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Willie Pye Execution Scheduled For 3/20/24

Willie Pye is scheduled to be executed by the State of Georgia for the murder of Alicia Lynn Yarbrough

According to court documents Willie Pye and Alicia Lynn Yarbrough were once in a relationship however it would end badly

Alicia Lynn Yarbrough would move into the home of another man and Willie Pye decided to rob them of their weapons. When they found Yarbrough alone with her baby, Pye would take items from the home and would kidnap Alicia and leaving the baby alone in the home

Willie Pye and the other people with him woukld take Alicia Lynn Yarbrough to a hotel where she would be sexually assaulted repeatedly. They would then take her to a remote location where Pye would fatally shoot the woman

Willie Pye would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death

-Update – Willie Pye was executed on March 20 2024

Willie Pye News

A Georgia man should not be executed because he is intellectually disabled and feels remorse for killing his former girlfriend three decades ago, his lawyers wrote in seeking clemency for him.

Willie James Pye, 59, is scheduled to be put to death Wednesday using the sedative pentobarbital in what would be the state’s first execution in more than four years. Pye was convicted of murder and other crimes in the November 1993 killing of Alicia Lynn Yarbrough.

A clemency hearing is set for Tuesday. In Georgia, those hearings are conducted in secret, with the result announced afterward.

Now that his execution is imminent Willie Pye lawyers are claiming that his IQ is too low for him to be executed and he has shown remorse since the murder which took place in 1993

“Had defense counsel not abdicated his role, the jurors would have learned that Mr. Pye is intellectually disabled and has an IQ of 68,” Pye’s public defenders wrote in their clemency application.

“They also would have learned the challenges he faced from birth — profound poverty, neglect, constant violence and chaos in his family home — foreclosed the possibility of healthy development,” they wrote. “This is precisely the kind of evidence that supports a life sentence verdict.”

Pye’s lawyers also cited severe problems in the Spalding County justice system in the 1990s and said that Pye has been a positive influence on those around him while he’s been in prison.

Pye had been in an on-and-off romantic relationship with Yarbrough. At the time she was killed, Yarbrough was living with another man. Pye, Chester Adams and a 15-year-old boy had planned to rob that man and bought a handgun before heading to a party in Griffin, prosecutors have said.

The trio left the party around midnight and went to the house where Yarbrough lived, finding her alone with her baby. They forced their way into the house, stole a ring and necklace from Yarbrough and took her with them when they left, leaving the baby alone, prosecutors have said.

They drove to a motel, where they took turns raping Yarbrough and then left the motel with her in the teenager’s car, prosecutors have said. They turned onto a dirt road and Pye ordered Yarbrough out of the car, made her lie face down and shot her three times, according to court filings.

Yarbrough’s body was found a few hours after she was killed. Pye, Adams and the teenager were quickly arrested. Pye and Adams denied knowing anything about Yarbrough’s death, but the teenager confessed and implicated the other two.

The teenager reached a plea agreement with prosecutors and was the main witness at Pye’s trial. A jury in June 1996 found Pye guilty of murder, kidnapping, armed robbery, rape and burglary, and sentenced him to death.

Pye’s lawyers have argued in court filings that other statements the teen made are inconsistent with what he said at Pye’s trial. Those statements, as well as statements Pye made during trial, indicate that Yarbrough left the home willingly and went to the motel to trade sex for drugs, the lawyers said in court filings.

Pye’s lawyers also wrote in court filings that Pye was raised in extreme poverty in a home without indoor plumbing or access to sufficient food, shoes or clothing. His childhood was characterized by neglect and abuse by family members who abused alcohol, his lawyers wrote.

His lawyers also argued that Pye suffered from brain damage, potentially caused by fetal alcohol syndrome, that harmed his ability to plan and control his impulses. They also argue that he is intellectually disabled and is therefore ineligible for execution, citing the findings of several experts who evaluated him.

Pye’s lawyers have long argued that he should be resentenced because his trial lawyer didn’t adequately prepare for the sentencing phase of his trial. A three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with Pye’s lawyers in April 2021. But the full federal appeals court overturned that ruling in October 2022.

Adams, now 55, pleaded guilty in April 1997 to charges of malice murder, kidnapping with bodily injury, armed robbery, rape and aggravated sodomy. He got five consecutive life prison sentences and remains behind bars.

https://www.foxnews.com/us/georgia-man-sentenced-death-seeks-clemency-grounds-intellectual-disability

Ricky Allen Dubose Georgia Death Row

Ricky Allen Dubose was sentenced to death by the State of Georgia for the murders of two prison guards during an escape. According to court documents Ricky Allen Dubose and Donnie Rowe were able to slip out of their handcuffs while being transported by prison employees. Ricky Allen Dubose would grab an officer’s gun and open fire killing correctional guards Curtis Billue and Christopher Monica. Ricky Allen Dubose and Donnie Rowe would be arrested in Tennessee and extradited back to Georgia to stand trial for the double murder. Donnie Rowe would be ultimately sentenced to life in prison without parole. Ricky Allen Dubose would be ultimately sentenced to death. Shortly after he was sentenced Ricky Allen Dubose would take his own life

Ricky Allen Dubose More News

Ricky Allen “Juvie” Dubose is the latest inmate in Georgia to be sentenced to death for the crime of murder.

Dubose shot to death Georgia Department of Corrections Sgt. Curtis Bernard Billue and Sgt. Christopher James Monica during an escape from a state prison transport bus on June 13,2017, in Putnam County.

A jury of six men and six women from Glynn County deliberated nearly three hours Thursday afternoon before returning a unanimous verdict of death against the 29-year-old condemned killer in Putnam County Superior Court in Eatonton.

The double-death sentence, plus 20 years, was imposed against Dubose by Ocmulgee Judicial Circuit Superior Court Judge Alison T. Burleson shortly before 3:30 p.m.

The judge reviewed the verdict of the jurors and then told them, along with the five alternate jurors, that they were allowed to stay in the courtroom for the sentencing procedure or they could leave and board a mini-bus back to Glynn County. All 17 jurors opted to leave the courtroom with the thanks of the court for their service.

Dubose stood with Georgia Capital Defender Attorneys Amber Pittman, Nathanael Studelska, Gerald “Jerry” Word and Shayla Galloway, as Burleson imposed the punishment against him. As was the case throughout the trial, Dubose showed no emotion.

Jurors deliberating Dubose’s fate determined there were aggravated circumstances related to the murders of the officers. They both worked in the transportation hub at Baldwin State Prison near Milledgeville. Both men also lived in Baldwin County.

Evidence presented during the 10-day murder trial revealed that Dubose is a member of the Ghost Face Gangsters, a criminal gang that operates in and out of Georgia prisons.

While family members of the slain officers received the justice they had been seeking for their loved ones, others in the courtroom, including his wife, could be seen crying for Dubose. The couple reportedly married some time ago while Dubose awaited trial in the five-year-old double-murder case.

Members of the Billue and Monica families embraced several people who joined them in the courtroom gallery to support them. Many of them included employees and officials from the Georgia Department of Corrections, as well as church groups, victim advocates from the district attorney’s office, along with District Attorney T. Wright Barksdale III, Chief Assistant District Attorney Allison Mauldin, Assistant District Attorney Blyne May and Putnam County Sheriff Howard R. Sills.

Dubose, who had worn dress slacks, a long sleeve dress shirt and a necktie every day of his trial, was immediately handcuffed after sentencing. He then met briefly with his defense team and was then told to change from his dress clothes into white inmate prison garb before he was placed into the rear seat of a patrol car and taken back to the Georgia Special Management Unit (SMU) prison near Jackson.

He now is among more than 40 men and one woman on death row in Georgia.

https://www.unionrecorder.com/news/dubose-sentenced-to-death-in-17-slayings/article_99c79a7e-ee3f-11ec-9149-036dae339bc9.html

Ricky Allen Dubose Suicide

A 29-year-old man has died behind bars more than a week after he was sentenced to death for murdering two prison guards in Georgia

Ricky Allen Dubose hanged himself, a local law enforcement official said, according to The Union-Recorder.

“He committed suicide,” Putnam County Sheriff Howard R. Sill told the outlet. “The suicide could be done about as quick as it took for him to murder Billue and Monica. It doesn’t take long to do It. If somebody is going to do it, it can happen in a matter of seconds.”

The sheriff said he confirmed Dubose’s death with Georgia Department of Corrections personnel. The agency did not specify a cause of death in a press release issued Sunday.

“On June 26, at approximately 4:45 p.m., Correctional Officers found inmate Ricky Dubose (GDC#1000492869) unresponsive in his cell,” officials said. “Emergency Medical Services were called and life saving measures were performed. Dubose was pronounced deceased by the coroner at the facility at 5:56 p.m. GDC, in conjunction with the GBI is conducting an investigation into the death, as standard procedure.”

Dubose’s defense mourned for him, said a member of the team.

“This is extremely devastating to all of us, even though I’d only known Ricky closely for about a year,” attorney Gerald “Jerry” Word told The Union-Recorder. “Amber Pittman and Nathanael Studelska had gotten to know him for five years. And Shayla Galloway had gotten to know him well, too.”

Dubose and fellow inmate Donnie Rowe overpowered two prison guards — officers Curtis Billue and Christopher Monica — on a prison transport bus in June 2017. Dubose took one of their guns, and fatally shot them. He and Rowe fled after carjacking a nearby driver, reaching Tennessee. They held a couple hostage, tied them up, took their valuables and clothes, and threatened them to keep quiet, Bedford County Sheriff Austin Swing said at the time, according to The Associated Press. But the fugitives ultimately surrendered. Law enforcement said they gave themselves up not to officials, but to a local man.

“I realized I had two ex-cons wanted for murder who had just shot at law enforcement who had nothing to lose and for some reason they surrendered and laid down on the concrete in my driveway,” Patrick Hale told the AP at the time. “If that doesn’t make you believe in Jesus Christ, I don’t know what does.”

Although both men separately went to trial and were convicted, Dubose was the one who received the death penalty as the actual gunman. Rowe received a sentence of life in prison without parole. Dubose’s attorneys argued in court that Rowe was the one directing their client’s actions, and that their client was intellectually disabled.

“Ricky did shoot at people, Ricky did,” attorney Gabrielle Pittman said, according to WMAZ. “But you know who was driving, you know who put the gun in his hands, you know who told him to hang out the window and shoot? That was Donnie.”

Prosecutor T. Wright Barksdale called Dubose “an intelligent, calculated criminal,” however.

Billue and Monica’s families welcomed the verdict and sentence against Dubose.

“The closure that the judicial system has brought to us has given us great hope because I know the next step is going to be healing,” Curtis’ sister Denise Billue said, according to WMAZ in a June 16 report. “We know that we will never move on without Curt, but we will move forward.”

“I’m extremely grateful for everybody involved in making this happen and getting justice for my dad,” Christopher’s daughter Zoey Monica said. “I’m just excited about getting to finally feel some sort of peace with everything.”

Georgia Inmate Hanged Himself After Being Sentenced to Death for Murdering Two Prison Guards: Sheriff

Jerome Bowden Georgia Execution

Jerome Bowden was executed by the State of Georgia for a double murder. According to court documents Jerome Bowden would break into a home and stab to death a mother and her daughter. The elderly woman who was paralyzed and bedridden and her daughter would be found days later. Jerome Bowen would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death. Jerome Bowden would be executed by lethal injection on June 25, 1986

Jerome Bowden More News

Strapped into Georgia’s electric chair, moments from meeting his fate, Jerome Bowden uttered his last words.

I would like to thank the people of this institution for taking such care of me as they did,” said Bowden, 34, convicted of a gruesome murder in Columbus. “I hope by my execution being carried out, it will bring some light to this thing that is wrong.”

Then a prison official flipped a switch, sending 2,000 volts of electricity through Bowden’s body. Two minutes later, a physician pronounced him dead.

That was June 24, 1986. Thirty years later, Georgia officials insist that details of Bowden’s execution remain, by law, “confidential state secrets.”

The State Board of Pardons and Paroles recently turned down a request from two documentary filmmakers to release documents concerning Bowden’s long-ago appeal for clemency. The filmmakers are especially interested in a board-ordered IQ test that apparently found Bowden to be, in the language of the day, mentally retarded.

“They don’t care about historical accuracy,” said Paula Caplan, a Harvard University professor who has spent a dozen years working with the director Mark Harris on “American Justice: The Jerome Bowden Story.” Their film, still unfinished, credits Bowden’s execution with swaying public opinion – and the U.S. Supreme Court – against executing people with intellectual disabilities. (Warning: the film contains graphic crime-scene photographs.)

Two years after putting Bowden to death, Georgia became the first state to bar such executions. But the state law spares only condemned killers who are judged “beyond a reasonable doubt,” the highest standard of proof in the U.S. legal system. The Supreme Court prohibited the practice in 2002, but deferred to states’ judgment on whether inmates are disabled.

The film is “a history about a major turning point in U.S. law that started in Georgia,” Caplan said in an interview. “But it’s still happening, and it’s still happening the way it happened to Jerome Bowden.”

In 2015, for instance, Georgia executed Warren Lee Hill, whose IQ was 70, for beating his prison cellmate to death. An IQ of 70 or below is generally considered to indicate a disability.

The records the filmmakers sought on Bowden’s execution are confidential under state law, said Steve Hayes, a Parole Board spokesman. The law, however, also gives the board the discretion to make the documents public.

“In determining whether to declassify the records, the board determines whether declassifying the materials furthers public policy, assists law enforcement or aids in the protection of the public,” Hayes said. “The board determined their request did not meet any of the criteria.”

More than perhaps any other state agency, the parole board operates with virtually no public scrutiny. It considers clemency requests and most other matters in private and, in most cases, offers no explanation for its decision.

This decision leaves a hole in the film, which begins in 1976 in Columbus.

Police were called to check on the well-being of Kathryn Stryker, 55, who lived with her 76-year-old mother, Wessie Bell Jenkins. In the kitchen, an officer found Stryker’s body, disfigured from being beaten and stabbed. Jenkins lay in bed, badly wounded but still alive four days after the assault. She died of a heart attack in a hospital about a month later.

Detectives arrested a 16-year-old neighbor, James Lee Graves. He confessed to robbing the women but said his friend Jerome Bowden, then 24, killed Stryker and assaulted Jenkins.

Jerome Bowden had served time in prison on a burglary conviction, but relatives and friends told the filmmakers he was not violent.

“Jerome wasn’t a bad child,” his sister Josie Lee Henderson said in the film. “He was off some.”

Another sister, Shirley Thomas, said Bowden was “retarded” – a “slow learner” who attended “a special class for special people.” He could not read, Thomas said, and could not have comprehended the signed confession that detectives later presented at his trial.

Both sisters are now dead.

When Jerome Bowden went on trial, a judge denied a request from his court-appointed lawyer – trying his first criminal case – to pay for psychological testing. The judge did not allow the lawyer to mention Bowden’s intellectual disability in front of the jury.

Testifying in his own defense, Bowden denied killing Stryker. He said he confessed only because a detective told him it would keep him “from going to the electric chair.”

In a separate trial, Graves was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison. Now 56, he was released on parole in 2012.

Jerome Bowden spent nearly a decade on Death Row before officials set an execution date. He appealed for clemency from the parole board, mentioning that at age 14, his IQ was recorded as 59 – 41 points below average intelligence.

The board granted a temporary stay of execution and ordered a new IQ test. Ten days later, a psychologist told the board that Bowden scored 71 on a verbal section of the test and 62 on the non-verbal portion. His combined score was 65 – still in the disabled range.

But the board lifted the stay, describing Bowden as “mildly retarded.”

“We learned a great deal of what ‘mildly retarded’ means,” a parole board member was quoted as saying in news reports. “A mildly retarded person is not walking around in a cloud. … If he doesn’t understand the relationship between pain and punishment now, he did then.”

Jerome Bowden was put to death the following morning.

Caplan, who also is a psychologist, wants to see the test papers from 1986 to assess whether the IQ examination was properly administered and interpreted.

“It may be it was administered by the book,” she said. “But we do not know that. This man was executed because of it.”

https://www.ajc.com/blog/investigations/years-later-details-disabled-man-execution-still-state-secrets/GNtfMdTqyZrTpscahSaNZK/

John Young Georgia Execution

John Young was executed by the State of Georgia for a triple murder. According to court documents John Young would break into the home of the victims and would beat to death three elderly people Coleman Brice, Gladys Brice, and Katie Davis. John Young would also attack three others in the home. John Young would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death. John Young would be executed by way of electric chair on March 20 1985

John Young More News

The sister of triple murderer John C. Young, who died early Wednesday in Georgia’s electric chair, said he faced his execution calmly and his only concern was for the welfare of his brothers and sisters.

Katie Young Vasser, who spent more than three hours with the condemned man Tuesday at the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Center, said he read the Bible and expressed hope that his four sisters and three brothers would comfort each other after his death.

Young, 28, spent nine years on death row for murdering three elderly Macon residents during a 1974 rampage. Coleman Brice, 85, his wife Gladys, 83, and Katie Davis, 83, were beaten and kicked to death in their homes.

Three other elderly residents of Young’s racially mixed neighborhood were seriously injured in similar attacks. All six were white.

Young is the sixth man, and the fifth black, to be executed in Georgia since the state resumed using the electric chair in 1983 after a 19-year suspension.

Mrs. Vasser, who lives near Houston, Texas, said her brother never acknowledged the murders.

″I don’t think he knows,″ she said, adding that he was ″real, real out on drugs″ when the attacks occurred.

Mrs. Vasser and another sister, Annie Duncan of Milledgeville, were among Young’s last visitors Tuesday.

″We read the Bible, we cried and when we left he had a smile on his face,″ Mrs. Vasser said in a telephone interview. ″He had peace within … and, having come to know Christ, he was calm.″

No representatives of the victims’ families were at the prison for the execution.

Young’s attorneys filed numerous last-minute appeals based on the admission of his trial lawyer that he was under the influence of drugs while representing Young. But Young’s last chance for a stay vanished Tuesday evening when the U.S. Supreme Court turned down his appeal request by 5-3.

About four hours later, Young was escorted into the execution chamber and strapped into the varnished wooden chair by six guards.

In a barely audible final statement delivered to 12 official witnesses, Young complained that poor people and blacks were ″pawns of society.″

″Being born black in America was against me,″ he said. ″Y’all cry that America was built on Christianity, I say it was built on slavery.″

At 12:15 a.m., Warden Ralph Kemp read the court’s execution order and two guards placed a leather harness over Young’s shaved head, while two others attached electrodes to his right leg and head.

Then, with a leather mask over his face, 1,080 volts of electricity was applied.

Two minutes later the current was turned off and his body was allowed to cool for six minutes before two doctors pronounced him dead.

Outside the central Georgia prison, about 30 death penalty opponents staged a 45-minute vigil, holding candles and singing hymns.

About 20 people demonstrated in favor of the execution, including Ed Stephens, grand dragon of the Georgia Ku Klux Klan, and two other robed Klansmen. The two groups were separated by a barbed wire fence.

https://apnews.com/article/3618d56eb2dfb6d1c53cf6cbc8b47bb8

Van Solomon Georgia Execution

Van Solomon was executed by the State of Georgia for the murder of a store manager during a robbery. According to court documents Van Solomon would shoot and kill the store manager during a robbery. Van Solomon who was a former Minister was arrested, convicted and sentenced to death. Van Solomon would be executed by way of the electric chair on February 20 1985

Van Solomon More News

Van Roosevelt Solomon, a former minister who was once a robbery-shooting victim himself, was executed in Georgia’s electric chair early Wednesday for the 1979 torture-murder of a convenience store manager.

Solomon went to the execution chamber after a final meal of fruit and chocolate ice cream and was put to death with a single, two-minute surge of 2,080 volts of electricity.

The 41-yearold former Oklahoma Baptist minister was pronounced dead at 12:27 a.m. EST. Prison officials said his body was turned over to his family for cremation.

‘I would like to say I would like to give my blessing to all the people who tried to save my life,’ Solomon said after being strapped into the electric chair.

Among those who joined the fight to save Solomon was was the widow of slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., who said his execution would be ‘a travesty.’

Solomon walked into the execution chamber calmly and spoke quietly to prison guards who strapped his arms, legs and chest into the wooden chair. After making his final statement, Solomon prayed briefly with the prison chaplain, then stared intently while warden Ralph Kemp read his death sentence

When the electricity surged through Solomon, he bolted upright with clenched fists. Afterwards, his torso relaxed and slumped forward and moments later he was prounounced dead by two prison physicians.

Defense attorney George Kendall, who witnessed the execution, sighed deeply, closed his eyes, lowered his head briefly, then stared intently at his dead client before leaving the execution chamber.

About 50 demonstrators stood in a light rain outside the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Center. Death penalty protesters decried executions as ‘modern day crucifixions’ while capital punishment advocates called it ‘a permanent attitude adjustment.’

Hours before Solomon was put to death, the Supreme Court and Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles refused his pleas for a stay and clemency.

He became the 38th convict executed in the nation and the fifth put to death in Georgia’s electric chair since the Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment in 1976.

Solomon was sentenced to death for killing Roger Dennis Tackett, the manager of a convenience store in Smyrna. Five years earlier, Solomon almost died when he was shot in the stomach during a holdup of a downtown Atlanta grocery store he managed.

Defense attorneys insist Solomon’s accomplice, death row inmate Brandon Jones, pumped five bullets into Tackett, a 35-year-old Phi Betta Kappa graduate of Georgetown University and father of a 7-year-old daughter.

Prosecutor Tom Charron disagreed. He said there were two pistols and both men had gunpowder residue on their hands.

‘They shot his thumb off as he was dying because they wanted to know where the money was,’ said Charron, who called the slaying ‘particularly horrible.’

The victim’s father, Norman Tackett, 72, said the execution would ease his pain ‘to some extent.’

‘They have all the evidence that proves they’re guilty and they should have to suffer too,’ he said.

The condemned killer spent his final day visiting relatives, including his mother, sisters, aunts, nieces and nephews.

Solomon, the son of an alcoholic father and pious mother, served 3 years in Oklahoma prisons for assault and armed robbery before becoming an assistant pastor of a Baptist church in Lawton, Okla.

Friends in Lawton and Atlanta, where Solomon moved in 1973, say he took in numerous homeless and needy people and the pastor of his Lawton church called him ‘a caring and deeply Christian man.’

Defense attorneys say the jury that sentenced Solomon to death was never told about his past good deeds.

Coretta Scott King wrote the pardons board that Solomon’s execution ‘would be a travesty of justice.’

https://www.upi.com/Archives/1985/02/20/Van-Roosevelt-Solomon-a-former-minister-who-was-once/8441477723600/