A Fulton County judge on Monday ordered a temporary pause of a Georgia execution for Stacey Humphreys, who was scheduled to be put to death in December after the state had already halted the procedure shortly before he was to receive a lethal injection. The judge said questions about the clemency process must be addressed before Humphreys’ death sentence can proceed, directing both sides to submit additional legal briefs in the meantime.
The order by Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney addressed an issue raised by Humphreys’ lawyers: they said the parole board members who would consider his clemency petition have conflicts of interest. Humphreys, 52, had been facing a scheduled execution on Dec. 17, but the execution was already paused just days before he was to receive a lethal injection.
Humphreys was convicted in the 2003 shooting deaths of Cyndi Williams, 33, and Lori Brown, 21, at a real estate office where they worked in Cobb County, northwest of Atlanta. In court filings, his attorneys sought to have two parole board members recuse themselves from considering his clemency request, arguing that their participation would taint the hearing.
One of those board members is Kimberly McCoy, whom Humphreys’ lawyers described as having previously been a victim advocate with the Cobb County district attorney’s office at the time of Humphreys’ trial and being assigned to work with victims in the case. The other is Wayne Bennett, whom the lawyers said was sheriff in Glynn County, where the trial was moved because of pretrial publicity, and that he oversaw security for the jurors and for Humphreys during the case.
In Monday’s order, McBurney wrote that “pressing ‘pause’ on the execution machinery until we answer the non-frivolous question raised by Petitioner concerning the proper composition of the Board for his clemency hearing is the correct course of action.” He ordered lawyers for both sides to file additional briefs on the issue by Jan. 19.
The judge also said Humphreys should be allowed to have the conflict-of-interest question researched and argued thoroughly, so that a parole board free of conflicts can decide his case at a clemency hearing, according to the text of the order reported by the Associated Press.