Hearings to continue in death penalty case
♦ Foster is accused of sexually assaulting and killing a retired Rome school teacher in 1986.
Attorneys for a man facing the death penalty on accusation that he raped and killed a retired school teacher in 1986 said he’d be willing to immediately plead guilty for life in prison — if that option was available.
“We would be willing to plea to life with parole today,” Christian Lamar with the Georgia Capital Defenders Office told Floyd County Superior Court Judge William “Billy” Sparks during a hearing Monday morning.
His client, Timothy Tyrone Foster, has been in state custody since he was 18, he is 53 now. If he were to be convicted, or plea, and be sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole — he would be immediately eligible for parole.
When he approached prosecutors with the idea of Foster pleading guilty to murder, Lamar told the judge the state countered with a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Rome Circuit District Attorney Leigh Patterson disagreed with that contention in court.
“Just to clarify, your honor, we did not make any counter offer,” Patterson told the judge.
A new case with similar circumstances has an additional sentencing option, life without parole. Since Foster’s case is from the 1980s, prior to a change in Georgia law, there are only two options if his case goes to jury trial — life with the possibility of parole or death.
However, in a negotiated plea, Foster could potentially be sentenced to life without parole in prison.
Foster was sentenced to death in 1987 for the murder and molestation of 79-yearold retired school teacher Queen Madge White during a burglary at her home at Highland Circle.
The U.S. Supreme Court overturned his conviction in 2016, saying the district attorney at that time had systematically excluded Black jurors.
In Foster v. Chatman, the high court ruled that the district attorney at the time of trial, Steve Lanier, discriminated on the basis of race when he used preemptory strikes to eliminate all four of the Black potential jurors.
The high court overturned Foster’s conviction and sent it back to Floyd County for retrial.
Foster was transferred to the Floyd County Jail in March 2017 from Georgia’s death row in Jackson. In 2018, the state expressed its intent to seek the death penalty and the process to try him for murder began again.
Monday’s hearing was among several pretrial hearings held for a bevy of motions filed in the case. The morning’s testimony centered around the proportionality of the death penalty — essentially whether or not the death penalty is implemented in a consistent and fair manner.
Prior to this week, the hearings have covered a number of matters including several difficulties presenting the case for trial. Original case files have been lost, only copies remain. Many, if not most, witnesses have died or face health issues.
After a hearing scheduled for Tuesday on if certain pieces of evidence should be admissible, the only thing that remains will be a final hearing concerning the composition of the jury pool, scheduled for August.
Once the local hearings are finalized, the case goes up to the Georgia high court for review prior to trial. During Monday’s hearing, Judge Sparks estimated the case could go to trial by the end of the year or the beginning of 2022.