Georgia lawmakers consider easing one of the nation's toughest death penalty laws

Independent

04-03-2025

Last year, Georgia executed Willie James Pye, whose IQ was low enough to indicate that he was intellectually disabled, according to his lawyers.
That rattled Glennville Republican state Rep. Bill Werkheiser, who months earlier had introduced legislation to make it easier for someone facing the death penalty to prove they are intellectually disabled and thus ineligible to receive the death penalty.
His bill didn't get a vote in committee, but a similar effort this year has garnered more legislative support — it passed the House unanimously Tuesday and is now pending in the Senate.
Georgia in 1988 became the first state to outlaw the death penalty for intellectually disabled people. The U.S. Supreme Court followed in 2002, ruling that executing intellectually disabled people violates constitutional protections against cruel and unusual punishment.
But the high court left it up to states to determine the threshold at which a person is considered intellectually disabled. Georgia's requirement that people prove that disability beyond a reasonable doubt makes it an outlier, the only state with such a high burden of proof.
Lawmakers have previously discussed changing that threshold. This year's bill also gives defendants a chance to present evidence of intellectual disability at a pretrial hearing that would be mandatory if prosecutors agree. If found guilty at trial, defendants could then present evidence of intellectual disability in a separate process in front of the same jury. If they are found to have an intellectual disability, they would get a life sentence if convicted.
'I believe it is incumbent upon the state to protect those who cannot protect themselves,' Werkheiser said.
Pye was convicted in the 1993 abduction, rape and shooting death of Alicia Lynn Yarbrough. His lawyers argued he was intellectually disabled and brain damaged.
In another case that drew national attention, Warren Lee Hill was executed in Georgia in 2015 for killing a fellow detainee despite his lawyers repeatedly arguing that he had an intellectual disability. In a 2002 order, a judge said that if Georgia used a lower standard than reasonable doubt, Hill would have likely been found intellectually disabled.
When the Georgia Supreme Court upheld the death penalty for Rodney Young in 2021, the justices found he had failed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he was intellectually disabled. But then-Presiding Justice David Nahmias wrote that he would 'embrace' efforts by lawmakers to change the standard.
Prosecutors have testified in committee hearings that they're not opposed to changing the reasonable doubt standard, which some had previously lobbied against. But they oppose changes to the trial process and the addition of a pretrial hearing.
'The proposed bill cherry-picks from several different states,' T. Wright Barksdale III, district attorney for the Ocmulgee Judicial Circuit in central Georgia, said in an interview.
The bill's supporters argue that if jurors have heard the details of a gruesome crime, they may then have a hard time evaluating evidence of the defendant's intellectual disability without bias. Most states give defendants the chance to prove their intellectual disability before the trial and have separate processes for determining a defendant's guilt and intellectual disability.
'Changing only the standard of proof is insufficient for ensuring that Georgia does not continue to execute people with valid claims of intellectual disability,' said Mazie Lynn Guertin, executive director of the Georgia Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.
Barksdale III denies that Georgia executes people with intellectual disabilities. He argued that the proposed law would make the process too complicated and would keep the death penalty from being imposed altogether.
'As this law is constructed, and based on my experience of trying capital cases, it would for all intents and purposes cripple us to a point that we would never have a real fair shot at ever obtaining a death penalty for anyone,' Barksdale said.
If lawmakers want to do away with the death penalty, they should just do that, Barksdale said. But lawmakers have said that's not their intention.
During two committee hearings on this bill, lawmakers from both parties seemed unconvinced that the procedural changes would make the process too complicated. Death penalty cases already take a long time, with many motions and hearings ahead of the trial, they pointed out.
'We have the death penalty in this state. I'm not going to debate it," Rep. Esther Panitch, a Sandy Springs Democrat and criminal defense attorney, said Tuesday. "But if we're going to mete out the ultimate punishment, it should only be for the worst of the worst, and those we have spent the time to make sure understand their culpability.'
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Kramon is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues. Follow Kramon on X: @charlottekramon.