KENNESAW, Ga. — A Georgia choose on Monday ordered a brief pause to a December execution that was already placed on maintain, saying questions in regards to the state’s clemency course of should be addressed earlier than Stacey Humphreys ‘ loss of life sentence could possibly be carried out.
Humphreys, 52, was going through scheduled execution Dec. 17 however the process was paused simply days earlier than he was to have obtained a deadly injection.
He was convicted of malice homicide and different crimes within the 2003 taking pictures deaths of Cyndi Williams, 33, and Lori Brown, 21, at the actual property workplace the place they labored in Cobb County, northwest of Atlanta.
At situation: Humphreys’ legal professionals contend that two members of Georgia’s parole board have conflicts of curiosity which might taint their participation in a clemency listening to.
Humphreys’ legal professionals earlier this month filed a petition asking a choose to order the 2 members of the parole board to recuse themselves from contemplating his clemency petition.
The legal professionals stated a kind of board members, Kimberly McCoy, was beforehand a sufferer advocate with the Cobb County district legal professional’s workplace on the time of Humphreys’ trial and was assigned to work with victims within the case.
One other board member, Wayne Bennett, was the sheriff in Glynn County, the place the trial was moved due to pretrial publicity. Humphreys’ legal professionals say Bennett oversaw safety for the jurors and Humphreys himself in the course of the case.
In an order filed Monday, Fulton County Superior Courtroom Choose Robert McBurney wrote that “urgent ‘pause’ on the execution equipment till we reply the non-frivolous query raised by Petitioner in regards to the correct composition of the Board for his clemency listening to is the right plan of action.”
He ordered legal professionals for either side to file extra authorized briefs on the problem by Jan. 19.
Moreover, the choose wrote in his order that Humphreys deserves to have the battle of curiosity query researched and argued totally so {that a} parole board freed from conflicts of curiosity can determine his case at a clemency listening to.
