[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----GA., KY.

[Rick Halperin]

April 22



GEORGIA----impending execution

Judge rejects condemned inmate's argument for resentencing



A judge on Friday declined to hold a new sentencing for a condemned Georgia 
inmate who argued he should be resentenced because he wouldn't get the death 
penalty if he were sentenced today.

Robert Earl Butts Jr., 40, is scheduled to die May 3. He and 41-year-old Marion 
Wilson Jr. were convicted and sentenced to death in the March 1996 slaying of 
Donovan Corey Parks in central Georgia.

Butts' lawyers argued in a court filing earlier this week that he should have a 
new sentencing.

The murder for which Butts and Wilson were sentenced had a single victim. There 
was just 1 aggravating factor, a circumstance that increases the severity of a 
crime and increases the possible sentence. According to sentencing data 
obtained and analyzed by Butts' lawyers, no one has been sentenced to death for 
a murder with 1 victim and 1 aggravating factor in over a decade.

That fact, they argue, "raises a threshold inference that Butts' death sentence 
is grossly disproportionate," they argue.

Ocmulgee Judicial Circuit Chief Judge William Prior Jr. on Friday declined to 
hold a new sentencing. The state Supreme Court has the responsibility of 
judging proportionality and has already determined Butts' sentence is not 
disproportionate, he wrote.

But even if his court were the appropriate place for the argument, Prior wrote, 
Butts unnecessarily waited until right before his execution to make the 
argument and failed to show that the data presented would be likely to result 
in a different result.

Butts and Wilson asked Parks for a ride outside a Walmart store in 
Milledgeville, about 93 miles (150 kilometers) southeast of Atlanta. After 
they'd gone a short distance they ordered him to stop the car, dragged him out 
and killed him with a single shot to the back of his head, prosecutors said.

They tried unsuccessfully to sell Parks' car and ended up driving it to a 
remote part of Macon and setting fire to it.

Appeals in Wilson's case are still pending.

(source: Daily Journal)








KENTUCKY:

Kentucky seeks death penalty in 71-year-old veteran's death



Prosecutors in Kentucky are seeking the death penalty against the man they say 
killed a 71-year-old Army veteran during a robbery.

The News-Enterprise reports the Hardin County Commonwealth's Attorney's Office 
filed aggravators Tuesday against 25-year-old Aaron Lee Pearson in the 2016 
death of Norman Hall.

Authorities believe Pearson and 18-year-old Eloysia James-Venerable broke into 
Hall's home to rob him. Hall, who lived alone and used an oxygen tank, died 
from multiple blows to his head and face and being stabbed in the neck.

Pearson is charged with complicity to commit murder, complicity to 1st-degree 
robbery and complicity to tampering with physical evidence charges. It' s 
unclear whether he has a lawyer.

(source: fisherbusinessnews.com)