The 11th Execution of 2017
Georgia carried out its first execution of the year on May
17, 2017. J.W. Ledford Jr., 45, was pronounced dead at 1:17 a.m. at the state
prison in Jackson, more than six hours after his initial execution time, reported the USA Today. The
delay was waiting for a ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court, which denied his
request for a stay.
He was convicted of murder in the January 1992 stabbing
death of Dr. Harry Johnston in Murray County, northwest Georgia.
The State Board of Pardons and Paroles, which is the only
authority in Georgia with the power to commute a death sentence, declined to
spare Ledford’s life.
Ledford told police he had gone to Johnston’s home on Jan.
31, 1992, to ask for a ride to the grocery store. After the older man accused him
of stealing and smacked him, Ledford pulled out a knife and stabbed Johnston to
death, according to court filings. The pathologist who did the autopsy said
Johnston suffered “one continuous or two slices to the neck” and bled to death.
After dragging Johnston’s body to another part of Johnston’s
property and covering it up, Ledford went to Johnston’s house with a knife and
demanded money from Johnston’s wife, according to court filings. He took money
and four guns from the home, tied up Johnston’s wife and left in Johnston’s
truck. He was arrested later that day.
Ledford told police he had a number of beers and smoked a
couple joints in the hours before the killing.
Ledford’s lawyers had asked the parole board to spare him,
citing a rough childhood, substance abuse from an early age and his
intellectual disability. After a hearing Monday, the board declined to grant
clemency. Following its normal practice, the board did not give a reason for
its denial.
Because of changes in brain chemistry caused by a drug
Ledford has been taking for chronic nerve pain for more than a decade, there is
a high risk that the pentobarbital Georgia plans to use to execute him will not
render him unconscious and devoid of sensation or feeling, his lawyers wrote in
a federal lawsuit filed Thursday. That would violate the prohibition against
cruel and unusual punishment enshrined in the Eighth Amendment of the U.S.
Constitution, the lawsuit says.
When challenging an execution method on those grounds, a
U.S. Supreme Court precedent requires inmates to propose a known and available
alternative. Ledford’s lawyers, therefore, proposed that he be executed by
firing squad, a method that is not allowed under Georgia law.
A federal judge dismissed the lawsuit, saying Ledford’s
attorneys had failed to show that execution by pentobarbital would be “sure or
very likely” to cause him extreme pain as required by U.S. Supreme Court
precedent. U.S. District Judge Steve Jones also said the decision to wait until
just a few days before his execution date to file the lawsuit suggested a
stalling tactic.
Ledford’s lawyers appealed to the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of
Appeals and asked that court to temporarily halt the execution. A three-judge
panel of the 11th Circuit on Monday rejected that request. Ledford’s attorneys
have asked the full 11th Circuit to take up the case.
Ledford’s lawyers had also asked a state court judge to halt
the execution because he was only 20 and his brain wasn’t done developing when
he killed Johnston. Just as juvenile offenders are considered less culpable and
not the “worst of the worst” for whom the death penalty is reserved, the
execution of those under 21 is also unconstitutional, Ledford’s lawyers argue.
A Butts County Superior Court judge rejected that petition,
and Ledford’s lawyers have appealed to the state Supreme Court. The Georgia
Supreme Court, later Tuesday, rejected the appeal of the lower court refusal to
stop the execution.
Ledford was the first inmate executed this year in Georgia.
The state executed nine inmates last year, more than any other state and the
most Georgia had executed in a single calendar year since the U.S. Supreme
Court allowed the death penalty to resume 40 years ago.
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