2024-03-21 07:12:00
(CNN) — The state of Georgia on Wednesday executed death row inmate Willie Pye, who was convicted and sentenced to death for the murder of Alicia Lynn Yarbrough in 1993.
The execution, which is Georgia’s first in more than four years, was carried out by lethal injection at 11:03 p.m. at a prison in Jackson, about 50 miles south of Atlanta, according to a Department of Justice news release. Georgia Corrections. Pye did not make a final statement, according to the statement.
Pye, 59, was executed after the US Supreme Court denied his final appeals Wednesday night. In a petition for clemency and several court briefs, Pye and his attorneys sought to save his life, citing an intellectual disability, a troubled upbringing and ineffective legal assistance.
Pye’s execution marks the first in Georgia since January 2020, according to the nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center. Executions stopped there as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, according to the American Bar Association.
Pye was convicted in 1996 of premeditated murder, kidnapping with bodily injury, armed robbery, burglary and rape in the slaying of Yarbrough, with whom he had an on-again, off-again romantic relationship, according to court records.
The execution was preceded by a flurry of last-minute appeals, not uncommon in capital cases, including two filed with the U.S. Supreme Court that were ultimately denied.
Willie James Pye, who was executed at the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison, poses for a Georgia Department of Corrections photograph on an unspecified date. (Credit: Georgia Department of Corrections/Reuters)
In one, Pye argued that he should not be executed because of a pandemic-era agreement between the Georgia Attorney General’s Office and capital defense attorneys that effectively halted executions in the state until certain conditions were met.
Pye’s attorneys argued that by excluding him from the deal, the state placed him in a “disadvantaged class of death row prisoners,” allegedly violating the equal protection and due process clauses of the 14th Amendment. The state urged the justices to deny Pye’s appeal, citing a state court’s determination that he was not a party to the agreement.
The other appeal stemmed from Pye’s argument that he had an intellectual disability, which his lawyers argued should make his execution unconstitutional. However, Georgia requires inmates to prove an intellectual disability beyond a reasonable doubt, a burden of proof that Pye’s attorneys said was so high that it should also be unconstitutional.
Once again, the state urged the Court to deny the appeal, in part, due to a state court’s prior rejection of similar claims.
In declining to halt Pye’s execution, the Supreme Court did not explain its reasoning, as is often the case in emergency appeals. There were no dissents noted.
The murder of Alicia Lynn Yarbrough
Pye, with two accomplices, intended to rob a man with whom Yarbrough was living, an appeals court decision says. Pye was angry with Yarbrough because the man had signed the birth certificate of a child Pye claimed was his. Pye purchased a .22-caliber handgun before the three men went with ski masks to the man’s house, where Yarbrough was alone with the baby.
Pye broke down the door and held Yarbrough at gunpoint, the court decision says. The men took a ring and a necklace from Yarbrough, then kidnapped her and took her to a motel, where they raped her.
They then drove Yarbrough down a dirt road, where Pye ordered him out of the car, told him to lie face down and shot him three times, according to the court ruling. One of Pye’s accomplices later confessed and testified for the state, and DNA analysis of semen taken from the victim’s body matched Pye.
Pye’s jury recommended a death sentence, which was ultimately imposed by the court in addition to three sentences of life in prison plus 20 years, according to the Georgia Attorney General’s Office.
Pye’s accomplices are serving life sentences for their roles in Yarbrough’s murder, Georgia corrections records show.
Pye alleged his trial lawyer ‘abandoned his position’
Pye’s clemency petition argued for a commutation to a life sentence, pointing in part to the ineffective legal assistance of his trial attorney, who died in 2000.
In fact, three of Willie Pye’s jurors opposed his execution, citing factors in the inmate’s background that were not presented by what his clemency petition said was an overburdened and ineffective public defender. However, the state parole board was not convinced: After meeting Tuesday and “carefully considering all of the facts and circumstances of the case,” it denied clemency, according to a news release.
At that time, that attorney “was responsible for all indigent defense services” for Spalding County, Georgia, through a contract for which he received a lump sum, the petition says.
With the help of only one other attorney and an investigator, Pye’s attorney was responsible for hundreds of felony cases at a time, in addition to his private practice, the petition said. When he represented Pye, the attorney was also representing defendants in four other capital cases. As a result, the lawyer “effectively abandoned his position.”
Had he provided adequate representation to Pye, jurors “would have known that Mr. Pye has an intellectual disability and an IQ of 68,” his petition said, well below the average of 100. “They would also have known the challenges he faced from birth: deep poverty, neglect, constant violence and chaos in her family home, which closed the possibility of healthy development,” the petition said.
The Georgia Supreme Court in 1989 ruled that executions of people with intellectual disabilities violate the state’s constitution, a ruling that was repeated years later by the U.S. Supreme Court, which found in 2002 that such an execution would violate state protections. of the Eighth Amendment against cruel and unusual punishment.
Still, Georgia is the only state that sets its burden of proof at the “insurmountably high” standard of beyond a reasonable doubt, Pye’s petition stated.
His conviction and sentence were upheld on appeals in state and federal courts, although in 2021 a three-judge panel of the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the sentence, finding that the work of Pye’s attorney during the sentencing phase of Pye’s trial It was deficient and harmful. However, that ruling was overturned a year later, after a hearing before the entire Eleventh Circuit.
Similarly, a state court previously reviewed Pye’s claim of intellectual disability but found in a 2012 ruling that Pye did not prove it required. This Wednesday, that court rejected a similar appeal from Pye, finding that the claim was successive, that is, that it had already been decided, referring to the 2012 order.
— CNN’s John Fritze contributed to this report.
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