WHAT GEORGIA INMATE SAID BEFORE EXECUTION

Last appeals denied; Ga.’s 9th execution this year leads U.S.

JACKSON — William Sallie, 50, was executed by lethal injection Tuesday at the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison, making him the ninth inmate the state has put to death this year.

Sallie’s death occurred at 10:05 p.m.

The U.S. Supreme Court denied a stay of execution shortly before 9:30 p.m.

At 9:38 p.m., a six-man strap-down team shuffled Sallie into the execution chamber and eased him onto the gurney. Each man kept both hands on Sallie until each leg, each arm and his shoulders were secured. Then four nurses prepared him for the IV.

Sallie winced and kept his eyes closed as the IVs were inserted. Ten minutes after the procedure began, other witnesses filed into the chamber, including relatives of John Moore, the man whom Sallie murdered.

Sallie lifted his head and spoke to the witnesses. “I am very, very sorry for my crime. I really am sorry,” he said. “Man is going to take my life tonight, but God saved my soul. I’ve prayed about this. I do ask for forgiveness.” Then he asked for a prayer.

As the lethal drug flowed into his veins, Sallie’s shoulders twitched four or five times, but his eyes remained closed. Then he was still.

About nine protesters stood vigil in the chilly night air at an area just inside the entrance to the prison grounds.

Sallie was scheduled to die by lethal injection at 7 p.m., but Georgia does not act until all courts have weighed in, which usually puts the actual time of death well into the night and sometimes into the early morning hours of the next day.

Tuesday afternoon, the Georgia Supreme Court unanimously denied Sallie’s request for a stay of execution. His lawyers then petitioned the U.S. justices.

Georgia leads the nation in executions this year. Texas is second, with seven executions.

With Sallie’s punishment, Georgia has nearly doubled the number of executions it has carried out in a year since the death penalty was reinstated in this state in 1973. Georgia executed five people in 2015 and in 1987.

Sallie repeatedly failed to get any court to consider his claim of juror bias, and on Monday the State Board of Pardons and Paroles also rejected that argument.

Sallie was convicted in Bacon County of murdering his father-in-law John Moore in 1990, shooting and wounding his mother-inlaw Linda Moore, and kidnapping his estranged wife and her sister.

Sallie broke into his in-laws’ home — where his wife, Robin, and their 2-year-old son, Ryan, were sleeping — after he lost a custody battle and his wife filed for divorce.

In court filings and a clemency petition, Sallie’s lawyers wrote that the domestic turmoil in William and Robin Sallie’s lives was much like that lived by a juror who denied ever being embroiled in a volatile marriage, a custody dispute or domestic violence.

When the woman was questioned during jury selection for the Sallie murder trial, she said her marriages — four of them — had ended amicably.

Sallie’s lawyers said that was false, contending in their clemency petition that the juror fought with soon-to-be ex-husbands over child custody and support payments and lived with domestic abuse. That juror told an investigator for Sallie’s lawyers that she pushed six fellow jurors to change their votes from life in prison to death, making the jury’s decision unanimous.

Sallie’s lawyers also questioned the judgment of the juror they are challenging because she and a married male juror allegedly left the trial, after being sequestered, and went to her house. Several days after the trial ended, a deputy went to the female juror’s house to tell the male juror that his wife was looking for him.

In numerous filings, Sallie’s lawyers tried to get a hearing on the issue of juror bias, which was not argued in any court because Sallie missed a critical deadline to bring that appeal.

Sallie’s attorney Jack Martin said that deadline came at a time when Sallie did not have a lawyer, as Georgia law does not mandate that the state pay for appellate attorneys for death row inmates.

Martin said former Georgia Supreme Court Chief Justice Norman Fletcher told the Parole Board about Georgia’s history of not providing lawyers for condemned inmates.

Fletcher wrote an op-ed in The New York Times this week — “Georgia’s dangerous rush to execution” — in which he talked about problems inherent in Georgia’s application of the death penalty.