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Georgia attempts to make it easier to sentence someone to death

By Rob Leonard

House Bill 185 introduced by Rep. Barry Fleming is an attempt to re-write Georgia’s long standing and deeply-rooted law of requiring unanimous verdicts.  Interestingly, it seeks to rewrite the law where unanimous verdicts are needed the most, Death Penalty cases.  How in the world is in that we would require a unanimous verdict to convict someone of a minor misdemeanor, but 9 out of 12 would be OK to sentence a defendant to death? This news comes on the heels of Willie Williams release from prison last week after being exonerated by DNA evidence.  He spent the last 21 years of his life in prison for a crime he didn’t commit.  It was the sixth time in seven years that DNA has cleared an inmate in Georgia.  This is an issue not limited to Georgia, it is happening all over the country, prompting many states to modify the procedures used in police line-ups and raising awareness on the fallability of eyewitness evidence...continue to full post

Full post as published by Georgia Criminal Law Blog on January 31, 2007 (boomark / email).