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USA - Georgia. Willie Pye, 59, Black, was executed
March 20, 2024: March 20, 2024
Georgia
Willie Pye, 59, Black, was executed.
The execution – Georgia’s first in more than four years – was carried out by lethal injection (using pentobarbital) at 11:03 p.m. EDT at Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison in Jackson, about 50 miles south of Atlanta, the Georgia Department of Corrections said in a news release. Pye did not make a final statement, the release said.
Pye had been sentenced to death in 1996 for the November 16, 1993 rape, robbery and murder (in a supposed drug deal gone bad) of 21-year-old Alicia Lynn Yarborough, his former girlfriend.
The execution was preceded by a flurry of last-minute appeals – not uncommon in capital cases – including two filed with the US Supreme Court that were ultimately denied. One of the appeals recalled that the defendant's IQ had been measured at 68 points, placing him in the intellectual disability range. 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 noted dissents.
3 of the 9 surviving jurors who convicted Willie Pye pleaded with Georgia’s Board of Pardons and Paroles to spare his life, a clemency request that was ultimately declined on March 19.
In 2021 a three-judge panel of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals vacated the 1996 sentence, finding his trial attorney’s work during the sentencing phase of Pye’s trial was deficient and prejudicial. That ruling, however, was overturned a year later, following a hearing before the entirety of the 11th Circuit.
Pye becomes the 1st prisoner executed in Georgia this year, the 77th overall since the state resumed capital punishment in 1983, the 3rd in the U.S. put to death this year, and the 1,585th overall since the country resumed executions in 1977.
https://edition.cnn.com/2024/03/20/us/willie-pye-georgia-execution/index.html (Source: CNN, 20/03/2024)
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