed to about 20% of clemency grants. 

The cap­i­tal clemen­cy land­scape is so dis­parate in part because it has received lit­tle atten­tion from the U.S. Supreme Court. The main guid­ance for the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of state cap­i­tal clemen­cy pro­ceed­ings is Ohio Adult Parole Authority v. Woodard (1998), in which a plu­ral­i­ty of jus­tices con­clud­ed that clemen­cy appli­cants are enti­tled to ​“min­i­mal pro­ce­dur­al safe­guards” under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. For instance, the jus­tices wrote, a state offi­cial could not ​“flip[] a coin to deter­mine whether to grant clemen­cy,” or ​“arbi­trar­i­ly den[y] a pris­on­er any access to its clemency process.” 

Lesser Odds: Mr. Humphreys’ Constitutional Challenge

Mr. Humphreys argues that Woodard demands a state at least ​“fol­low[] its own estab­lished pro­ce­dures and…not devi­ate arbi­trar­i­ly” — but Georgia did so in his case. Ahead of Mr. Humphreys’ clemen­cy hear­ing on December 16, 2025, and his sched­uled exe­cu­tion the fol­low­ing day, his attor­neys argued that he could not receive a fair hear­ing because two mem­bers of the Georgia Board of Pardons and Parole had strong con­nec­tions to the case. Kimberly McCoy, new­ly appoint­ed to the Board fol­low­ing 25 years as a vic­tim advo­cate with the dis­trict attorney’s office, served as the ​“guardian” for vic­tims’ fam­i­lies dur­ing Mr. Humphreys’ tri­al and ​“formed a very close bond” with them. Wayne Bennett, a for­mer sher­iff, han­dled secu­ri­ty, hous­ing, and trans­porta­tion for the sequestered jurors and Mr. Humphreys himself. 

The Board’s own coun­sel acknowl­edged that a ​“full Board of five mem­bers is required to con­sid­er the clemen­cy request of an offend­er sen­tenced to death,” and the Fulton County Superior Court ini­tial­ly agreed, stay­ing the hear­ing and exe­cu­tion on the rea­son­ing that Ms. McCoy must be replaced. (He found that Mr. Bennett’s rela­tion­ship with the case did not rise to the con­flict lev­el.) A ​“non-vote has pre­cise­ly the same impact as a ​‘no’ vote,” unfair­ly reduc­ing Mr. Humphreys’ chance of suc­cess, Judge Robert McBurney wrote. The Board itself also ​“indef­i­nite­ly suspend[ed]” the exe­cu­tion. During a hear­ing on the issue, Judge McBurney com­ment­ed that Ms. McCoy’s con­flict ​“kind of hit[s] you in the face when you read about” it, and fac­ing four rather than five Board mem­bers requires Mr. Humphreys to ​“bat sev­en fifty instead of six hundred.” 

In March, Judge McBurney issued a final rul­ing that Ms. McCoy must recuse her­self — but that the law does not require a replace­ment. He con­clud­ed his rul­ing with the hope that the gov­er­nor and Board ​“will no doubt be guid­ed by the final­i­ty of the death penal­ty and the firm tra­di­tion of (if not the right to) a five-mem­ber delib­er­a­tive pan­el in deter­min­ing how to best pro­ceed.” Yet after the Georgia Supreme Court denied review of the judge’s deci­sion, the state set a new exe­cu­tion date and clemen­cy hear­ing with­out appoint­ing an inter­im Board mem­ber to fill Ms. McCoy’s spot. Mr. Humphreys appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court on July 28. 

Mr. Humphreys’ peti­tion argues that Georgia has vio­lat­ed the U.S. Constitution’s Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses by allot­ting him only four Board mem­bers to decide whether to spare his life — ​”con­trary to the unbro­ken his­tor­i­cal prac­tice in Georgia and the Board’s own under­stand­ing” of the law. Under Judge McBurney’s rea­son­ing (and metaphor), Georgia could the­o­ret­i­cal­ly pro­vide just three Board mem­bers to a con­demned pris­on­er, ​“a mere quo­rum,” forc­ing them ​“to bat a thou­sand” in con­vinc­ing all three. Additionally, hav­ing rec­og­nized the sever­i­ty of Ms. McCoy’s con­flict of inter­est, all cap­i­tal pris­on­ers whose cas­es moved through Cobb County in the years she worked there would face reduced odds com­pared to clemen­cy appli­cants from oth­er parts of the state. ​“Here, the State — through the Board — has imple­ment­ed a pro­ce­dure under which some death-sen­tenced pris­on­ers will have bet­ter odds of being spared exe­cu­tion and liv­ing out the remain­der of their nat­ur­al lives than oth­ers,” the attorneys wrote.

Mr. Humphreys’ attor­neys also argue that his case is the ​“per­fect vehi­cle” for the Supreme Court to update Woodard. The Court could clar­i­fy what pro­tec­tions the Constitution guar­an­tees for cap­i­tal clemen­cy hear­ings beyond its brief exam­ples, includ­ing whether pris­on­ers are enti­tled to equal pro­tec­tion of the laws in addi­tion to due process. Moreover, they note, the ​“need for robust clemen­cy pro­ce­dures in cap­i­tal cas­es has mush­roomed as the pow­er of post­con­vic­tion lit­i­ga­tion to cor­rect mis­car­riages of jus­tice has with­ered.” In the three decades since Woodard, laws and court rul­ings have sig­nif­i­cant­ly restrict­ed death-sen­tenced pris­on­ers’ abil­i­ty to present claims on appeal, so ​“the role of clemen­cy in avoid­ing the impo­si­tion of an unjust death sen­tence has grown ever more central.” 

Beneath Conflict-of-Interest Concerns, ​“Extreme” Juror Misconduct

Of that trend, Mr. Humphreys’ attor­neys argue that “[n]o case could be more illus­tra­tive than this one.” Mr. Humphreys was charged with the gun­point rob­bery and mur­der of two real­tors inside a mod­el home. At tri­al, a juror who had her­self been the vic­tim of a home inva­sion was seat­ed after she assured the court that she could be fair, since, she said, she had man­aged to escape before the attack­er entered. However, dur­ing jury delib­er­a­tions, she revealed that she had in fact been assault­ed while naked in bed. She ​“yelled, cursed, and screamed” at the oth­er jurors, say­ing that she would stay there ​“till for­ev­er” if that is what it took for Mr. Humphreys ​“to get death.” She even altered juror notes to the judge to con­ceal the fact that they had dead­locked, which under Georgia law should have result­ed in a life sen­tence, and false­ly told the oth­er jurors that with­out a death sen­tence Mr. Humphreys could walk free. Ultimately, she suc­cess­ful­ly ​“bul­lied the oth­er jurors into vot­ing for death based on [her] pri­or expe­ri­ence,” despite an ini­tial 11 – 1 vote for life — what one reporter called ​“the movie 12 Angry Men, in reverse.”

Yet, as three Supreme Court jus­tices not­ed in a dis­sent from a denial of review in Mr. Humphreys’ case last October, no court ever mean­ing­ful­ly con­sid­ered this alarm­ing evi­dence of juror mis­con­duct because it was ​“buried in a pro­ce­dur­al thick­et.” Testimony about the juror’s behav­ior was barred due to strict evi­den­tiary laws pro­tect­ing jury delib­er­a­tions; Mr. Humphreys’ first appel­late attor­neys failed to raise a mis­con­duct claim; and a fed­er­al court denied relief using an ​“unclear” appli­ca­tion of the increas­ing­ly com­plex stan­dards that gov­ern state pris­on­ers’ fed­er­al appeals. The juror ​“appears to have sin­gle­hand­ed­ly changed the ver­dict from life with­out parole to death,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson. ​“Tragically, the Court denies review…allow­ing a death sen­tence taint­ed by a sin­gle juror’s extra­or­di­nary mis­con­duct to stand.”

On August 28, Mr. Humphreys filed a motion for a new tri­al in state court based on his juror mis­con­duct claim. ​“A sin­gle cap­i­tal juror twice per­pe­trat­ed a fraud upon this Court…[and] [b]ut for her delib­er­ate deceit, Defendant Stacey Humphreys would today be serv­ing a sen­tence of life with­out parole con­sis­tent with the votes of the oth­er eleven jurors,” his attor­neys wrote. ​“Instead, he stands per­ilous­ly close to the death cham­ber.” This could be the first time the mis­con­duct claim is con­sid­ered on the mer­its. As his attor­neys argue in the Supreme Court peti­tion, how­ev­er, clemen­cy is like­ly his ​“last and best chance” — and that chance is cur­rent­ly slim­mer than for any oth­er con­demned Georgia pris­on­er in the modern era.