When it considers a death case, the state Board of Pardons and Parole puts almost everything on the table, former board Chairman Garland Hunt says.

A condemned killer’s experiences growing up. Behavior in school and later as an adult. And especially the crime and its victims — both those who died and those who loved them.

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Many people want Troy Anthony Davis spared, but the parole board will decide his fate without public explanation. A former chairman says members look hard at each case and debate it.

Everything is considered except the politics and the repercussions of the board’s judgment, Hunt said.

“We cannot make our decisions for the sake of popularity,” Hunt said.

The board this month could again face controversial choices in two high-profile death cases out of Savannah.

In one — the case of convicted cop killer Troy Anthony Davis — many of the witnesses against him almost two decades ago have recanted. Amnesty International, Hollywood celebrities and the pope have all contacted the board, advocating clemency.

The other — the 1974 case against David Alderman, who murdered his wife — became a vehicle for issues about the constitutionality of lethal injection.

Chatham County judges last week signed death warrants for both.

Barring any successful last-minute legal appeals to forestall execution, the cases will go to the Parole Board, the final arbiter when an execution looms.

What sways board members, however, may never be known. Unlike most state agencies, most of the Parole Board’s work is not public. Deliberations and documents they generate are “state secrets.”

Members don’t talk about how they vote, or why.

Hunt, who just ended his two-year stint as chairman, agreed to speak generally but not about any specific case.

The other members, appointed by the governor and approved by the state Senate, are Chairwoman Gale Buckner and Milton E. “Buddy” Nix, both previously with the GBI; former Drug Enforcement Administration agent Garfield Hammonds; and former Clayton County District Attorney Bob Keller. Hunt is co-pastor at a nondenominational church in Duluth.

Appeals heard, discussed

When an execution approaches, the board hears from both sides. First come those who want the condemned inmate spared. Later the same day, those who want the sentence carried out have their say. Inmates do not appear before the board, but relatives of inmates and victims may. There are no time limits or rules about what they can say.

The two sides are kept separate. Each group is escorted into an unmarked room on the fifth floor of a government building across the street from the Capitol. Sometimes reporters wait in the hallway to ask about what happened in the room.

After hearing from advocates for the inmate and the victim, Hunt said, the board members have “aggressive” and sometimes “more aggressive” private discussions. “We know it’s a matter of life and death,” Hunt said.

Death cases are the only ones members discuss. In other cases their decisions are based on files passed from member to member. In 2007, the board voted to release more than 11,400 inmates and revoked parole for 3,560.

Only the board’s lawyer and the chairman know the “private decision” each member makes on inmates facing death, Hunt said.

Maybe that shouldn’t be the case, Douglas County District Attorney David McDade said.

He was angered by a board decision in May to commute the sentence of Samuel David Crowe to life without parole just hours before he was to die by lethal injection for the 1988 murder of a former co-worker.

“I wish there were some guidelines, some standards,” said McDade, who has been involved in death penalty litigation for 28 years. “Whenever you have an entity that can operate without guidelines … the credibility of the results can sometimes be questioned. They don’t have to explain it, and they won’t explain it.”

State system unusual

Governors in 14 states have exclusive executive authority to stop an execution. In 21 others, the governor either sits on a panel that makes clemency decisions or recommends to a board what should be done. The president has sole authority to commute federal death sentences.

Georgia is one of three states that gives exclusive review power to an independent board.

“I think every state is going to have to have some mechanism [for clemency review],” said Rick Currie, the prosecutor in six southeast Georgia counties and president of the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council of Georgia. “Do you feel better with five people making that decision than one person? I feel better with five people making that decision or you could have a situation like in Illinois with a governor who is anti-death penalty and he started commuting sentences coming and going.”

Over the years, Georgia politicians have campaigned to weaken or abolish the Parole Board. From time to time the Legislature has threatened its existence, usually after controversial decisions. But the board survives.

“There’s a purpose for it, and I feel more comfortable with five people appointed by the governor and ratified by the Senate,” Currie said.

McDade said the public doesn’t always understand the issues when the board stops or delays an execution.

Both Davis and Alderman have been before the board already.

The board delayed Davis’ execution last summer to allow time to gather more information after several witnesses recanted testimony about the night in 1989 when Savannah police officer Mark Allen MacPhail was killed in a Burger King parking lot. The courts have upheld the death sentence.

Alderman was to have been executed last year. His lethal injection was put off because the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear arguments raised by a Kentucky death row inmate that the method is cruel. Though the high court upheld Kentucky’s lethal injection law, Alderman still has an appeal pending on his own challenge.

“We are needed. Executive clemency is always needed,” Hunt said.