Wheels of justice turn slowly
The Foster murder case will likely take time before it reaches a resolution.
There are no hearings scheduled at this point, and no set timeline for the re-trial of a man whose murder conviction was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2016.
Timothy Tyrone Foster, 49, was sentenced to death in 1987 on accusations he tortured and murdered Queen Madge White, a retired school teacher, during a 1986 burglary.
White was found the next morning by her sister. Her jaw was broken and there was a gash on the top of her head. Before she was strangled to death, she had been molested.
Although police found the stolen items from White’s house at Foster’s
home and the then 18-year-old confessed to the crime, the exclusion of black jurors from the trial gave Foster an avenue for an appeal.
Then-DA Steve Lanier struck off all four black jurors before the trial. Foster’s lawyers filed an open records request to receive the prosecutors’ notes from the 1987 trial.
The notes from a DA investigator show the names of each potential black juror highlighted in green and the word “black” circled next to the race question on the questionnaires.
A hearing in Floyd County Superior Court in 1987 ruled that Lanier provided race-neutral reasons for striking the four black jurors and the Georgia Supreme Court backed that ruling.
In 2015 the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments in the case and in May 2016 overturned Foster’s conviction. “The focus on race in the prosecution’s file plainly demonstrates a concerted effort to keep black prospective jurors off the jury,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote.
Comparisons
Floyd County Superior Court records show there haven’t been many filings in the year since the conviction was overturned. To get an idea of how long Foster’s case may take, we can look at two similar cases in which death sentences — but not convictions — were overturned.
It took years to resolve the cases of Mark Randall McPherson and Gary Chad Thomason. Both men were sentenced to death and both men’s sentences were overturned. Both McPherson and Thomason were resentenced to life without parole.
It took six years to resolve McPherson’s case and 11 for Thomason.
Mark Randall McPherson took a sentencing deal for life without parole for the 1998 murder of Linda Ratcliff after the Georgia Supreme Court overturned his sentence of death in 2008.
The state Supreme Court found that at least one juror would have opted for life or life without parole for McPherson if the panel had heard about his physical abuse and neglect as a child, as well as his drug use and time spent in numerous foster homes, detention centers and group homes.
In 1998, McPherson was living with Ratcliff when he murdered her. Ratcliff had told co-workers she planned to leave him. McPherson then stole her car, cellphone, credit cards and some cash, which he later used to barter for drugs, police reported.
At the time of McPherson’s sentencing District Attorney Leigh Patterson said the agreement ended a legal process that could have extended for years.
In 1992 Gary Chad Thomason fatally shot Jerry Self, 33, outside his Bells Ferry Road home. In the intervening years, Diane Self Rush has attended a seemingly endless procession of court pro- ceedings as Thomason appealed his case.
Convicted and sentenced to death in 1996 on murder, burglary and weapons charges, Thomason had his sentence — but not conviction — overturned in 2003.
Thomason also took a sentencing deal which offered life without parole, rather than the death penalty.
In his re-sentencing hearing in 2014, Thomason testified he was physically and verbally abused as a child and began using drugs. He soon became an addict and burglarized homes to feed his addiction. He was first incarcerated at 17, and was sexually assaulted in prison.
Thomas was sentenced to life without parole after that re-sentencing hearing.
In both cases the families of the victims approved of the sentencing deals of life without parole, Patterson said.
Death Row
Foster was moved from Georgia’s death row in Jackson to Floyd County Jail in March 2017, and was one of two men from Floyd County remaining under sentence of death until his conviction was overturned.
He’ll likely remain in jail without bond until the case is resolved.
James Randall Rogers, now 56, is the only man currently sentenced to death from Floyd County. Rogers raped and murdered his 75-year-old neighbor, Grace Perry in 1980.
He was first convicted and sentenced to death in 1982 on charges of murder, rape and aggravated assault for raping and then impaling Perry with a rake handle.
However, Rogers had to be retried, convicted and sentenced in 1985 after he appealed the original conviction because the grand jury pool didn’t include enough women.
Later Rogers appealed his conviction again, citing a U.S. Supreme Court ban of the execution of mentally retarded criminals. He cited a definition of mental retardation as consistently scoring less than 70 on IQ tests. Rogers took six tests, with his score falling below 70 only once.
In 2007, the Supreme Court of Georgia upheld a Floyd County jury’s 2005 finding that Rogers wasn’t mentally retarded.
The Georgia Department of Corrections does not list any date for Rogers’ scheduled execution.