atlanta — Lawyers for men He is scheduled to be executed Death penalty defense attorneys argue next week in Georgia that an agreement the state and death penalty defense attorneys made during the COVID-19 pandemic should protect their client from execution for now.
A federal judge is scheduled to hear arguments Tuesday in a lawsuit filed by lawyers for Stacey Humphries, who is scheduled to die on December 17. Humphries, 52, was convicted of murder in the 2003 slayings of 33-year-old Cindy Williams and 21-year-old Lori Brown at the real estate office where they worked in suburban Atlanta.
After Georgia halted executions during the pandemic, the state attorney general’s office announced I entered into an agreement With lawyers for people on death row to determine the conditions under which they can appeal. The state Supreme Court has He stressed that the agreement is a binding contract.
The text of the agreement says it applies only to people on death row whose requests to have their appeals reconsidered while there is a judicial emergency related to the pandemic. The judicial emergency was lifted in June 2021 and the appeals court denied Humphries’ request in October 2024. State attorneys say Humphries is not covered by the agreement and should be allowed to continue his execution.
The agreement includes three conditions that must be met before the death sentences of covered prisoners can be scheduled: the end of the state’s coronavirus-related judicial emergency, the resumption of regular visitation in state prisons, and the availability of a coronavirus vaccine “for all members of the public.”
In addition, state attorneys agreed that once these conditions were met, they would provide three months’ notice before pursuing a death warrant for one of the prisoners covered by the agreement and six months’ notice for the rest.
Although the judicial emergency was lifted more than four years ago, defense attorneys say the other two conditions have not been met because visitation is “severely restricted” compared to pre-pandemic levels, and infants younger than 6 months are not eligible for the vaccine.
a judge ruling earlier this year The vaccine requirement has not yet been met, and the state’s appeal of that ruling is pending before the Georgia Supreme Court. The judge plans to handle the visitation issue separately.
The express goal of the agreement is to allow attorneys for people on death row to adequately prepare for clemency proceedings and “for the hectic period of time immediately preceding execution proceedings,” Humphreys’ lawyers wrote in a lawsuit filed in October.
They argue that seeking to execute people not included in the agreement while it is still in effect creates a “distinct and undesirable class” of death row prisoners who will not be guaranteed the same level of legal representation in violation of their constitutional rights to equal protection and due process.
“What matters is that the harms that the terms of the agreement were designed to protect against still exist today for all death row inmates,” Humphreys’ lawyers wrote.
The state’s attorneys dispute the violation of Humphreys’ due process and equal protection rights, arguing that he failed to show how his attorneys were prevented from preparing for his upcoming execution due to COVID-19 or that the state arbitrarily chose to exclude him from the agreement.
State attorneys also point out that death row inmate Willie James Bay made similar arguments before him Implementation in March 2024 A federal judge found that “the state clearly has a valid basis for drawing a line between inmates who are and are not covered by the agreement.” A federal judge dismissed a similar case brought by three other people on death row in Georgia, which is pending before the Eleventh Circuit.