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[Breaking news update, published at 11:16 p.m. ET]
The state of Georgia has executed Willie Pye, who was convicted and sentenced to death for the murder of Alicia Lynn Yarbrough in 1993.
The execution of Pye, 59, was carried out at 11:03 p.m., the Georgia Department of Corrections said in a news release.
[Original story, published at 10:01 p.m. ET]
The US Supreme Court has denied the final appeals of Georgia death row inmate Willie Pye, clearing the way for the state to proceed with his execution, which would be Georgia’s first in more than four years.
In a clemency petition and various court filings, Pye and his attorneys had argued for his life to be spared, citing an intellectual disability, a troubled upbringing and ineffective assistance of counsel.
Indeed, three of Willie Pye’s jurors are opposed to his execution, citing factors in the inmate’s background that were not presented by what his clemency petition says was an overworked and ineffective public defender. The state parole board, however, was unconvinced: After meeting Tuesday and “thoroughly considering all of the facts and circumstances of the case,” it denied clemency, according to a news release.
If Pye’s execution by lethal injection proceeds as planned Wednesday evening, it would be Georgia’s first since January 2020, according to the non-profit Death Penalty Information Center. Executions were halted there as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, the American Bar Association has said.
Pye, 59, was convicted of malice murder, kidnapping with bodily injury, armed robbery, burglary and rape and sentenced to death for the 1993 killing of Alicia Lynn Yarbrough, with whom he had an on-again, off-again romantic relationship, according to court records.
Pye’s clemency petition argued instead for a life sentence, pointing in part to the ineffective assistance of his trial attorney, who died in 2000. At the time, that attorney “was responsible for all indigent defense services” for Spalding County, Georgia, through a contract for which he was paid a lump sum, the petition says.
With the help of just one other attorney and an investigator, Pye’s lawyer was responsible for hundreds of felony cases at the same time – in addition to his private practice, the petition says. When he represented Pye, the lawyer was also representing defendants in four other capital cases. As a result, the attorney “effectively abandoned his post.”
Erik S. Lesser/AFP/Getty Images
A Georgia Department of Corrections officer walks in 2011 at the entrance to the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison in Jackson.
If he had provided Pye adequate representation, jurors “would have learned that Mr. Pye is intellectually disabled and has an IQ of 68,” his petition says, well below the 100 average. “They also would have learned the challenges he faced from birth – profound poverty, neglect, constant violence and chaos in his family home – foreclosed the possibility of healthy development,” the petition says.
The Georgia Supreme Court in 1989 ruled executions of the intellectually disabled violate the state constitution – a ruling echoed years later by the US Supreme Court, which found in 2002 that such an execution…
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