Georgia readies to resume executions after a 4-year pause brought by COVID and a legal agreement

ATLANTA– An execution scheduled for next week would be the first in Georgia in more than four years. The state is trying to move past an agreement struck during the coronavirus pandemic that effectively halted lethal injections.

Willie James Pye, 59, will be put to death on March 20. He was convicted of murder and other crimes in the November 1993 killing of his ex-girlfriend, Alicia Lynn Yarbrough.

Georgia last carried out an execution in January 2020. Just over a year later, in April 2021, the attorney general’s office entered into an agreement with attorneys representing people on death row to order the executions of a certain group of people in to temporarily suspend death row. and to create conditions under which they could resume.

Here’s a look at why it’s been more than four years since Georgia has carried out an execution.

After the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976, Georgia resumed executions in 1983. The four-year pause in executions due to the coronavirus pandemic and a related agreement between the state and attorneys for people on death row was the longest break since then. From 2010 to 2020, the state executed 30 people, including nine in 2016 and five in 2015.

Unlike some other states, Georgia does not appear to have any problems obtaining the drug it uses for lethal injections. Prison officials have said they are getting the sedative pentobarbital from a compounding pharmacy whose identity is protected by state law.

Executions in Georgia stopped in 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic. But legal proceedings continued, meaning people on death row were still eligible for execution because they had no further appeals.

In early 2021, a judicial task force committee on COVID instructed attorneys representing people on death row to work with the attorney general’s office to determine the conditions under which executions could resume. After negotiations, they concluded the agreement in April 2021.

Under the agreement, executions would not begin again until six months after three conditions were met: the expiration of the state’s judicial emergency due to COVID-19, the resumption of normal visitation at state prisons and the availability of a COVID vaccine ‘for all members of the state prisons’. the public.” It also set minimum time intervals for the spacing between executions once they resumed.

The agreement applied to death row inmates whose request to have their appeals reheard was denied by the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals while the judicial emergency was in effect. The agreement would remain in effect until August 1, 2022, or one year from the date the conditions were met – whichever was later.

State officials obtained an execution order for Virgil Delano Presnell Jr. in April 2022, setting his execution for May 17, 2022. But Presnell’s attorneys from the Federal Defender Program filed a lawsuit, arguing that the state had violated the agreement. The judicial emergency had expired in June 2021, but the other two conditions were still not met, according to the lawsuit.

A Fulton County Superior Court judge agreed, halting the execution less than 24 hours before it was scheduled to take place. The state Supreme Court did not immediately rule on the state’s appeal, so the stay order remained in effect until after the weeklong execution period had expired.

The Supreme Court of Georgia ruled in December 2022 that the agreement was a binding contract. In a scathing concurring opinion, Judge Charlie Bethel wrote that “everyone must be able to count on the state to keep its word.”

The case returned to the lower court, where the two sides attempted to reach a settlement agreement. Lawyers for the state informed lawyers for people on death row on February 27 that further settlement negotiations were not worthwhile, according to a court filing by Pye’s lawyers.

On February 28, the day before the state obtained an execution order for Pye, his lawyers filed a motion to join him in the lawsuit over the agreement. They argued that the visitation and COVID vaccine requirements in the agreement had not yet been met.

“We are beyond shocked and outraged that, in the midst of settlement discussions, the Attorney General’s office simultaneously acted to pursue the execution of Willie Pye, one of our clients involved in those discussions endeavor, and without informing us. the Court,” said Nathan Potek, who represents death row inmates for the Federal Defender Program.

Pye’s appeal was decided by the 11th Circuit in April 2021, before the judicial emergency ended, and that is the relevant date, his lawyers argued. But the appeals court’s three-judge panel did not dismiss his case, but instead overturned his death sentence. The case was heard again by the full appeals court and ultimately the 11th Circuit denied his appeal in March 2023, almost two years after the judicial emergency ended.

Pye’s attorneys noted that their access to Pye remains extremely limited, saying it took more than 24 hours to arrange a phone call with him after the execution order was issued. They added: “This is not normal and does not reflect the access and availability of legal aid that was previously possible, and it is unacceptable.”

The state argued that the agreement was temporary and “expressly limited to a small subset of death row inmates.” Pye does not belong to that group and is therefore not exempt from execution while the lawsuit over the agreement is pending, the state says.

The judge agreed with the state, writing that the timeline of Pye’s case is undisputed and leaves him outside the group covered by the agreement. Pye’s attorneys are trying to take that decision to the state appeals court.

Pye’s attorneys also filed a new lawsuit last week accusing the state of violating the contract.