Georgia death row prisoner Stacey Ian Humphreys won’t be executed tonight, under an order from the Supreme Court of Georgia that hints the justices want his bid for resentencing to proceed on a normal schedule instead of rushing through it to meet a 7 p.m. deadline.
The state’s high court indicated Wednesday that a Cobb judge’s last-minute order staying the condemned prisoner’s execution would remain in place as it considers “the important and novel questions” raised by Humphreys’ attorneys on the eve of his scheduled execution.
The justices said the appeal will be considered “in the ordinary course of business and according to a forthcoming scheduling order.”
“We leave undisturbed the stay order issued by the Cobb County Superior Court,” the justices said.
A spokesperson for the Department of Corrections confirmed the execution would not happen Wednesday as planned, but declined to comment further.
State prosecutors had sought to overturn a decision by Cobb County Superior Court Judge Tyler Browning, who ruled late Tuesday that Humphreys, convicted in the 2003 killings of two real estate agents, should have a hearing to determine whether his sentence should be reduced under a new Georgia law.
The Georgia Survivors Justice Act, touted as a tool for domestic violence and child abuse victims, allows judges to consider a person’s history as a victim of abuse when deciding their punishment. Attorneys for Humphreys have argued the law doesn’t expressly require the crime in question to involve the perpetrator’s abuser.
Humphreys, 53, had been scheduled to die by lethal injection Wednesday at 7 p.m. at the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification State Prison in Jackson.
The state has argued that, should the court apply Georgia’s Survivor Justice Act to Humphreys, it would effectively nullify the death penalty.
Humphreys’ defense attorneys argued earlier Tuesday that he should not be executed because years of childhood physical and sexual abuse served as a major contributing factor in his crimes.
“Mr. Humphreys endured years of arbitrary beatings, whippings, he was burned with cigarettes,” Humphreys’ attorney, Brian Kammer, said. “He suffered a skull fracture at age 3 and his parents withheld treatment for that.”
Kammer said Humphreys was exposed to domestic violence and substance abuse throughout his childhood, and was sexually abused by his paternal great-grandmother “for many years.”
That abuse severely damaged Humphreys’ mental health and ultimately led to his criminal behavior as an adult, Kammer argued.
The novel argument came just hours before four members of the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles voted to deny clemency.
State prosecutors contend the Georgia law at the center of Humphreys’ argument is meant to protect those accused of killing or harming their abusers, not someone facing the death penalty for murdering two strangers more than two decades ago.
Humphreys was convicted and sentenced to death nearly two decades ago for the 2003 killings of Cyndi Williams and Lori Brown, who were strangled and then shot to death in the model home of a Cobb subdivision.
Senior Assistant Attorney General Sabrina Graham said Humphreys’ defense team is effectively using the new law against legislators’ intent.
“The purpose was for people who were subject to abuse by the victims that they harmed,” Graham told the judge Tuesday. “It was not to give people another chance to produce mitigating evidence that they already presented at trial and then ask the judge to resentence them based on that.”
She said the argument to apply the law to his case “creates a new exception to the death penalty.”
She said that in her more than two decades of trying death penalty cases, virtually every defendant has argued family abuse and mental disorders contributed in some way to the crimes.
Humphreys’ attorneys said the way the law is written does not exclude him from claiming abuse was a significant contributing factor in his crimes.
“Your honor, it says what it says,” Kammer told the judge.
In his order, Browning sided with the defense, saying there’s nothing in the new statute limiting the new law to cases in which victims commit crimes against those who’ve abused them.
“While the GSJA may make more logical sense as a legal vehicle exclusive to victims who commit crimes against their abusers, neither the preamble for the bill nor the plain wording of the statutes limit it,” he said.
Prosecutors vowed to promptly appeal the judge’s decision in the hope of carrying out Humphreys’ execution within the allotted time frame.
Credit: AJC staff
Credit: AJC staff
If the resentencing hearing is allowed to move forward, Graham asked for at least two months to prepare. The judge granted their request.
Barring last-minute intervention from a higher court, Browning said he plans to schedule the hearing in “around 60 days.”
Outside the courtroom, defense attorney Nathan Potek said he believes the new law applies to his client.
There’s no exclusion or limitation laid out in the statute, Potek said.
“It’s asked to focus on folks that suffered that extreme violence and abuse as children. We think Mr. Humphreys did,” he said. “Mr. Humphreys is a person that this statute is designed to cover.”
— AJC staff writers Caleb Groves and Taylor Croft contributed to this report.
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