Case Highlights a Quirk in Georgia's Death Penalty

Georgia is planning its first execution in more than four years this month—as activists petition for it to be halted. Willie James Pye is set to be put to death on March 20 for the November 1993 killing of ex-girlfriend Alicia Lynn Yarbrough. Georgians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty say the execution should be stopped due to the 59-year-old's intellectual disability. More:

• The crime: Pye, Chester Adams, and a 15-year-old boy planned to rob the man Yarbrough was living with. They went to her home and found her and a baby alone. Prosecutors say they robbed Yarbrough, took her (leaving the baby behind) to a motel, repeatedly raped her, then drove her away from the hotel and forced her out of the car and onto the ground. Pye then shot her three times. The teen confessed and testified against Pye.

• What his lawyers argue: The AP reports they want to see him resentenced in part because they say his trial attorney did not sufficiently investigate his "life, background, physical and psychiatric health." They say his childhood was one of poverty, abuse, and neglect and that frontal-lobe brain damage, possibly the result of fetal alcohol syndrome, impacted his impulse control.
• More on his attorney: The Death Penalty Information Center notes Pye's court-appointed lawyer, Johnny Mostiler, had a "lump-sum deal with Spalding County to represent the entire indigent criminal caseload, which numbered some 800 felony and five capital cases." He spent about 150 hours on Pye's case, a fraction of what experts say is required in capital cases, and fewer than five hours preparing the case for a life sentence, "most of it on the day of the penalty phase and the day before."
• The petition: It notes Pye has an IQ of 68 but takes particular note of the fact his sentence was handed down by a Georgia court. Georgia is the only state in which intellectual disability must be proved "beyond a reasonable doubt" to prevent execution. "This is an unattainable standard," the petition reads. "Had Willie Pye been tried in a state that uses 'preponderance of evidence' as a standard of proof, he would have been ineligible for the death penalty."

(More death row stories.)