Three decades ago, Jack Alderman and John Arthur Brown both stood condemned to die for the grisly murder of Alderman's wife in an apartment complex just outside of Savannah.

The murder described in court testimony was as crude as it was vicious. Brown bludgeoned Barbara Jean Alderman with a foot-long crescent wrench. Both men then choked her and, to make sure she was dead, placed her underwater in a bathtub. Then they took her body to a creek to make it appear as if she died in a car accident.

AJC File (ENLARGE)

Rheta Earlene Blase is shown with a photo of her murdered daughter Barbara Jean Alderman in Savannah in 1987.

Courtesy (ENLARGE)

Jack Alderman was convicted of killing his wife, Barbara Jean, on Sept. 21. 1974, in Garden City just outside of Savannah.

VIEW FROM VICTIM'S KIN "I'm very angry at the parole board [for granting parole to accomplice John Arthur Brown]. If that happened to one of their children, you'd see them change." As for Jack Alderman, "I say, God's going to take care of him yet. His time is coming." RHETA EARLENE BLASE Murder victim's mother expressing her outrage to The Atlanta Constitution in March 1987, more than a decade before she died, that Jack Alderman's accomplice, John Arthur Brown, had been granted parole after serving 12 years of a life sentence. ALDERMAN'S ARGUMENT In court filings, Jack Alderman's lawyers say the Georgia Supreme Court relied upon inappropriate cases when upholding Alderman's death sentence in 1985. Citing work published by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution last September, the filings say that by relying upon invalidated death sentences, the court violated the Eighth Amendment's guarantee against cruel and unusual punishment and the "proportionality review" mandated by state law. • In that 1985 opinion, the state Supreme Court cited 20 death sentences it said were similar to Alderman's death sentence to show it was not excessive to or out of line with other death sentences. • Of those, 10 death sentences were already overturned at the time of the decision. • Another seven of those death sentences have since been overturned. • Of those 17 overturned cases, 15 defendants later got life sentences, one was released and one was never retried. CHAIN OF EVENTS • March 28, 1973: Then-Gov. Jimmy Carter signs legislation restoring Georgia's death penalty into law. • Sept. 19, 1974: Barbara Alderman is murdered in her apartment in Garden City near Savannah. • June 14, 1975: A Chatham County jury sentences Jack Alderman to death for his wife's killing. Murder accomplice John Arthur Brown testifies for the prosecution. • Dec. 4, 1975: Another Chatham jury sentences Brown to death for his role in Barbara Jean Alderman's murder. • July 2, 1976: The U.S. Supreme Court upholds Georgia's death-penalty law, reinstating capital punishment. • Dec. 4, 1978: Brown is resentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole. • Jan. 10, 1983: A federal appeals court vacates Alderman's death sentence and orders a new sentencing trial. • April 1, 1984: A second Chatham jury sentences Alderman to death; Brown testifies again for the prosecution. • March 9, 1987: The state Board of Pardons and Paroles grants Brown parole, releasing him from prison. • Jan. 31, 1994: The parole board commutes Brown's life sentence for murder. GEORGIA'S NEXT EXECUTION On Tuesday at 7 p.m.,William Lynd is scheduled to be the first person executed nationwide since the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of lethal injection. Lynd was sentenced to death for the murder of his live-in girlfriend in Berrien County in 1988. Jack Alderman was scheduled to be executed last October, but Georgia Supreme Court stayed the execution because the high court was considering the lethal injection case out of Kentucky. The state Attorney General's Office is now asking the state Supreme Court to lift the stay of Alderman's execution. RELATED LINKS: • More Metro news • Metro photo galleries

For his help, Alderman promised to pay Brown half of Barbara Jean Alderman's $10,000 life insurance policy.

Alderman later said he found his wife's body that night at the creek but was so traumatized he forgot to tell anyone.

In separate trials, both Alderman and Brown were convicted of the murder and sentenced to death. But their fates diverged dramatically after that. Alderman, one of the longest-serving death-row inmates in the country, could have his execution date set soon. Last week, a federal judge rejected his arguments that Georgia's lethal-injection procedures are unconstitutional.

Brown died in 2000 a free man.

Alderman's lawyers are now asking the courts to look at the disparate treatment given to Alderman and Brown. They cite Brown's startling removal from death row three years into his sentence, his controversial release from prison nine years after that and the commutation of his murder sentence in 1994.

The lawyers also contend prosecutors improperly withheld information about an agreement reached with Brown for his testimony and that Brown was the moving force behind the murder.

"Brown was a monster — a true sociopath," Tom Dunn, Alderman's lawyer, said. "He killed Barbara Alderman, falsely placed the blame on Jack Alderman and then cut a deal with the state. He went from death row to freedom because he was a master manipulator of the truth."

Brown testified not once, but twice, against Alderman at trial. After Alderman's initial death sentence was thrown out on appeal, Brown testified when Alderman was sentenced to death again in 1984.

For years, Brown said he had no deal with prosecutors in exchange for his testimony. If there was one, Alderman could have grounds for a new trial because prosecutors never disclosed it.

In 1998, after his murder sentence was commuted, Brown signed a sworn affidavit explaining why he testified.

Then-prosecutor Lionel Drew told Brown he "would make sure it was to my benefit" for testifying against Alderman, Brown said in the affidavit. He added that Drew "never made me a specific promise."

Drew is now deceased. Ironically, except for Alderman, who was sentenced to die, all of the key players from his first trial — the prosecutors, his defense lawyer, the trial judge, the star witness — are now dead.

Last week, Assistant District Attorney David Lock said he is confident Alderman instigated the murder and that the DA's office played no role in Brown getting paroled.

Lock, who was in college when Alderman was tried the first time, prosecuted the second trial in 1984. Asked if Brown had a secret agreement with the DA's office or his testimony, Lock said, "There was never any deal that has ever been proven."

Ron Carlson, a University of Georgia law professor, called the disparate treatment received by Alderman and Brown unusual but not unprecedented. There are times when the killer in a murder-for-hire case has testified for the prosecution, and the person who put the killer up to it received a more severe penalty at trial, Carlson said.

In those cases, a deal has been struck between prosecutors and the witness, he said. "If there was a deal like that in Alderman's case, it should have been disclosed."

Barbara Alderman's family thinks it is past time for Jack Alderman to die.

"There was no deal made between John and the prosecutor's office," Debra Blase, the victim's sister, said. "We're just hoping it will soon be over with. We live with this every day. He's been through appeal after appeal after appeal."

Before his trial, Brown rejected the prosecution's offer of a life sentence, his lawyer, Alex Zipperer has said. Instead, he went to trial and got death.

But three years later, that death sentence was thrown out and Brown was resentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole. This was based on a plea bargain approved by the victim's family in appreciation for his help convicting Alderman, Zipperer said.

Brown went on to prison to serve his life term. But in late 1986, the parole board notified the victim's family that it was considering releasing Brown on parole.

The victim's mother, Rheta Earlene Blase, opposed it. "How would all of you feel if it was your daughter that was murdered," she wrote the board.

But Brown was granted parole in March 1987 and moved to Williamstown, N.Y., to live with his family.

Brown, a former mechanic, got a steady job as manager at a Sunoco gas station. But in 1988, he was investigated on accusations he molested two teenage girls.

Despite that, in 1994, the Georgia parole board, finding Brown had sufficient time to establish a stable life that no longer required supervision, commuted his life sentence to time served.

Scheree Lipscomb, a parole board spokeswoman, said that, under guidelines in place at the time, Brown was eligible for parole after serving seven years of his life sentence.

Once on parole, he also was eligible to have his sentence commuted to time served, she said.

Brown's former wife, in sworn testimony given to Alderman's lawyers, now says Brown was a tormented, abusive man after his release from prison, flying into rages that often turned violent.

"John would punch me in the abdomen until I passed out from the pain or he got tired," she said. "Sometimes he grabbed my face in both hands and told me he could snap my neck like a twig."

The woman's daughter, in a sworn statement, said Brown molested her repeatedly and said he'd kill her mother if she reported him.

He was never charged with molestation. In February 2000, Brown, 51, committed suicide in New York.