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Kenneth Fults Georgia Execution

Kenneth Fults was executed by the State of Georgia for the murder of his neighbor during a robbery. According to court documents Kenneth Fults would break into his neighbors home and during the process would shoot and kill nineteen year old Cathy Bounds after smothering the woman with a pillow. Kenneth Fults would steal the victims car and fled the scene. Kenneth Fults would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death. Kenneth Fults would be executed by lethal injection on April 12, 2016

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A Georgia inmate convicted of the fatal shooting of a woman during a 1996 crime spree had his request for a stay of execution rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday, hours before he received a lethal injection.

Attorneys for inmate Kenneth Fults had asked the nation’s highest court to consider arguments that a juror who imposed the sentence was motivated by racial bias. The request presented to Justice Clarence Thomas on behalf of the court had been denied, the court said in a statement Tuesday afternoon. It gave no explanation for the decision.

Fults was executed at 7:37 p.m. Tuesday at the state prison in Jackson, according to the Georgia Department of Corrections.

In a statement the department said Fults “accepted a final prayer and declined to make a final statement.”

The 47-year-old inmate had pleaded guilty to killing a neighbor, 19-year-old Cathy Bounds, during a burglary in January 1996, and a jury sentenced him to death

On Tuesday, Fults had visits with 17 relatives, a friend and an attorney and two paralegals, officials said.

On Monday, the State Board of Pardons and Paroles declined to grant clemency for Fults. The parole board is the only entity in Georgia that can commute a death sentence.

Prosecutors have said Fults killed Bounds during a weeklong crime spree that began when he stole two guns during burglaries. After trying unsuccessfully to kill his former girlfriend’s new boyfriend with one of the stolen guns, Fults broke into the trailer next to his, where Bounds lived with her boyfriend.

Bounds, who was home alone, pleaded for her life and offered him the rings on her fingers, but Fults forced her into the bedroom, wrapped electrical tape around her head, put her face-down on the bed, put a pillow over her head and shot her five times in the back of the head, prosecutors said.

Fults’ lawyers said in a clemency petition that their client had an extremely tough childhood characterized by abuse and neglect and an intellectual disability that keeps him from behaving appropriately

“Mr. Fults, the man, committed a terrible, tragic act when he killed Cathy Bounds,” they wrote. “But before the man existed, there was an innocent, vulnerable child in his place. And that child, Kenny, fell through the cracks.”

They also pointed out what they said were flaws in his sentencing trial, including a juror they said was motivated by racial bias and a defense attorney who fell asleep and failed to provide jurors with adequate information.

In their filing with the Supreme Court, Fults’ lawyers argued his death sentence is unconstitutional because one of the jurors who imposed it was motivated by racial prejudice.

During jury selection for Fults’ trial in 1997, juror Thomas Buffington, who was white, told the judge and lawyers on both sides that he felt no racial prejudice.

An investigator working with Fults’ lawyers eight years later spoke to Buffington about his jury service. Buffington, who was 79 at the time of the interview and has since died, twice used a racial slur when talking about Kenneth Fults, who is black.

Once he pled guilty, I knew I would vote for the death penalty because that’s what that (N-word) deserved,” Buffington said, according to the signed, April 12, 2005, affidavit in the court record.

State and federal courts have consistently declined to consider Fults’ argument that his sentence was unfairly imposed because of racial bias, mostly for procedural reasons that have to do with when the argument was first raised. The U.S. Supreme court in October declined to take up the issue on appeal.

As the scheduled execution loomed, Fults’ lawyers asked the high court to take the case directly, not as an appeal. They argued it was very similar to another case the court agreed last week to hear.

The state argued in a court filing Monday that this case did not demonstrate the “exceptional circumstances” necessary for the Supreme Court to take it on directly.

Fults was the fourth man executed in Georgia this year. Another man, Daniel Lucas, is scheduled to die April 27.

https://www.news4jax.com/news/2016/04/13/georgia-executes-man-who-killed-teen-neighbor-in-1996/

Joshua Bishop Georgia Execution

Joshua Bishop was executed by the State of Georgia for the murder of a man during a robbery. According to court documents Joshua Bishop and Mark Braxley would murder Leverett Morrison because they wanted his Jeep. After Joshua Bishop was arrested he would confess to the murder of Ricky Lee Willis. Joshua Bishop would be sentenced to death and executed by lethal injection on March 31, 2016

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Georgia has executed Joshua Daniel Bishop for the 1994 Baldwin County murder of Leverett Morrison, the office of the Georgia attorney general announced Thursday.

Bishop, 41, was put to death by lethal injection at 9:27 p.m. at the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Center in Butts County. The sentence was carried out shortly after the United States Supreme Court denied Bishop’s request for a stay of execution.

A possible reprieve from the nation’s highest court was all Bishop had left after the Georgia Supreme Court on Thursday afternoon declined to halt his execution. The State Board of Pardons and Paroles also denied his plea for clemency Thursday.

The original execution hour of 7 p.m. came and went, as is the norm in death penalty cases.

During his final evening of life, Bishop ate all of his last meal: a barbecue sandwich, Brunswick stew, potato chips, coleslaw, lemonade and purple candy. He also received 13 visitors — a mixture of friends, clergy and legal reps — and recorded a final statement.

Bishop is the third man Georgia has executed this year. There is another lethal injection scheduled for April 12 — Kenneth Fults for murdering his neighbor in 1996.

Bishop was 19 when he and 36-year-old Mark Braxley murdered Morrison because they wanted the keys to his Jeep.

The three men had spent much of June 25, 1994, drinking at a local bar before they moved their party to Braxley’s trailer where they smoked crack.

Morrison, 35, was asleep but woke up when Bishop tried to fish his keys out of his pocket. Bishop and Braxley hit Morrison with a car battery and then beat him with a curtain rod until he was dead. They left his body between two dumpsters, set fire to his Jeep, and returned to Braxley’s trailer to clean the murder scene.

Then they went back to the bar to drink.

While Bishop confessed to killing Morrison — as well as a second murder investigators did not yet know about — he still went to trial and was ultimately sentenced to die. Braxley, however, pleaded guilty and is serving a sentence of life with parole.

The two were never tried on charges of killing Ricky Lee Wills on June 9, 1994, but evidence of Wills’ murder was used to secure a death sentence for Bishop. Bishop and Braxley said they killed Wills because he he’d had sexual contact with Bishop’s mother, who was a prostitute and drug and alcohol addict.

https://www.ajc.com/news/local/georgia-executes-joshua-bishop-for-1994-murder/cMjL3hrLCd0XaCk9AEUI3K/

Travis Hittson Georgia Execution

Travis Hittson was executed by the State of Georgia for the murder of another sailor. According to court documents Travis Hittson and Edward Vollmer would murder fellow Navy sailor Conway Utterbeck whose body was dismembered and spread over two states. Travis Hittson would be convicted and sentenced to death. Travis Hittson would be executed February 18, 2016

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A former Navy crewman was executed Wednesday in Georgia for killing a fellow sailor whose remains were found buried in two states.

Travis Hittson, 45, was declared dead at 8:14 p.m. by Warden Bruce Chatman after receiving an injection of the barbiturate pentobarbital at the state prison in Jackson. He was convicted in the April 1992 killing of Conway Utterbeck.

When Chatman asked if he wanted to make a final statement in front of witnesses, Hittson said, “No, sir. I’m alright.” He then agreed to have a prayer read.

Georgia doesn’t announce exactly when the lethal drugs begin flowing, and the injection isn’t visible to observers. But the warden left the execution chamber at 8:04 p.m., and records from past executions show the lethal drug generally begins to flow within a minute or two of the warden’s departure.

Hittson blinked repeatedly for several minutes and then appeared to take several deep breaths before becoming still about four minutes after the warden left the execution chamber.

Hittson’s lawyers had said he was mistreated and neglected as a child and constantly craved the approval of others. That, they said, combined with alcoholism and relatively low intelligence, made it easy for his direct supervisor in the Navy, Edward Vollmer, to manipulate him into killing Utterbeck.

The State Board of Pardons and Paroles, which is the only entity in Georgia authorized to commute a death sentence, on Tuesday denied Hittson’s request for clemency. The board didn’t give a reason for the denial, which is standard.

Hittson’s lawyers also contended in a court filing that his constitutional rights were violated during sentencing when a judge allowed a state psychologist who had examined Hittson to recount damaging statements Hittson had made about Utterbeck.

A Butts County judge on Tuesday rejected those arguments and the state Supreme Court on Wednesday rejected an appeal of that decision and denied a stay of execution.

The U.S. Supreme Court also declined to halt the execution.

Hittson, Utterbeck and Vollmer were stationed in Pensacola, in the Florida Panhandle, in April 1992 when they went to Vollmer’s parents’ home in Warner Robins in central Georgia for a weekend.

Hittson told investigators he and Vollmer went out drinking the second night they were there, leaving Utterbeck at the house. As they were driving back to the house, Vollmer told Hittson that Utterbeck planned to kill them both and that they needed to “get him” first, according to court filings.

When they reached the house, where Utterbeck was sleeping in a recliner, Vollmer put on a bulletproof vest and took a sawed-off shotgun and a handgun from his car and gave Hittson an aluminum baseball bat. On Vollmer’s instructions, Hittson hit Utterbeck several times in the head with the bat and then dragged him into the kitchen where Vollmer was waiting, according to court filings. Vollmer stepped on Utterbeck’s hand and Hittson shot him in the head, according to court filings.

Vollmer said they needed to cut up Utterbeck’s body to get rid of the evidence, according to court filings. Hittson told investigators he began to cut the body with a hacksaw but he became sick and Vollmer finished dismembering the body, according to court filings.

They buried Utterbeck’s torso in Houston County in central Georgia and brought the rest of the remains back to Pensacola and buried them there.

When investigators began questioning Utterbeck’s shipmates a couple of months later, Hittson confessed and also implicated Vollmer, according to court filings. He led investigators to Utterbeck’s remains and other crime scene evidence.

Travis Hittson was convicted of malice murder, aggravated assault, possession of a firearm during the commission of a crime and theft by taking. He was sentenced to die for the malice murder conviction.

Vollmer reached a plea deal and is serving a life sentence. He was denied parole in 1999 and again last year. Reconsideration of his case had been set for 2020, but based on information offered at Hittson’s clemency hearing, the parole board on Wednesday reset that for 2024. Eight years is the maximum delay between consideration dates allowed by board rules.

Travis Hittson was the second person executed in Georgia this year. The state executed five inmates last year, the most it has executed in a calendar year since 1987.

https://www.al.com/news/2016/02/former_navy_crewman_travis_hit.html

Brandon Jones Georgia Execution

Brandon Jones was executed by the State of Georgia for the murder of a store clerk. According to court documents Brandon Jones and Van Roosevelt Solomon would enter a store and in the process of robbing it would shoot and kill the manager Roger Tackett in 1979. Both men would be sentenced to death, Van Roosevelt Solomon was executed by way of the electric chair in 1985. Brandon Jones would be executed by lethal injection on February 3, 2016

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Georgia has executed the oldest man on the state’s death row, Brandon Astor Jones.

At 12:46 a.m. Wednesday, Jones, just 10 days shy of his 73rd birthday, took his last breath, ending a decades-long journey for the daughter and widow of the man he murdered in 1979.

The execution had been scheduled for 7 p.m. Tuesday. Jones, the fifth-oldest inmate executed in the nation, waited in a holding cell a few steps from the death chamber as the appointed time came and went amid a flurry of last-minute court filings for mercy.

It took more than an hour to prepare Jones for his lethal injection. According to a media witness who monitored the setup, it appeared they had to insert an IV into his groin area, which is protocol if the nurses cannot find accessible veins in the inmate’s arms.

Jones fought death. His eyes closed within a minute of the warden leaving the execution chamber, but 6 minutes later his eyes popped open. He looked at a clock on the wall, and then appeared to look at the man who prosecuted him in 1979, former Cobb County District Attorney Tom Charron, who was sitting on the front row.

After he died, about 15 of his supporters and death-penalty opponents, who were gathered about a mile from the execution building, held hands and prayed.

One supporter, Carole Butcher, said she had been writing Jones for about 15 years from her home in the United Kingdom. “We had our ups and downs. He supported me through my ups and downs,” Butcher said tearfully.

Jones’ attorneys waged a legal battle through the final hours to spare the 72-year-old from being executed for the 1979 murder of Roger Tackett, who managed a Tenneco convenience store and gas station in Cobb County.

The battle ended at about 11 p.m. Tuesday, when U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas denied requests for a stay, allowing the execution to go forward.

No final statement

Three friends and 11 family members visited Jones on his last full day of life, as did a lawyer and an investigator.

Afterward, Jones ate his final meal — the same dinner served every other inmate at the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison near Jackson: chicken, rutabagas, turnip greens, dry white beans, cornbread, fruit punch and, for dessert, bread pudding.

Jones declined to make a final statement, although he did record a message several hours before his execution.

Cruel and unusual?

Earlier on Tuesday, the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta turned down Jones’ request for a stay so his lawyers could argue before all 11 federal appeals court judges, sitting as a group, the constitutionality of the Georgia law that keeps secret the identity of the pharmacist who makes the pentobarbital for executions.

Although a majority of those judges rejected his request for a stay, five of the judges in four dissents sharply criticized the secrecy law.

“Today Brandon Jones will be executed, possibly in violation of the Constitution,” 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Robin Rosenbaum wrote in one of the dissenting opinions. “He may also be cruelly and unusually punished in the process. But if he is, we will not know until it’s too late — if ever.”

Pardons and Paroles

Challenges to secrecy laws have failed repeatedly in Georgia and in other states with similar statutes.

These laws were adopted as it became increasingly hard to secure lethal injection drugs from makers who were under public pressure from death penalty opponents.

Opponents, however, say the laws make it impossible to ensure that the drugs made are pure and will not cause an unnecessarily painful death.

Jones also lost on Monday before the State Board of Pardons and Paroles despite his argument that the death sentence for this particular crime was disproportionate.

Co-defendant electrocuted

Jones and Van Roosevelt Solomon were both sentenced to die for murdering Tackett, who had stayed at the Tenneco convenience store after closing to finish paperwork so he would be free to attend Father’s Day Mass with his daughter and wife.

Jones worked for Solomon at his painting business. The two had set out to burglarize the Tenneco.

JW Ledford Georgia Execution

JW Ledford was executed by the State of Georgia for the murder of his elderly neighbor. According to court documents JW Ledford would fatally stab to death seventy three year old Dr. Harry Johnston during a robbery. When it was time for his execution on May 17, 2017 he would make a statement that would lead to the warden cutting off the mic. JW Ledford would be executed by lethal injection

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Georgia on Wednesday carried out its first execution this year, putting to death a man convicted of killing his 73-year-old neighbor 25 years ago.

J.W. Ledford’s time of death was 1:17 a.m. after an injection of compounded barbiturate pentobarbital at the state prison in Jackson, Warden Eric Sellers told witnesses.

Ledford, 45, was convicted of murder in the January 1992 stabbing death of Dr. Harry Johnston in Murray County.

Ledford smiled broadly as witnesses entered the viewing area. When given a chance to make a final statement, he appeared to quote from the movie “Cool Hand Luke.”

“What we have here is a failure to communicate. Some men you just can’t reach,” he said, later adding, “I am not the failure. You are the failure to communicate.”

“You can kiss my white trash ass,” he added, continuing to smile.

As the warden exited the execution chamber at 1:09 a.m., Ledford began talking again, but the microphones had been cut off so his words weren’t audible.

Records from past executions show the lethal drug generally starts flowing within a couple of minutes of the warden exiting the execution chamber. Ledford raised his head to look at his right arm right after the warden left and about a minute later appeared to speak to a guard to his right.

He then rested his head, closed his eyes and appeared to take several deep breaths before falling still within two or three minutes of the warden leaving the room.

Ledford told police he had gone to Johnston’s home on Jan. 31, 1992, to ask for a ride to the grocery store. After the older man accused him of stealing and smacked him, Ledford pulled out a knife and stabbed Johnston to death, according to court filings. The pathologist who did the autopsy said Johnston suffered “one continuous or two slices to the neck” and bled to death.

After dragging Johnston’s body to another part of Johnston’s property and covering it up, Ledford went to Johnston’s house with a knife and demanded money from Johnston’s wife, according to court filings. He took money and four guns from the home, tied up Johnston’s wife and left in Johnston’s truck. He was arrested later that day.

Ledford told police he had several beers and smoked marijuana in the hours before the killing.

Ledford’s lawyers had asked the parole board to spare him, citing a rough childhood, substance abuse from an early age and his intellectual disability. After holding a hearing Monday, the board declined to grant clemency. Following its normal practice, the board did not give a reason for its denial.

Ledford’s lawyers also tried to get the courts to stop his execution. The challenges were appealed all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court, which rejected them shortly after 12:30 a.m. Wednesday.

Because of changes in brain chemistry caused by a drug Ledford has been taking for chronic nerve pain for more than a decade, there was a high risk that the pentobarbital Georgia planned to use to execute him would not render him unconscious and devoid of sensation or feeling, his lawyers wrote in a federal lawsuit filed Thursday. That would violate the prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment enshrined in the Eighth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, the lawsuit said.

When challenging an execution method on those grounds, a U.S. Supreme Court precedent requires inmates to propose a known and available alternative. Ledford’s lawyers, therefore, proposed that he be executed by firing squad, a method that is not allowed under Georgia law.

Ledford’s lawyers also asked a state court judge to halt the execution because he was only 20 and his brain wasn’t done developing when he killed Johnston. Just as juvenile offenders are considered less culpable and not the “worst of the worst” for whom the death penalty is reserved, the execution of those under 21 is also unconstitutional, Ledford’s lawyers argue.

The state executed nine inmates last year, more than any other state and the most Georgia had executed in a single calendar year since the U.S. Supreme Court allowed the death penalty to resume 40 years ago.

https://www.mercurynews.com/2017/05/17/georgia-executes-man-who-killed-elderly-neighbor-in-1992/