Just 10 days after a jury sentenced him to death in Putnam County, Ricky DuBose was found dead in his cell on death row at the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison in Jackson, in an apparent suicide. He was the youngest person on death row. The GBI is investigating his death.
News
U.S. Supreme Court Rules in Favor of GRC Client Michael Nance
On June 23, 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of GRC client Michael Nance, who had challenged the constitutionality of his execution by lethal injection, in light of his unique medical conditions. In proceedings below, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals had held that Mr. Nance could not bring his claim in a… Read More →
First Post-Pandemic Death Sentence in Georgia
Ricky DuBose was sentenced to death by a jury in Putnam County, for the murders of corrections officers Curtis Billue and Christopher Monica in 2017. In September 2021, in the first post-pandemic death penalty trial in Georgia, the jury in Mr. DuBose’s codefendant Donnie Rowe’s case rejected the death penalty and sentenced him to life… Read More →
Judge Stays Execution of Virgil Presnell
On April 27, 2022, the State of Georgia scheduled the first post-pandemic execution, for Virgil Presnell on May 17, 2022. The Federal Defender Program, which represents Mr. Presnell, filed a breach of contract action against the Attorney General’s Office, on grounds that the Office violated a contract that specified how execution-eligible cases would be scheduled… Read More →
Case Challenges Georgia’s Burden of Proof in Intellectual Disability Cases
Lawyers for Rodney Young, a man on Georgia’s death row, have asked the Georgia Supreme Court to find the state’s requirement that people facing the death penalty must prove intellectual disability beyond a reasonable doubt unconstitutional, following the United States Supreme Court decisions in Hall v. Florida and Moore v. Texas. While Georgia was the… Read More →
Seven People Exonerated from Georgia’s Death Row since 1973
After conducting an exhaustive search of death sentences since 1973, the Death Penalty Information Center added Howard Jackson Stack to its list of people who were exonerated after being sent to death row. After a reversal by the Georgia Supreme Court, the charges against Mr. Slack were dismissed in 1975. Mr. Slack’s case brings the… Read More →
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who, along with Justice Stephen Breyer, had called for the U.S. Supreme Court to consider anew the constitutionality of the death penalty, passed away due to complications with cancer. Prior to her service on the U.S. Supreme Court, as a lawyer with the ACLU, Justice Ginsburg authored an amicus brief in… Read More →
Willie Palmer No Longer Under Death Sentence
Today, Willie Palmer is no longer under a death sentence, after nearly 25 years on death row, by agreement between the parties, for another sentencing trial in Burke County. He will no longer face the death penalty. The Resource Center represented Mr. Palmer in his state post-conviction proceedings following his first trial in 1997, and… Read More →
Georgia Death Penalty Study Finds Stark Racial Disparities
A new study of Georgia’s death penalty system finds even more racial disparities in the imposition of the ultimate punishment. Building on the well-known Baldus Study, which showed that people who had killed white victims were four times more likely to receive the death penalty than people who had killed Black victims, researchers Scott Phillips… Read More →
Prosecutor John Johnson’s History of Misconduct
The Atlanta-Journal Constitution highlights the pattern of misconduct by Brunswick Judicial Circuit prosecutor John Johnson, including in the death penalty cases of former Georgia Resource Center clients Larry Jenkins, Larry Lee, and Jimmy Meders.
Murphy Davis’s Memoir Published
Longtime GRC partner Murphy Davis released her memoir Surely Goodness and Mercy, describing her decades-long struggle against cancer. Ms. Davis is a Presbyterian minister who, along with her husband Ed Loring, ran the Open Door Community in Atlanta (now based in Baltimore). As part of her ministry, Ms. Davis served dozens of people on Georgia’s… Read More →
Johnny Gates is Free
Johnny Gates, who served more than 26 years on death row and 43 years in prison, for a 1977 Muscogee County murder, was released from prison today. Mr. Gates always maintained his innocence for the crime. In March, the Georgia Supreme Court affirmed the reversal of Mr. Gates’s conviction so that he could conduct DNA… Read More →