Attorney: Execution Delayed for Ga. Inmate

[struggle4progress]

Source: ABC

By GREG BLUESTEIN Associated Press
October 4, 2011 (AP)

A judge in Georgia has delayed an execution set for Wednesday after the inmate's lawyer asked for more DNA testing.

Marcus Ray Johnson was scheduled to die for the 1994 rape and murder of Angela Sizemore after a nightclub visit.

It would have been the first execution in Georgia since Troy Davis was put to death two weeks ago in a case that garnered international protest because several witnesses disputed their original testimony.

But Dougherty County Superior Court Judge Willie Lockette halted the Johnson execution after hearing several hours of arguments Tuesday ...

Read more: http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/attorney-execution-delayed-ga-inmate-14664736

[Kerrytravelers]

1. One of these things is not like the other.

Troy Davis


Marcus Ray Johnson


I'm glad they stayed the execution. The death penalty is barbaric. I just find it interesting who gets executed and who doesn't.

[Rainbowreflect]

4. I must admit that was the first question that popped into my head.

And damned if my fears were not confirmed.

[Kerrytravelers]

7. I was so hoping I was wrong.

Although it wouldn't have been better if it wasn't a white man. Execution is wrong, regardless. This just shows the glaring disparity in how the dp is applied with one more example.

[msanthrope]

8. Race/occupation of the victim is more likely to garner the death penalty than race of the perp.

It's still racist--just not like you think.

As a society, we tend to value white victims more. There have been lots of studies on this, and the greatest challenge to the death penalty in recent jurisprudence, McCleskey v. Kemp, was based on this disparate impact...



"In 1990, a U.S. General Accounting Office report concluded, “In 82% of studies , the race of the victim was found to influence the likelihood of being charged with capital murder or receiving the death penalty, i.e., those who murdered whites were found more likely to be sentenced to death than those who murdered blacks.”

According to the Death Penalty Information Center (PDF), 76 percent of the murder victims in cases that resulted in executions were White, although only 50 percent of murder victims are White. Of defendants executed for murdering someone of the opposite race, 17 were White – including Lawrence Russell Brewer, who was executed in Texas the same night as Troy Davis for the 1998 dragging death of James Byrd, Jr. in Jasper, Texas – and 254 were Black.

A study of 2,000 potential death penalty cases in Georgia led by Professor David Baldus of the University of Iowa found that the odds of receiving the death penalty in Georgia were 4.3 times greater if the defendant killed a White person than if he had killed an African-American. A report prepared for the American Bar Association found the multiplier was 4.4 in North Carolina and 5.5 in Mississippi."

http://www.blackvoicenews.com/news/news-wire/46854-georgia-remains-center-of-death-penalty-controversy.html

[Kerrytravelers]

9. I totally agree. I've heard this before from other very reputable sources (in addition to the one

you provided.) I have so many moral issues with the DP, this is just one of many.

I found it very interesting that they were very quick to execute Davis, even after there were serious questions as to his guilt and then turned right around two weeks later and stayed an execution of a white guy. I didn't know the race of the victims when I made my post. I was taken with who got the stay and who didn't.

The "justice" system we have here is so racist on so many levels.

Thanks for the link. :hi:

[ladjf]

2. Please Georgia Government, stop murdering people. nt

[Denninmi]

3. Honestly, for the "justice" system in Georgia,

I think that the execution of Troy Davis was much like the "liquidations" the Nazis did at concentration camps as Allied and Soviet troops moved in -- get rid of any potential witnesses to their crimes as quickly as possible. For Davis, it wasn't a question of justice at that point, it was a matter of getting the execution over with so that people would hopefully "forget about it."

Not forgetting, are we?

[Gregorian]

5. That also crossed my mind. But that is hard to believe.

Our system is so barbaric. Even pointing it out has gotten me showers of hate. What a society we have here.

[SkyDaddy7]

6. Everyone needs to understand WHY Ga is on a...

rapid fire killing spree...Georgia use to hold the lead in most executions but since Rick Perry became Governor of Texas Georgia have lost that title...Now I guess our "most corrupt" Governor Nathan Deal wants to regain the title.


If my wife was not forcing me to stay in Georgia close to her family I would have been gone long ago...Almost all my childhood friends annoy the hell out of me with their BLIND Christian Faith in the Republican Party & they are no different than most on the population down here. If they are not just plain stupid uneducated red neck racists then they are Christian Crazies or BOTH!

Oh well.