Death penalty on decline in Georgia
ATLANTA — Georgia prosecutors have long had a reputation for zealously seeking the death penalty to punish heinous killers. And yet capital punishment in 2019 seems to be going the way of the guillotine and the gallows: It’s disappearing.
A jury in Augusta imposed the last death sentence in Georgia in March 2014. With no capital trials set for early this year, it’s all but certain the state will go at least five years without a death sentence.
That span is the longest here since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment more than four decades ago. It wasn’t long ago when death sentences were fairly routine in the state. Between 2007 and 2014, for example, prosecutors convinced Georgia juries to hand down death sentences in 18 cases.
Pursuing a death penalty means a costly trial and decades of appeals. And it’s now made more difficult by jurors’ growing reluctance to send convicts to their death. The availability of a life-without-parole sentence, which is seen by many as a more humane option, offers an alternative that district attorneys are turning to more often.
Last year, Georgia’s district attorneys filed notices to seek the death penalty in just three cases. That’s also the lowest number, on an annual basis, in decades. It wasn’t that long ago when DAs sought death for dozens of cases a year, such as in 2011 when they sought it 26 times or 2005 when they sought it 40 times, according to state records obtained by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution under an Open Records Act request.
“Wow, I didn’t know that,” Cobb County District Attorney Vic Reynolds said, when told so few death notices were filed last year. He attributed the precipitous drop to the ability of prosecutors to get sentences of life in prison without the possibility of parole.
This is also reflected on a national level. Across the U.S., capital sentences are reaching historic lows.
“I believe at some point it will go away. It will either be abolished by law or no longer used because the public no longer supports it.” – VERNON KEENAN, FORMER GBI DIRECTOR
Polls have shown increasing support for life-without-parole sentences as opposed to the death penalty.
Last year, 42 death sentences were imposed nationwide, according to the Death Penalty Information Center in Washington. That’s down from 83 such sentences in 2013 and 120 in 2008.
A decade ago, prosecutors in Georgia had to seek the death penalty against a murder defendant in order to get the option of a lifewithout-parole sentence. But in 2009 state lawmakers made a change that allows DAs to seek life without parole in non-death-penalty cases. In Georgia, a sentence of life in prison means an inmate can seek parole after serving 30 years — a lifewithout-parole sentence is the only way to be sure someone convicted stays in prison.
In the Cobb County hot-car death case involving a toddler, Reynolds did not seek death for the child’s father, Justin Ross Harris. Instead, Reynolds obtained a life-withoutparole sentence after Harris’ conviction.
“The majority of prosecutors around the state are now convinced that a life-without-parole sentence actually means what it says,” said Reynolds, who has sought the death penalty in one case during his six years as DA. “It’s made a huge difference.”
Reynolds also acknowledged that the public’s attitude toward capital punishment has shifted. “It’s now more difficult to obtain a death sentence because that’s not necessarily what many of your citizens or jurors wish to be done these days,” he noted.
Vernon Keenan, who retired Jan. 1 after serving 15 years as GBI director, said he doesn’t believe the death penalty will be around much longer.
“I believe at some point it will go away,” he said. “It will either be abolished by law or no longer used because the public no longer supports it.”
The state’s former top lawman said he’s never supported capital punishment.
“It doesn’t accomplish much of anything,” Keenan said. “It doesn’t deter anyone from committing the crime. They’re not concerned about the sentence because they don’t think they’ll get caught.”